Discovery’s Digital Head Kayse Tapped To Lead Ad Sales For Oprah’s OWN Channel

Kathy Kayse, Discovery

After a year and a half as Discovery Communications’ EVP of digital media sales, Kathy Kayse is being moved over to take over ad sales for the company’s forthcoming cable channel, OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network. Kayse came to Discovery from AOL (NYSE: AOL) — she had been a 24-year Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) veteran. In her new post, B&C reports, she’ll continue to report to Joe Abruzzese, president ad sales at Discovery, but she will also work under Christina Norman, the former MTV Network exec who was named OWN’s president back in January. The cable network doesn’t have any plans to fill Kayse’s post as digital media sales head.

Winfrey and Discovery Communications (NSDQ: DISCA) formed the joint venture the created OWN in January 2008. Since the channel was initiated with an emphasis on being multi-platform, Kayse will will be responsible for ad sales at both the network and the Oprah.com site that anchors OWN. The network is expected to launch next year.

To get ready for its debut, OWN has added a number of top execs to run it, including Jamila Hunter, who a former NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) exec at Bravo who was tapped as programming head this summer. Meanwhile, after only a few months on the job Robin Schwartz exited last spring as president of TV.

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