• by Wayne Friedman , April 21, 2006

In the wake of its big acquisition of NFL Thursday-Saturday primetime games, the NFL Network has named veteran ad sales executive Ron Furman senior vice president-media sales.

Furman comes to the NFL Network, which is owned by the NFL, just in the nick of time: The NFL football advertising marketplace is set to begin in a few weeks. He'll oversee the TV network, NFL.com, and NFL Films advertising sales activities.

Furman joins the NFL after a short stint as senior vice president-advertising sales for MTV. Before that he was executive vice president-sales and marketing at Univision Television Networks for six years. He also held positions at ABC selling network prime-time sales and sports.

The addition of NFL game coverage at the NFL Network should quickly boost its subscriber base from its current level of 35 million subscribers, analysts say. NFL Network competed with Comcast's Corp. Outdoor Life Channel, among other cable networks, for the package.

An NFL Network spokesman had no comment.