Nancy Tellem, former president of CBS Network Television Entertainment Group, has joined Microsoft as entertainment and digital media president, where she will oversee the launch of a new production studio in Los Angeles and help the company expand its entertainment efforts.
The move builds on a company-wide effort to dramatically expand the amount of entertainment content that is available on the Xbox gaming console platform and is another example of how tech companies are increasingly looking to hire executives from the TV or film side of the businesses to expand the content available on their devices.
Xbox users are already spending over 80 hours a month with entertainment content on the platforms, Phil Spencer, corporate vice president, Microsoft Studios, explained in an interview.
"We see TV as a must have when we are thinking about partnering with companies," he noted, adding that hiring "such a great leader to attract talent and establish content partnership will greatly strengthen our push into entertainment."
Tellem will report to Spencer.
In an interview, Tellem noted that they are building studio in Los Angeles "from scratch and opening doors to writers and production companies and major media companies who are looking to partner with us."
She sees the studio producing a wide range of content that would include "long-form TV, short-form Web," and a variety of other types of content "across all demos and all genres."
