– AOL (NYSE: TWX) UK: The portal business has promoted interactive marketing VP Michael Steckler to the managing director position – and it will be hoping to bring stability to the business after recent defections. Since joining from MSN in July, Steckler had held the interim MD post, which was vacated in April by Andy Jonesco’s departure to BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) as its head of digital strategy. Steckler had been an enthusiastic planning and development director for the EMEA (NSDQ: ERTS) region of Microsoft’s (NSDQ: MSFT) online services group. In recent months, AOL Europe lost director Michael Moore to Telegraph Media Group, Carlos Morgado to Passado and commercial development head Phil Guest to Habbo Hotel.
– BBC: This comes hot on the heels of last week’s appointment of ex Microsoft Windows Media exec Jon Billings and is another part of a shake-up at the BBC’s Future Media & Technology division. The Beeb has hired Anthony Rose, the former CTO of Kazaa co-developer Altnet, as head of digital media technology. Rose will be responsible for leading development of the iPlayer catch-up TV software and for creating a common media experience across all the BBC’s online outlets, DigitalSpy said. Rose spent six years at Altnet after previously serving as technology VP for Sega Australia New Developments.
It’s a significant nod toward peer-to-peer as the future distribution method of choice. iPlayer uses P2P to remove the distribution cost burden from the BBC itself – at Kazaa, Rose worked on a very popular P2P media network and, according to a bio, holds several patents on such technology himself. This is the latest part in a reorganisation by Erik Huggers, the former Windows Media exec hired in May as BBC Future Media & Technology controller, and follows the departures of “BBC 2.0” project manager Tom Loosemore to Ofcom in June and iPlayer developer Ben Lavender to Lovefilm a month later.