• by Wayne Friedman , December 1, 2020

Viamedia, the big independent seller of local cable TV advertising inventory, has promoted David Solomon to president and chief executive officer.

Solomon, a 17-year veteran, was most recently chief revenue officer. The move was announced by Viamedia's primary investor, Lake Capital.

No reason was disclosed as to why the change was made.

Viamedia has been involved in a four-year-long antitrust lawsuit against Comcast Corp. over what Viamedia claims is the cable operator's efforts in monopolizing the local cable advertising spot market.

Before joining Viamedia in 2003 as vice president, Solomon held senior executive positions at Comcast Spotlight, Insight Media, and Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI).

Among Solomon’s achievements, he pushed Viamedia in selling dynamic advertising insertion -- the key element of advance addressable advertising -- among Viamedia’s 60 MVPDs (multichannel video program distributors) clients.

Recently, Viamedia witnessed a 200% increase in political revenue in its average revenue per subscriber versus that of 2016.

Cable TV -- national and local advertising -- is estimated to see a 50% hike in advertising spend from political campaigns, according to Kantar -- to $1.2 billion, up from $800 million in 2016.

Local cable TV represents an overwhelmingly dominant piece of that total.

Overall, local cable advertising revenue is expected to be down 4.8% to $4.6 billion in 2020, according to MoffettNathanson Research.