Cox's Esser To Chair C-SPAN Exec Committee

C-SPAN's board of directors has tapped Cox President Pat Esser to be chairman of its executive committee. That came at the board's annual meeting in Washington.

Esser has been a member of the board since 2005. Esser succeeds Glenn Britt, Time Warner Cable chairman, who is retiring from the company at the end of the year.

The seven-member executive committee sets strategy and oversees finances for the network.

C-SPAN Executive Chairman Brian Lamb called Esser the ideal person to guide C-SPAN. "Pat Esser has a keen understanding of where the telecommunications industry is headed; particularly with consumer interests, innovative technologies and how C-SPAN may better serve our audience in a digital world," Lamb said of Esser's election to a one-year term.

Also named to the executive committee at the meeting was Amy Tykeson, president of BendBroadband. She has been a board member since 2007. Tykeson is a familiar face in Washington, having testified at a hearing in June on the impact of legislation on small and midsized cable operators.

Finally, elected new board members were Jeff DeMond, CEO of BCI Broadband, and Edward Holleran, president of Atlantic Broadband. It is actually a return engagement for DeMond, who had been on the board when he was CEO of Bresnan Communications.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.