• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, May 6, 2008

As the Gospel Music Channel mounts an aggressive pre-upfront campaign, the network has brought on a new executive to oversee the coming sales process. Former Oxygen network sales chief Mary Jeanne (M.J.) Cavanagh joins as executive vice president of ad sales.

In the newly created post at GMC, Cavanagh will head the multiplatform sales efforts. The previous head, vice president-ad sales Barbara Bekkedahl, will report to her.

Cavanagh led Oxygen to more than $100 million in sales in 2006--after having joined the company during its uncertain early days in 2002. She received considerable attention last year for her willingness to experiment with the eBay-enabled online selling system, shunned by most of her cable peers. Looking to the system as a potential venue for new business, those efforts resulted in a deal with at least one first-time advertiser, Intel.

Cavanagh left Oxygen in the wake of NBC Universal's recent acquisition, as the company looked to fold it into its Bravo unit.

GMC, like Oxygen before the acquisition, is an independent, privately owned network.

The 4-year-old network aims to appeal to fans of multiple sub-genres of gospel, from traditional to country to rock. Distribution has climbed to the 40 million range. (It's available nationally via DirecTV, and on cable in locales ranging from nine cities in Alaska to Old Lyme, CT (Comcast) to Yuma, Ariz. (Time Warner).

The network is looking to capitalize on its growth in the upfront, launching a trade campaign that includes ads on phone booths in Manhattan.

Network president Charles Humbard said Cavanagh-plus-increased-distribution "puts us in an even stronger position [for] a break-through upfront. She has always been a top biller whose sales teams consistently exceeded revenue goals." At GMC, Cavanagh will report to Humbard.