BBC America Moves Ad Sales in-House

Mark Gall Joins Network from The Weather Channel

By Alex Weprin -- Broadcasting & Cable, 11/27/2007 12:44:00 PM

BBC America hired Mark Gall to lead its advertising-sales division, and the network plans to move all ad sales in-house by April 1. Discovery Communications currently handles ad sales for the channel.

“Now that we present a wider proposition for advertisers, it's time to fully leverage a stand-alone sales team dedicated to the BBC brand,” said Garth Ancier, president of BBC Worldwide America. “With 33% of BBC.com's international traffic coming from North America and BBC America in almost 60 million homes, we offer extremely attractive platforms for advertisers to reach our significant upscale audience. Discovery has done a terrific job for BBC America sales and, of course, we continue to be very strong partners in distribution and factual programming.”

BBC America launched BBC World News America, the network’s flagship American news broadcast, in October, and it plans to launch BBC America HD next year.

Gall will oversee the transition to in-house advertising sales by establishing ad hubs in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

The move comes on the heels of the introduction of ads on BBC.com, BBC’s Web portal for visitors from outside of the United Kingdom, currently the fifth-ranked broadcast-news site in the United States.

Gall is joining BBC America from The Weather Channel, where he served as senior vice president.