Erik Huggers, the exec who led Intel Media’s attempt to create a virtual MVPD, has joined Vevo as president and CEO, succeeding Rio Caraeff, who departed Vevo late last year, according to multiple media reports.

Huggers, being named to the slot as Vevo makes its Newfronts presentation Thursday, left Verizon Communications in mid-2014, about five months after the telco struck a deal to acquire OnCue, the advanced video assets that Intel had developed to form the basis of what was to become an provider of over-the-top pay TV services.  He is also late of BBC, where he helped to launch its iPlayer service,  Microsoft and Endemol.

Vevo, primarily backed by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment and launched in 2009, currently offers a library of about 140,000 HD music videos, including some exclusive original programming.

"The Vevo team has built the leading video service that has been embraced by passionate music fans around the world," Huggers said in a statement. "I believe there is great potential in accelerating innovation to delight audiences with new product features and premium content."

Huggers will be tasked for seeking growth beyond outlets such as YouTube, and possibly pursue strategies to help Vevo’s investors get a return via an IPO, Bloomberg reported, citing an unnamed source.

Verizon Communications intends to launch an Internet-fed video service spawned by its acquisition of Intel Media’s OnCue assets by mid-2015, company CEO Lowell McAdam said Thursday at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in New York, according to multiple reports.

The coming service, a seeming departure from the traditional pay-TV service delivered via Verizon’s FiOS TV platform, will enter the picture as others pursue similar over-the-top TV strategies, including Dish Network’s single-stream multiscreen offering that’s expected to launch later this year, and the service that Sony is developing as it carves out distribution deals with Viacom and other programming partners. 

And apparently Verizon’s discussions with programmers about securing digital rights for a broadband-based subscription TV service have been improving.

"It's moved from a stiff-arm to more of an embrace," he said, according to Reuters, noting that dialogue with broadcast TV networks and other content providers has been “changing dramatically” over the past six months to a year.

Verizon hasn’t announced how it will price and package the service, but expects it to include access to major broadcast channels (“the big four for sure”), and a lineup of “custom channels,” Deadline.com reported.

In June, questions swirled about how Verizon would utilize OnCue assets, with some sources claiming that the near-term plan was not to create an out-of-footprint, virtual MVPD service, but to instead use them to develop a next-gen platform that would help FiOS TV transition more of its offerings to IP and catch up to where Comcast is heading with its X1 platform. Now it seems that Verizon has been able to start locking up the kind of digital distribution rights it will need to create smaller, more personalized subscription bundles.

Verizon, which also operates a cloud-based video delivery system via the Verizon Digital Media Services (VDMS) unit, is also developing a live video service that will be delivered on its mobile network using bandwidth-friendly LTE multicast technology. Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said in July that Verizon Wireless plans to “go commercial” with such an offering as early as 2015.

Sony’s coming “virtual” pay-TV service took a step closer to the real Wednesday as the CE giant and Viacom announced that they have inked a distribution deal that covers "at least" 22 Viacom cable channels at launch, as well as access the Viacom's full on-demand package.

Sony, like Dish Network and others, is developing a broadband-fed services tailored to reach younger demographic sets, including so-called cord-cutters and consumers who have never taken a pay-TV service. While cord-cutting remains a small but growing threat to the traditional pay-TV industry, 84% of U.S. homes still subscribe to some form of pay television, and 35% of households that don’t take pay-TV have never subscribed to a pay-TV service, according to a recent study from Leichtman Research Group. LRG also found that the number of U.S. cable broadband subs surpassed cable pay-TV subs for the first time in the second quarter of 2014.

The distribution deal between Sony and the Viacom comes after Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman predicted last year at a UBS conference that there was a “very strong chance” that a virtual MVPD would be announced in 2014

At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, Sony announced that it intended to start testing an OTT pay-TV service sometime in 2014. In June, Shawn Layden, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, told Re/code that the service, which he billed as “revolutionary,”  was “on track” to debut sometime later in the year “in some capacity.”

Sony hasn’t announced a launch date for the cloud-based TV service, only noting Wednesday that more details about it will be announced “in the near future.”

“Our new cloud-based TV service will combine the live TV content people love most about cable with the dynamic experience they have come to expect from our network,” Andrew House, group executive for Sony’s Network Entertainment Business, said in a statement. “Viacom’s award-winning networks are a perfect match for our new service, ensuring that our customers will be able to access the shows they love on their favorite devices, when and how they choose.”

