Warner Bros. Consolidates Digital Operations

Warner Bros. has created a Home Entertainment Group to oversee digital delivery of its entertainment content on new and future platforms.

Kevin Tsujihara will head the group as president, reporting directly to Warner Bros. CEO Barry Meyer and COO Alan Horn. Tsujihara had been executive VP, corporate business development & strategy

The group will include online, wireless, games, home video and anti-piracy. The group's goal is to join like services to speed their implementation while managing the risks they pose to the value of the studio's content.

At the same time, the group will also create a separate business unit, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, which will contain the online and wireless businesses, as well as VOD, SVOD and pay-per-view.

The unit will oversee worldwide electronic digital distribution of content, which previously had been handled by different business units of the studio.

"We must safely exploit our assets across every exhibition outlet available to us today and those developed in the future," said Meyer, "while managing windowing structures so as not to cannibalize these assets and with a constant eye toward protecting them from digital theft."

Also as part of the restructuring, Ron Sanders has been named president of Warner Home Video. Sanders had been executive VP and GM, North America. Jim Cardwell, who had been president of Home Video since January 2003, will remain a consultant to the company.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.