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CEO changes at Sky Deutschland
Jörn Krieger ©RapidTVNews | 03-12-2009
Rumours of a change in leadership at Sky Deutschland have proven true, with CEO Mark Williams leaving the troubled German pay-TV broadcaster on 31 March 2010.
The decision was made for personal reasons, the company said in a statement. Williams' successor will be Brian Sullivan, currently managing director/customer group at UK-based pay-TV broadcaster BSkyB, in which News Corp, as with Sky Deutschland, is the largest single shareholder. The 47-year old American will initially take on the role as deputy CEO for three months from 1 January 2010 at Williams' side before taking over the top position on 1 April 2010.
Williams' resignation has been speculated for some weeks after his plans to put Sky Deutschland back on track met with little success. Despite a new packaging and pricing structure introduced on 4 July in the process of re-launching Premiere as Sky, which was accompanied by a €100 million advertising campaign, the broadcaster only managed to add 67,000 new subscribers in the third quarter of this year.
"Mark Williams has made an enormous contribution to Sky in a short period of time. He joined in extraordinary circumstances and moved quickly to stabilise the business, closing the security gap, recapitalising the company, securing new Bundesliga rights and launching the new pay-TV service Sky - all in little over a year", said Markus Tellenbach, chairman of Sky Deutschland's supervisory board. "We would like to thank him for all that he has done to put the company on the path to growth and respect his decision to rejoin his family following a carefully managed transition."
According to Tellenbach, with Sullivan, who has worked at BSkyB for over 13 years, Sky has found an "outstanding new leader". "When Brian Sullivan joined BSkyB, it had only slightly more customers than Sky Deutschland does today. Now, it is a model for excellence in our industry. In a marketplace with strong free-to-air broadcasters, Sullivan has played a central role in building a popular subscription service that is now in more than one in three British homes."
Brian Sullivan is a highly-regarded senior staffer at Sky. He has firmly backed spectacular technological innovation at Sky as well as being a constant and trusted member of Sky's most senior management.
However, Sky Deutschland has a long way to go before it reaches a similar market penetration in Germany. With 2.4m subscribers out of 40 million households, the share of Sky Deutschland homes is currently just 6%.
© Rapid TV News 2009
