• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, August 16, 2013

Former Disney executive Michael Thornton will take on a new position in charge of distribution at Starz. As chief revenue officer, he will take over duties held by Ed Huguez, who will leave the president of affiliate distribution role, but remain as an advisor through early next year.

The chief revenue officer post is a new position at the company, where the flagship Starz pay-TV network is in about 22 million homes and the Encore brand in some 35 million.

Thornton will report to Glenn Curtis, the president of Starz, which recently completed a multitiered distribution agreement with Time Warner Cable. The cable operator has been slotting a Starz channel in place of the CBS local station in markets where there is a blackouts, due to a carriage dispute with CBS.

Last year, Starz dropped its programming from Netflix after the two could not reach a new distribution agreement.

Thornton has been executive vice president, acquisitions, business and legal affairs, where he has overseen programming acquisition for the 17 channels in the Starz fleet, as well as digital platforms. His duties also included global syndication of Starz original series.

He came to Starz, now a publicly traded entity, in 2011 after serving as an executive vice president in business and legal affairs at Disney/ABC Domestic Television since 2005.

He had worked at DirecTV in a role that included programming acquisition .