• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, January 7, 2010

A year after tapping high profile programming executive Jason Meil to run its celebrated Innovations Group, Interpublic's Initiative unit is shaking the division up once again. Meil, who was brought in with much fanfare from a top position at Al Gore's Current Media, is out, and the unit is being reorganized.

An official announcement is expected later today, but people familiar with the shakeup say the division will be headed by Dave Rosner, director of innovations at Initiative, and one of the surviving members of the team originally formed by former Innovations chief Alan Cohen, who left last year to become president of Omnicom's OMD U.S. operations.

Cohen's departure left a void in the Innovations group, which had become the hot new business, and creative hub with in Initiative, and it searched long and hard to replace him, recruiting Meil, who had been senior vice president-original programming, acquisitions and user-generated content at Current Media, and is considered a digital media visionary.

In a move that Interpublic insiders say is unrelated, another top Initiative executive, Janet Fitzpatrick-Wilks is out as president-worldwide clients. Fitzpatrick-Wilks' departure, which was attributed to conflicting management styles, occurred prior to the holidays. Fitzpatrick-Wilks previously was Initiative's Chief Strategic Officer, and before that, worldwide director of communication planning.

Initiative insiders said it was unclear whether her role would be replaced, or simply phased out, and there is speculation from some observers that the move may be part of a "roll up" strategy at Interpublic's Mediabrands unit, which has been taking on greater operational roles that had been delegated to its individual media brand networks, Initiative and Universal McCann.

Partly due to that strategy, MediaDailyNews sister publication Media magazine named Mediabrands its media agency holding company of the year, and noted that holding company units like Mediabrands appear to be generating much of the innovation in the media services business, as opposed to individual media services networks.