The 2012 Digital All-Stars

If you're going to get involved in the television industry's continuing digital revolution, you have to love the notion of traditional ideas being totally remade, for the benefit of your company and your viewers/users. And the folks on our annual list of digital game-changers/innovators have also long mastered two more things: convincing their companies that this is the right way to go, and knowing how to never sit still once things start going right.





































Matthew Baker: Pioneering Digital Measurement Possibilities

As VP and integrated group director of Universal McCann's J3 unit serving client Johnson & Johnson, Matthew Baker faces a unique challenge. Buying both traditional TV and online video means finding ways to compare them; while they are similar in some ways, they remain distinct in others.

More

Albert Cheng: Innovator's Industry Firsts Bear Fruit

If being a Digital All-Star was simply a matter of technical innovation, Albert Cheng would easily make the cut for this year's roster.

More

Cameron Clayton: A Consummate Digital Storyteller

The weather is hardly just a good subject to make small talk about anymore-and with all of the apps, websites and social media integrations now available, the Weather Channel's Cameron Clayton is making meteorology anything but mundane.

More

Andy Cohen: Digital Made the TV Star

It's hard to im agine a time when television executives and talent weren't blogging or tweeting their every thought. But seven years ago, Andy Cohen was one of the first, when he started a blog on BravoTV.com to dish on the behind-the-scenes drama of

Project Runway

.

More

Dave Coletti: ESPN's Real 'Stat Boy'

With apologies to Pardon the Interruption's Tony Reali -- who is affectionately referred to as "stat boy" -- ESPN's actual "stat boy" is Dave Coletti.

More

Charles Gray: Setting a National Stage for Local News

While the majority of the television station business is thinking about getting more local, Charles Gray, digital content director at Raycom Media, has his eyes on national stories.

More

Rick Haskins: Parsing Viewers' Taste for the New Online

Rick Haskins was ready to hang up his hat as The CW's head of marketing before the network persuaded him to stay-with digital programs added to his purview-last December.

More

Walker Jacobs: Turner's Digital 'Mad Man'

As the head of one of the fastest-growing areas of Turner Broadcasting System's business, Walker Jacobs, executive VP, Turner digital ad sales, is always looking for ways to better service advertisers.

More

Roger Keating: A Well-Connected Digital Doyen

Roger Keating, head of digital at Hearst Television, isn't as concerned with viewers' habits today as he is with how they will consume local TV content tomorrow, and next year.

More

Jason Kilar: Enjoying a History of Confounding Skeptics

When Hulu launched in August 2007, the prognosis for CEO Jason Kilar making

B&C

's 2012 list of Digital All-Stars on the company's fifth anniversary would not have been promising. Early on, there was considerable skepticism that "old media" companies like NBCUniversal and News Corp. could even work together period, let alone jointly back a successful Internet start-up.

More

Jim Lanzone: Keeping the Eye Focused on the Web

CBSi's size as a profitable top-10 Internet property, and its global reach (which includes the No. 1 tech, fashion and auto sites in China), would easily elevate the division's president, Jim Lanzone, to a top spot on any roster of global digital prominence. But Lanzone has also been making some additional power moves of his own.

More

Frances Manfredi: Exec Behind the Netflix Deal Heard Round the World

When Frances Manfredi, president of NBCUniversal Cable and New Media Distribution, closed a deal with Netflix in 2007 to make episodes of NBC primetime series available to Netflix subscribers, she was met with two diverse reactions: shoulder-shrugging and people picking up the phone and screaming at her.

More

Nick Matesi: A Disaster Helps Define a Station's Digital Value

Nick Matesi was headed to Home Depot in Monument, Colo., on Saturday, June 23, when he saw a plume of smoke rising from the nearby mountains. As vice president and general manager of a local television station in Colorado Springs, Gray's KTTV, smoke meant something different to Matesi than it did to most people. He turned his car around and headed in to work.

More

Jed Meyer: Keeping Track of a Deluge of Data

Jonathan "Jed" Meyer, U.S. director of research at Omnicom Media's Annalect Group, has been a leader in gathering and analyzing the deluge of data delivered by an increasingly digital industry.

More

JB Perrette: Following a Digital North Star

It's easy to get lost in the fastpaced, crowded digital world, but Discovery Communications' JB Perrette has a guiding North Star: the consumer.

More