After 11 years with Anheuser-Busch, Steve Margosian is joining OLN as vice president of marketing solutions. Margosian, whose last day at A-B was Friday, had been general manager and vice president at Busch Media’s New York office, handling most media buying for A-B’s in-house agency.
He has spent his entire career as a buyer, working at several agencies before going to A-B. At OLN, he’ll be charged with creating non-traditional media packages for advertisers, reporting to both Tom Prigoda, senior vice president, marketing solutions and interactive media, Comcast Networks, and John West, senior vice president, OLN Advertising Sales.
“A lot of people have made the successful transition from the buy side to the sell side,” said Dave Cassaro, president of advertising sales for Comcast Networks, who oversees sales at OLN. “What’s great about Steve is he has tremendous creativity.”
Hiring someone of Margosian’s industry stature — he controlled close to $300 million a year in sports advertising — is widely viewed as a signal that OLN parent company Comcast has every expectation of adding major new programming to the network, most likely the NFL. Margosian probably would not leave A-B, a company he said he loved working for, to market just bull riding and the NHL.
Neither he nor OLN officials would comment on what’s next for OLN.
“I think the company is well-positioned and out front,” said Margosian, 42, adding that the technology bent of the company, with its emphasis on video-on-demand and broadband Internet, gives Comcast an “ability to create value outside of the space of the 30-second ad.”
Margosian replaces OLN veteran Mike Long, who worked out of Comcast’s Chicago offices and left in the fall because he did not want to relocate to the East, Cassaro said.
Around that time, Cassaro said he and Margosian spoke about the position.
“Steve actually engaged us in a conversation,” he said. “Over a lunch or drink, he threw his name out there that this was something he might be interested in.”
Tony Ponturo, A-B’s vice president of global media and sports marketing, said in a statement: “Steve Margosian has been a very valuable member of our team at Anheuser-Busch for many years, and his contributions will be missed.”
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| MLB has let Fox know that letting its
exclusive window expire could be costly. |
MLB TALKING TO NBC: The exclusive negotiating window between Fox Broadcasting Co. and Major League Baseball expired with the new year, giving MLB the opportunity to seek other bidders. Industry sources said preliminary discussions have commenced with NBC Sports, whose president, Ken Schanzer, once ran The Baseball Network, a joint venture between the league, NBC and ABC in the mid-’90s.
Fox’s five-year, $2.5 billion deal runs through next season, and includes rights to all national games on broadcast television. The original deal also included rights that were later transferred to ESPN for the weekday afternoon regular-season games and some division series games in the postseason. Those games likely will be sold as a separate package this time, possibly to ESPN or, just as likely, OLN if the network also gets NFL Thursday-Saturday rights.
For the broadcast piece, MLB stressed to Fox that letting the exclusive window expire was dangerous business, as ESPN did the same thing and ended up paying a $100 million-a-year increase for its cable deal.
MLB, Fox and NBC had no comment.
Andy Bernstein can be reached at abernstein@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
