Duff Names Carlton’s Digby As ITV Sales Director
Graham Duff, the new managing director of ITV Sales, has named Gary Digby, the Carlton Sales managing director, as his new right hand man, in a move the brings him close to completing his senior management line-up.
It is understood that Digby saw off competition from his current boss at Carlton Sales, Steve Platt, and Granada Enterprises managing director, Simon Pardon, to take the role of sales director at ITV’s newly merged sales house.
Simon Lent, deputy managing director at Granada Enterprises, has been named as Digby’s second in command and will assume the position of London sales leader, with three agency account groups reporting directly to him.
Meanwhile, Duff has announced the appointment of three other senior directors to help him lead the combined sales operation that will result from the £4.5 billion merger of Carlton and Granada, which is due for completion early next year (see ITV Cleared To Merge With Sales Houses Intact).
The first of these senior appointments is Jill Kerslake, operations director at Granada Enterprises, who becomes director of sales operations. The second is Andy Bagnall, Granada’s planning director, who takes up the role of director of knowledge management, and the third is Debbie Chalet, who retains her position as chief executive of Carlton Screen Advertising.
Duff, who is currently chief executive of Granada Enterprises, told staff in a memo that he hopes to announce the appointment of a director of customer relationship management before Christmas.
Commenting on the appointments, he said: “Given the commercial imperative of the negotiation timetable, I will now prioritise working with Gary and Simon on the next steps in the area of agency sales. I will also be developing with Andy, Jill and Gary how we best progress in all the areas that will come under their charge.”
Last week former Starcom Motive vice chairman, David Connolly, was named as the independent adjudicator responsible for overseeing airtime sales at ITV following the merger of Carlton and Granada. He will be responsible for implementing and overseeing the controversial contract rights renewal remedy, which allows advertisers to roll over the discounts on their current ITV contracts for the next three years (see Starcom Motive’s Connolly To Oversee ITV Airtime Sales).
Rival commercial broadcasters also received a boost yesterday when Ofcom lifted the rules banning Channel 4, Channel Five and BSkyB from selling advertising airtime jointly, in a move that paves the way for a merger of their sales operations (see Ofcom Clears Way For Sales House Consolidation).
Channel 4 welcomed the decision, which is the result of a wide-ranging investigation into the airtime sales market, saying: “It made no sense to keep these rules in place after the Carlton and Granada merger had been approved.”
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