Another Executive at TiVo Resigns
TiVo Inc. said Tuesday that Marty Yudkovitz had resigned as president, marking the second major change within a few weeks in the executive ranks at the digital video recording company.
The resignation of Yudkovitz on Monday came almost three weeks after Chief Executive Mike Ramsay said he would be stepping down from the helm as soon as a successor was found.
Yudkovitz, who had been an NBC executive before joining TiVo in May 2003, said he was leaving for personal reasons but would remain for a period of time as a consultant for certain matters. There are no immediate plans to replace Yudkovitz, Ramsay said.
Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo, founded in 1997 by Ramsay and Jim Barton, the company’s chief technology officer, helped introduce digital video recorders to consumers in 1999 and has since become the industry’s leading brand name.
But others are fast encroaching, namely cable and satellite operators that are introducing their own digital recording features in their set-top boxes. Digital video recording also is being built into media-oriented computers and other consumer electronic devices, such as DVD recorders. Some televisions also include the technology.
The number of TiVo subscribers has steadily grown, with the company accounting for about a third of the estimated 6.5 million of the nation’s households that have DVRs. But TiVo has not yet reached sustained profitability and hopes to do so by the end of 2005.
Yudkovitz is a 20-year television industry veteran who played a key role in creating CNBC and MSNBC, which are owned by General Electric Co. He was recruited by TiVo to help build closer ties with Hollywood, which has largely been rankled by copyright concerns stemming from digital video recording.
The technology lets television viewers record shows to a hard drive, fast-forward through commercials and pause live TV.
During his tenure, Yudkovitz spoke about new ways advertisements could be integrated into a television world of mostly ad-skipping viewers. He also helped build TiVo’s fledgling business of audience measurement, in which the company would sell data indicating how TiVo users were watching TV, Ramsay said.
Ramsay, who will remain as chairman after his own successor is found, said Yudkovitz’s resignation would not affect the company’s plans or its new strategies.
Yudkovitz, 50, said he was on a list of potential candidates to succeed Ramsay but decided to withdraw himself from the running, removing the prospect of relocating his wife and two young children from Connecticut.
“If I’m not going to be CEO, I may as well put an end to it,” Yudkovitz said, adding that his resignation coincided with the last day of Tivo’s fiscal year.
“It looks like both the CEO and president are saying, ‘We’ve taken the company as far as we can, and let’s find somebody who can take TiVo to the next level,’ ” said April Horace, an analyst at Janco Partners Inc.
On Monday, the company said it would invite third-party developers to create software for TiVo users, hoping to draw an expanded set of media applications, such as music and photo services, even video games.
Shares of TiVo fell 17 cents to $3.84 on Nasdaq. The stock has dropped by more than 65% from a 52-week high of $12.94 in March.
