Cablevision Promotes Kanouff To EVP, Corporate Engineering And Technology

Cablevision Systems elevated Yvette Kanouff, the longtime SeaChange International exec who joined the MSO in March, to the position of executive vice president of corporate engineering and technology following the departure of Jim Blackley, who had led the technology group for the last six years.

Kanouff will continue to report to Wilt Hildenbrand, Cablevision's senior advisor, engineering and technology. Cablevision originally hired the former SeaChange president as executive vice president of engineering, software design.

Kanouff's expanded responsibilities span software; hardware for video, data and voice; active network components; and operations, architecture and information technology. In addition, she will oversee the development and integration of new products for the company, from conceptualization to implementation, as well as the design of mechanisms to enable customer feedback.

"Yvette is a highly-talented technologist, with a well-deserved reputation in our industry for her knowledge of hardware and software development," Hildenbrand said in a statement. "She has been a strong addition to Cablevision's management team and we are pleased that she is expanding her role at the company to our engineering and technology groups."

Blackley left the company amid a spate of high-level executive departures, including chief operating officer Tom Rutledge and president of operations John Bickham -- who are now CEO and COO, respectively, of Charter Communications. Other departures have included EVP of marketing John Hargis (now Charter's head of marketing); EVP of consumer operations Kathleen "Kip" Mayo; John Trierweiler, EVP of product management; and David Kline, president and chief operating officer of media sales.

Earlier this week, Cablevision hired Jerry Genova, who worked for the MSO for 25 years before departing in 2000, as executive vice president of network management and field operations.

Cablevision also recently hired Greg McCastle, previously senior vice president at AT&T Services and head of AT&T AdWorks, who replaced Kline.