CW's Morningstar Now Bats For MLB Sales

Bill MorningstarSenior advertising executive Bill Morningstar, who spent over a decade at The CW Network and its predecessor the WB, will be the head of advertising sales for the new Major League Baseball network, according to executives close to the companies.

Morningstar, whose contract as executive vice president of advertising was up with The CW this year, is a big-time baseball aficionado. He regularly travels to games with his family, executives say, and thus is a perfect fit for the new MLB position.

The MLB Network is expected to launch in January with somewhere north of 50 million subscribers. Big cable/satellite distributors include Comcast, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV and Cox Communications.

The CW had no comment on Morningstar's departure or when a replacement would be named. Morningstar's second-in-command is Rob Tuck, a longtime advertising executive at the CW and the WB beforehand.

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The CW has struggled in 2008, losing 20% of is core viewers from a year ago. Still, Morningstar steered the network to a comparatively strong upfront marketplace last month, grabbing $375 million in ad revenue--8% higher than a year ago and about 6% higher on its price-per-thousand viewers on a comparable Monday-to-Friday basis. (The CW sold off its Sunday night schedule for the upcoming season.)

Morningstar has been linked for some time to other major advertising positions in the recent past, including the top advertising sales job at Lifetime.

Two former WB senior marketing executives, Bob Bibb and Lou Goldstein, landed at Lifetime after the WB shuttered in 2006. A former senior marketing executive at Lifetime, Rick Haskins, is now executive vice president of marketing and brand strategy at the CW.

The news of Morningstar's departure was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

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