CBS has hired Mickey Carter as senior vice president of television networks distribution, reporting to Ray Hopkins, president of the department. Carter will bolster CBS’s team of negotiators and assist in the multiplatform growth and distribution strategies for all CBS-owned properties.
The announcement comes shortly after the appointment of another former Fox executive, Jonathan Sarrow, to a similar role. Carter and Sarrow will work as counterparts within the Television Distribution division.
“Mickey is a tremendous executive with a stellar reputation in the industry,” Hopkins said in a release. “His successful track record in negotiating deals will further CBS’s strategy of securing carriage fees that are commensurate to the high-quality content we deliver to our distribution partners. I look forward to working closely with him.”
Added Hopkins in the release, “With both Mickey and Jonathan, we now have a team in place to maximize the continued growth of this important revenue stream for the Company. I look forward to their combined contributions.”
Carter recently served as VP of national accounts at Fox News, where he managed the business relationships with all major cable, satellite and telco companies that distributed Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network content. In this role, he identified strategic initiatives related to the distribution of Fox News programming content and negotiated the distribution agreements with companies on a variety of platforms, including TV Everywhere, mobile, broadband and other emerging platforms.
Prior to joining Fox News, Carter served as senior director of programming for Time Warner Cable, where he was responsible for the negotiation of agreements for the distribution of content to Time Warner Cable subscribers across its linear television and video-on-demand platforms. Carter also worked as a lawyer and business executive in the music and sports industries. He served as an attorney and player-agent for several prominent professional athletes, including baseball Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn and NFL legend Reggie White. Within the music industry, he worked as a talent representative and spent several years at Zomba Recording Corp., where he negotiated artist deals and production agreements for the Jive Records label imprint (Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Justin Timberlake and ‘N Sync, R. Kelly) as well as the Verity Records gospel music label.
