Sony Shifts Vital Pay Tv Area to Steve Mosko

By Juliana J. Bolden

Steve Mosko

Set to complete its $4.8 billion acquisition of MGM today, Sony Pictures Entertainment announced key restructures within its vital pay TV operations.

Its domestic pay TV sales business will now run under the direction of Sony Pictures Television President Steve Mosko. The shift enables Sony Pictures Television International, headed by President Michael Grindon and long responsible for all pay TV sales, to focus on its expanding overseas activities.

More clearly dividing domestic and international roles, this move also enables the studio to better exploit its sizeable film library, which has ballooned to more than 7,000 titles. Both Mosko and Grindon report to Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman and CEO Michael Lynton and motion picture division chairman Amy Pascal.

Promoted to SPT president in 2001, Mosko says it took time for the division to get its house in order. “We've spent the last three years taking this company from a point at which everyone was saying that Sony was getting out of the television business entirely to now having (pilots) at every network this year,” Mosko said.
“Now, as the last independent studio left and with a wealth of great content” he continued, “we're going to be in a leadership position in terms of where this industry is going in the next 5-10 years.”

Mosko, who manages Sony’s U.S. television production and distribution operations, will oversee growing areas such as pay-per-view, video-on-demand and more. The studio locked a four-year deal with the executive that keeps him with Sony through 2009. Reportedly, Mosko is key in programming efforts for a series of developing channels, featuring video-on-demand services, created as a result of last year’s Sony-Comcast deal. Mosko said Sony is continuing to be aggressive in developing original programming for cable, and committed to the first-run syndication business.

Mosko, who also serves as chairman of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation and on on the board of directors for Sony/Liberty Media-owned GSN cable channel, joined Sony in 1992 as a sales executive.

In related news, publicity executive Bryan Byrd, who has spent most of the
past decade at Showtime, is joining Sony Television as Vice President of
Media Relations. Byrd, a longtime member of the Academy of Television Arts &
Sciences, is a former governor in the Academy’s public relations peer group.

Juan Morales also contributed to this story.