December 1, 2008

CableFAX: 35. Sporting Life: David Levy

David Levy
Title: President, Turner Sports
Age: Still Under 50
Education: Syracuse U, BS

Why Him? Talk about success. Levy’s pursuit of playoff baseball for TBS resulted in 4 games jumping onto cable’s list of top 50 telecasts of ’07. Viewers for this year’s AL championship trumped last year’s NL series counterpart by miles. Meanwhile TNT’s NBA coverage continues to excel. Through a partnership forged this year Turner is proffering the NBA its expertise in sales and digital rights management and TBS is operating nba.com and out-of-market package NBA League Pass. The partnership lets RSNs stream local, in-market games on their Web sites. And Turner Sports-powered pgatour.com has a graphical live scoring app indicating shot trails, ball location and performance of each golfer for every PGA stop.

Big Break: The Red Sox reaching the ALCS, helping to boost TBS’ playoff ratings, which were otherwise nondescript as the presidential election and economic crisis grabbed widespread attention.

Year Ahead:
Turner Sports’ digital presence among several high-profile sports offers great upside.

Favorite Food: Everything not good for you

Favorite Restaurant: Rao’s, NYC

Favorite Music: Rolling Stones

Unnecessary Luxury I Like Most: Playing top 100 golf courses in the U.S.

Fave Show Not on My Net: Entourage

CH

Return to the CableFAX 100 table of contents.