Rainbow Promotes Its Own

Rainbow Media Holdings Inc., the spinoff of which been delayed indefinitely, has turned in-house to fill several top management vacancies, promoting three of its veteran executives.

Ed Carroll, formerly executive vice president and general manager of The Independent Film Channel, was named president of Rainbow Entertainment Services, responsible for AMC, IFC and WE: Women’s Entertainment.

He replaces Kathleen Dore, who exited Rainbow in October to become president of television and radio at CanWest MediaWorks in Toronto.

Rainbow also named Kim Martin -- most recently executive VP of distribution and affiliate marketing for AMC, Fuse, IFC, WE, Mag Rack and Sportskool -- executive VP and GM of WE.

And Gregg Hill -- formerly executive VP of affiliate sales and marketing for AMC, IFC, WE and Mag Rack -- was promoted and named president of distribution, overseeing those same services.

The promotions come as no surprise. In fact, Martin has been serving as GM of WE for roughly two months -- Multichannel News reported it Oct. 11 (www.multichannel.com/article/CA470580.html) -- although the company hadn’t officially announced her promotion.

Carroll and Hill report to Sapan, and Martin reports to Carroll.

Rainbow still needs to replace Carroll as IFC GM. But it plans to name a new GM shortly, sources said. At least for the near-term, Carroll will essentially act as GM for AMC.

The GM slots at AMC and WE had been vacant because their chiefs -- Noreen O’Loughlin and Martin von Ruden, respectively -- were among 14 Cablevision Systems Corp. executives let go roughly 18 months ago in the wake of a probe into accounting irregularities at the company. The president of AMC Networks, Kate McEnroe, was also fired.

For more on Rainbow, please see Linda Moss’ story on page 8 of Monday’s issue of Multichannel News.