In a reorganization of its company, TVN Entertainment Corp.
has created Transactional Content Group to oversee its pay-per-view, video-on-demand and
transactional businesses.
TCG will be the umbrella group for TVN's near-VOD,
VOD, PPV-event, home shopping and direct-response businesses, which combined serve about
50 million direct-broadcast satellite and cable homes, TVN chairman and CEO Stu Levin
said.
The group will be headed by Gunthy-Renker Television CEO
Gregory A. Thomas. GRTV, which TVN purchased last year, primarily develops and distributes
infomercials.
"TCG will specialize in marketing programming and data
that consumers either pay to view or are motivated by to make a purchase," Thomas
said. "The benefit for our affiliates and partners is in maximizing revenue across a
full menu of transactional services."
TVN also appointed cable veteran James Riley as senior vice
president of business development for TCG. Riley -- who previously held sales positions
for Rainbow Programming Holdings Inc., E! Entertainment Television and GRTV Networks --
will handle the group's distribution and marketing efforts, Levin said.
The TCG formation comes on the heels of TVN's
formation in December of Broadband Internet Group, which handles the company's
playback, content-origination, digital compression and encryption services.
The announcement also comes in the midst of a transition
period for the company. Several key TVN executives have recently left, including CEO Jim
Ramo and senior vice president of sales and marketing David Sears.
In addition, TVN's turnkey digital NVOD service has
struggled to expand beyond several small MSOs, a number of Comcast Corp. cable systems and
Cablevision Systems Corp.
But Levin said the TCG announcement is one of many the
company plans to make in the near future regarding its future operations.
"[TCG] allows us to serve our clients in a much more
simple fashion," he added. "From here, it's full-steam ahead, especially
for our VOD platform, which we're very excited about."
