Univision Communications has promoted Tonia O'Connor to president, distribution sales and marketing.
In this role, O'Connor, who has been serving as executive vice president of distribution sales and marketing for the top U.S. Spanish-language media company, is responsible for leading its carriage efforts with cable, satellite and telecommunications operators, and managing the affiliate relations teams for the Univision and TeleFutura network stations, as well as cable network Galavisión.
O'Connor, who joined Univision in January 2008 after 13 years at Gemstar TV Guide, where she was executive vice president of distribution, played the leading role in helping Univision secure retransmission-consent fees from distributors for the first time during the most recent cycle, as the company had previously deployed must-carry rules for carriage.
Named a "Wonder Woman" by the editors of Multichannel News in 2009, O'Connor also drove Univision's push into video on demand, with the media company offering entertainment and sports fare, like the 2010 World Cup, via that advanced platform, while gaining a number of high-definition network rollouts in advance of FIFA's famed futbol tourney.
Univision CEO Joe Uva announced O'Connor's elevation in an email to staffers on Friday morning:
Dear colleagues,
"I am pleased to announce the promotion of Tonia O'Connor to the position of president, Distribution Sales & Marketing for UCI. In this role, Tonia will expand her responsibilities of leading and directing all distribution sales and marketing efforts of our networks and stations to include the development and leadership of a comprehensive companywide strategy for the distribution of all of our video content across all screens. She and her team will create, implement and monitor the necessary business rules, protocols and decision making processes to ensure that we maximize our growth opportunity in an ever changing and complex world of content distribution.
Tonia and her team will work collaboratively across our networks and station groups, UIM, Ad Sales, Legal and Government Relations to make sure the needs of all of our internal and external business partners are being met, while creating increased value for UCI, its shareholders and our consumers.
Since joining Univision in 2008, Tonia has built an industry leading team that has delivered a significant and growing new revenue stream for the Company through Retransmission Consent negotiations with cable operators, satellite distributors and telcos. Going forward, distribution of our content will represent an even larger percentage of our revenue and profits.
Please join me in congratulating Tonia on this well deserved promotion."
Best regards,
Joe
