Gore Staffs Up His Cable Net

Former Vice President Al Gore has hired a Cable News Network and The Walt Disney Co. veteran and a former magazine publisher for key posts in the senior-management team for his cable network, officials said Wednesday.

Gore, whose media company is named INdTV, has named David Neuman president of programming and Anne Zehren president of sales and marketing.

Gore and his partner, Joel Hyatt, acquired Newsworld International from Vivendi Universal in May.

Most recently, Neuman was chief programming officer at CNN, where he spearheaded the hiring of Anderson Cooper, Soledad O’Brien and Paula Zahn, as well as new-program development, including American Morning.

Neuman started his TV career at NBC, where, by age 26, he was vice president in charge of the “Peacock Network’s” primetime-comedy shows. One year later, he was named VP of comedy development.

From NBC, Neuman had stints at a variety of TV companies. He was an executive producer at 20th Century Fox, and he then serviced as president of programming at Channel One, the daily broadcast service distributed in classrooms.

From 1996-98, Neuman served as president of Walt Disney Television and Touchstone Television, where he supervised the production of Home Improvement and Ellen,among other shows.

Zehren is the founding publisher of Teen People magazine, which became one of the fastest-growing magazines ever launched, with readership topping 10 million in only five years.

Prior to Teen People,Zehren was associate publisher/marketing of Glamour, where she turned the marketing department from a cost center to a profit center. Before Glamour,Zehren was promotion/marketing director at Newsweek.

“We had a luxury of riches in that we were able to select from among many talented, successful media executives,” Gore said in a prepared statement. “It is inspiring to all of us that David and Anne share our vision and are determined to help us translate that vision into reality.”