BSkyB Poaches Five’s Milligan To Join Sales Division
BSkyB is understood to have poached Five’s deputy chief executive, Nick Milligan, to take up a newly created role at its advertising sales operation.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that Milligan, who has occupied a number of senior positions at Five, is set to take up a high-level role at Sky Media overseeing such operations as the sale of spot advertising across a portfolio of BSkyB and third party channels.
It is understood that the Five executive could also face the challenge of increasing BSkyB’s commercial operations to bring in more revenue. Theoretically the satellite broadcaster could merge its sales team with Channel 4, Five or Interactive Digital Sales to make it a larger player in the market for television advertising (see Ofcom’s Airtime Sales Ruling Receives Mixed Reaction).
A spokesman for BSkyB refused to comment on reports that Milligan would join Sky Media in a position senior to that of sales director, Mark Chippendale. He said: “We are always looking to grow our advertising revenue in line with Sky’s growing strength as a broadcaster.”
Five has also moved to quash rumours of the deputy chief executive’s departure and a spokesperson for the broadcaster insisted that Milligan had not tendered his resignation and had not announced any intention to step down.
Speculation about Milligan joining BSkyB has been rife since Dawn Airey resigned as Five chief executive to join BSkyB as managing director of Sky Networks in September 2002. However, it is understood that a clause in Airey’s contract prevented her from poaching staff from Five for at least a year (see Airey’s Departure Represents Coup For BSkyB).
Reports had also linked Milligan to the sales director job at the newly created ITV if the broadcaster had been forced to divest its sales operations following the merger of Carton and Granada. However, this came to nothing when a single ITV sales house was cleared by the Competition Commission (see ITV Cleared To Merge With Sales Houses Intact).
Milligan joined Five as sales director after its launch as Channel 5 in 1997. He was then promoted to the role of deputy chief executive in 2000 following the departure of the then chief executive David Elstein. Some had tipped Milligan to take over the top role at Five following the Airey’s departure, but the channel named former Flextech head, Jane Lighting, as chief executive in February last year (see Channel Five Names Lighting As New Chief Executive).
Five: 020 7550 5555 www.five.tv
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