Hinton, McCarron to Head Family Forum

Pfizer Inc.’s Kaki Hinton and Verizon Communications’ Bill McCarron are succeeding Johnson & Johnson’s Andrea Alstrup and Unilever’s Brad Simmons as co-chairs of the Family Friendly Programming Forum.

As corporate vice president of J&J, Alstrup founded the forum in 1998 to encourage TV networks to develop shows that appealed to families and, thus, would serve as appropriate and appealing advertising vehicles.

Simmons became co-chair after Bob Wehling, former chief marketing officer of Procter & Gamble Co., retired from both P&G and the forum.

Hinton is VP of advertising services for Pfizer Consumer Healthcare. McCarron is VP of media and sponsorships at Verizon.

The Family Friendly Forum is a group of 45 national advertisers, all of which are members of the Association of National Advertisers. Many of those members also providing funding for the forum’s script-development initiative, which helps networks to develop family-friendly scripts and get them on the air.

The forum also funds scholarships, hands out awards at the Annual Family Television Awards as of this year and sponsors a symposium for industry leaders.

Paige Albiniak

Contributing editor Paige Albiniak has been covering the business of television for more than 25 years. She is a longtime contributor to Next TV, Broadcasting + Cable and Multichannel News. She concurrently serves as editorial director for The Global Entertainment Marketing Academy of Arts & Sciences (G.E.M.A.). She has written for such publications as TVNewsCheck, The New York Post, Variety, CBS Watch and more. Albiniak was B+C’s Los Angeles bureau chief from September 2002 to 2004, and an associate editor covering Congress and lobbying for the magazine in Washington, D.C., from January 1997 - September 2002.