Thanks to the Viacom deal, Sony’s coming service will have access to BET, CMT, Comedy Central. MTV, MTV2, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., Nicktoons, Spike, TV Land, VH1, BET Gospel, Centric, Logo, CMT Pure Country, MTV Hits, MTV Jams, mtvU, Palladia, TeenNick, and Vh1 Classic. The Viacom-Sony deal also includes authenticated TV Everywhere rights. Viacom currently offers TV Everywhere apps from Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, BET, VH1, CMT and Logo.

Dish Network is also working on an internet based TV service and has signed up Walt Disney Co. and A+E Networks.

“Viacom always strives to create transformational opportunities that combine consumer value and technological innovation,” Dauman said, in a statement. “Given our young, tech-savvy audiences, our networks are essential for any new distribution platform, and we’re excited to be among the many programmers that will help power Sony’s new service and advance a new era for television.”

Dish Network is also developing a virtual MVPD service that, based on recent trademark filings, might carry the brand “nutv.”

Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen said last month that he expects to launch a single-stream OTT offering by the end of the year. Dish has already secured digital streaming rights with Walt Disney Co. and A+E Networks.

Intel Media pursued a virtual MVPD offering, secured its programming distribution rights, but got cold feet and opted to drop out and sell its “OnCue” assets to Verizon Communications.

Erik Huggers is exiting Verizon Communications roughly five months after the telco inked a deal to acquire OnCue, the advanced video assets that Intel had developed to form the basis of what was to become an ambitious "virtual" MSO service that sold pay-TV packages over-the-top.

Reuters first reported of Huggers’ departure on Friday (May 30), with Huggers telling the outlet that he had worked well with his boss at Verizon, head of product development Marni Walden. "There were no conflicts at all,” he told Reuters. “The technology is great, the team is great, the future is secure, the dream lives on. It's time to hand the baby over to someone else.”

Verizon confirmed that Huggers is leaving the company, adding that his departure does not alter the plans it has in store for the assets it acquired from Intel.

“We obtained a strong combination of technological and personnel assets from Intel Media. We intend to strategically utilize the OnCue technology and talent to grow our business. That has not changed,” Verizon spokesman Bill Kula said, in a statement.

Huggers also told The Wall Street Journal that Verizon is investing “quite significantly” in the 350-person Intel Media division that had undertaken the original OnCue effort, and that Verizon intends to move the group from Santa Clara, Calif., to a new facility in the Silicon Valley by the end of 2014. Huggers, rumored to be in the running for the lead job at Hulu when the future of Intel Media and the OnCue project was in doubt (Mike Hopkins was named CEO of the Web video hub last fall), told the paper that he has “a couple of irons in the fire,” but expects to stay in Silicon Valley.

Verizon has yet to outline its full plan for OnCue, though people familiar with it say the initial focus is to help the telco speed the development of a next-gen IP video product that can help Verizon catch up to Comcast and its cloud-fed X1 platform while also giving Verizon independent control of its set-top roadmap and the ability to trim CPE-related capex costs.

Still, some of Verizon’s OnCue-related work will include the pursuit of wireless and over-the-top options that would enable Verizon to bring more mobility to the FiOS video platform, Verizon chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam said in March at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco.

Before putting the OnCue assets on the block, Intel Media had designs on attacking a saturated pay-TV market with a broadband-delivered video subscription service outfitted with “smarter bundles” that would appeal to younger, connected consumers.

Intel Media’s original plan was to launch services by the end of 2013, but those plans were scuttled amid rumors that new Intel CEO Brian Krzanich had soured on the idea.  

The reasons why Intel Media pulled back have varied. While some sources indicated that the company had trouble landing enough carriage deals and the rights to cobble together a compelling service, multiple people familiar with OnCue’s plans said Intel Media was successful in putting distribution deals place, but then refused to sign them over fears that subscriber milestones and other commitments required by those contracts proved too steep.  

Krzanich told Re/code earlier this year that Intel  lacked the scale to move ahead on a pay-TV service on its own. “When you go and play with the content guys, it’s all about volume. And we come at it with no background, no experience, no volume,” he told the publication.