TiVo said its board has unanimously elected Enrique Rodriguez to president and CEO.
Rodriguez, who assumes that role effective today (November 13), succeeds Tom Carson, who announced his intention to retire in May. Carson, who led Rovi through its merger with TiVo last fall, is also stepping down from the TiVo board, but will stay with the company as an advisor through the beginning of Q2 2018 to assist with the CEO transition.
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Rodriguez takes the helm of TiVo more than a year after the merger with Rovi, and just weeks after TiVo introduced a new lineup of retail products that support voice-powered navigation. Earlier this month on TiVo's earnings call, Carson stressed that the company had “moved well beyond a hardware company,” as the bulk of its revenues are now coming way of software, services, advertising and licensing.
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Rodriguez most recently was EVP and CTO of AT&T’s Entertainment Group unit, coming on board there in 2015 to oversee U-verse and DirecTV and to head up the technical integration of those services.
Prior to that, Rodriguez was group VP of Sirius XM, and was SVP and GM of Cisco Systems’s Service Provider Video Group. At Cisco, he was one of the leads on Videoscape, a multi-screen video initiative that Cisco introduced in 2011 at CES that is now offered through a suite of products under the “Infinite” brand.
Rodriguez is also late of Microsoft, where he served in positions that included corporate vice president for the TV Division and as VP of Xbox partnerships. Before his time at Microsoft, Rodriguez spent more than 20 years at Thomson/RCA.
“Enrique is an exceptional leader and strategist who has the energy and passion that will position
TiVo for success,” Jim Meyer, TiVo’s chairman of the board of directors, said in a statement. “He knows the company and our industry inside and out, and will be able to move quickly with implementing initiatives that we believe will position the company for future success and add value for our stockholders.”
“I am honored to be selected by the Board for this opportunity to lead TiVo and its employees, and I look forward to the company’s next phase of growth,” added Rodriguez. “The opportunity for TiVo is enormous, and my focus will be on accelerating the innovation that our customers demand to help usher in a new era of entertainment, while adding value for our stockholders.”
