– Hearst Magazines UK: Hearst has made another appointment: Richard Swan is now head of advertising operations for Hearst Magazines UK’s digital business. Swan has eight years of experience leading ad ops at various companies including Hachette Filipacchi UK, Abu Dhabi Media Company, Global Radio and Autotrader.

– WebCollage: Peter Green has been hired as VP of sales. Most recently, he was SVP of strategic partnerships at dLife. Prior to that, he ran the sales team at Undertone.

– AccentHealth: John Curbishley has been appointed EVP for business and product development at AccentHealth, the health education TV network. Previously, he was an SVP for NBCU’s iVillage.

– Magnetic: Soo Jin Oh joins the search re-targeting firm as VP of advertising operations. She previously led ad ops at IDG TechNetwork and prior to that, worked at Dogtime Media.

CNBC.com, under the direction of Meredith (NYSE: MDP) Stark, and Digital Products (CNBC PRO, Mobile and iTV teams) will report directly to Krim. Lou Tosto, SVP, CNBC Digital Sales, will be a dotted-line report to Krim and work very closely with him on Digital’s revenue strategy. Scott Drake will continue to lead CNBC’s Technology organization reporting to Hoffman.

– NYT: Marc Frons is now chief information officer of The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), succeeding Joseph Seibert. Frons joined the company in 2006 as CTO of digital operations for The New York Times Media Group. Prior to this, he was VP and CTO of Dow Jones (NSDQ: NWS) & Company’s consumer media group. He started his career as a journalist, having worked as a reporter and editor at Newsweek from 1979 to 1984.

– Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia: Laura Petasnick joins as VP of integrated sales for Martha Stewart Living, reporting to MSL Publisher Peter Medwid. Prior to MSLO, Petasnick was publisher of Prevention and Prevention.com at Rodale.

– Starz Entertainment: Ed Huguez was promoted to the new position of president of affiliate distribution for Starz Entertainment. He was most recently EVP of affiliate sales and marketing, a position he held since joining the company in 2004. Prior to Starz, he was president, CEO and chairman of Midstream Technologies.

– Media6Degrees: Elizabeth Hellman joins as CMO and Rob Macdonald is now VP of business development. Hellman was previously VP of corporate marketing for Allow Media + Marketing. Macdonald, who had held senior roles at Google (NSDQ: GOOG), most recently was SVP of business development at Scribd.

The more than $50 million in digital sales represents at least 5.5 percent of the $900 million in advertising NBC Sports already has sold for London. The percentage is also up from Bejing, when digital represented 3 percent of the total take.

It’s not a vast amount but as one exec told me: “It’s real money.” That means it can no longer be dismissed as incidental or only marginally meaningful — a message that has not been lost at Comcast-operated NBC Universal.

By comparison, CBS (NYSE: CBS) brought in roughly $100 million in digital revenue for March Madness from 2007-2010, with sales increasing annually as the online event grew.

Why the uptick? Execs at NBC Sports attribute the increase to several factors, including the decision to put more than 3,000 hours of video from London online. NBC Sports is still a couple of months away from announcing what events will be live online but Mark Lazarus, who succeeded Dick Ebersol as head of NBC Sports Group, already has promised all events will be aired live online or on TV.

Under Ebersol and former NBCU CEO Jeff Zucker, NBC remained TV-centric, holding back video of some events even when the results — and often, the footage — were available. NBC Sports eventually started to provide coverage of results online but continued to hold back on some video to the frustration of online users (self included).

This version of NBC Sports will treat online video more like TV in other ways, including the ability to release more inventory during the Olympics if the demand is there.

[Keep in mind: Some users are still bound to be frustrated if they don't subscribe to multichannel TV. More video online and more live events on TV doesn't mean everyone will have access to everything. NBC Sports has yet to spell it out but some content will only be available to video subscribers via authentication. My hope is that Comcast will leave NBC itself outside of any authentication plans.]

As part of the increased streaming commitment, reported earlier this week by SBJ, NBC Sports is also shifting video technology and promotional partners to YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG) from Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT). Instead of Silverlight, NBC will use a co-branded version of YouTube’s video player. Instead of a syndication deal that allowed MSN.com also to show Olympic video, YouTube will promote the heck out of Olympic video from its front page and across the video hub but will direct all traffic to NBCOlympics.com.

Rick Cordella, VP/GM of NBC Sports and Olympics Digital, tells me reports that YouTube will be streaming official video as well are inaccurate. Some of that was fueled by a mistake on the NBC Sports advertising microsite that since has been corrected. It may sound like a small thing but it’s important to NBCU, which relies on its cable deals and affiliates, that YouTube not be perceived as a video partner. “All London Olympic video will live on nbcolympics.com,” Cordella said.

The switch is a lot more about demographics than technology. NBCU wants to increase the streams it serves and lower the age of the audience it reaches for the Olympics. YouTube already draws that kind of audience. With YouTube’s promotion hose turned on London, Cordella predicts “we will be able to move those demographics to the Olympics.”

According to its advertising kit (citing Nielsen), YouTube reaches 62 percent of U.S. males between 18-24 and 61 percent of all U.S. men between 18-34, as well as 58 percent of U.S. women 18-34. Users tend to be active, engaged and many of them like to share. Cordella is counting on all that to help NBCU expand its reach for the Olympics — which, in turn, will move that digital ad needle up.

While Cordella didn’t want to go into details, my understanding is the basic deal is a barter but NBCU would have to pay YouTube if certain metrics are surpassed. No revenue sharing is involved and NBC Sports retains control over ad sales.

NBC also has enhanced the technology it can offer advertisers during the Olympics by moving to ad insertion, which wasn’t available for Beijing. Instead of mirroring TV pods during streams, ads can be inserted to match the medium and device. That means that NBC Sports can serve up different ads from the same advertisers for a tablet user and a TV viewer at the same time, for instance.

– Univision Radio: Evan Harrison has been appointed EVP of content and entertainment. Reporting to President Jose Valle, he’ll be based in New York. Prior to joining the company, Harrison was chief creative officer at Van Wagner Communications.

– Precision Health Media: The company has picked up a new VP of marketing and $1 million in funding. Matthew Fink joins PHM from Johnson & Johnson, where he most recently was integrated marketing manager. The round of funding comes from Cava Capital and the Conyers Group, with participation from previous investors Metamorphic Ventures, and angels including Geoff Judge, partner in iNovia Capital, David Arcara, Jamie Driver, and Richard Forman of Health Venture Group.

– NBCUniversal: Four executives join the Integrated Media senior leadership team: Hilary Smith has been named SVP of communications and integrated media marketing, after having served as SVP of communications for NBCUniversal (NSDQ: CMCSA) Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated Media (E&DN/IM). Bari Komitee has been promoted to VP of marketing and events, IM, from director, women at NBCU, IM. Lenore Moritz is now VP of communications, IM and iVillage, in which she’ll lead communications for IM. Craig Coleman has been upped to VP of partnership marketing, IM. He was most recently director of marketing, Green is Universal, Healthy at NBC and Hispanics at NBCU for IM.

– Rocket Fuel: Former Lotame Solutions CMO Eric Porres joins Rocket Fuel as chief marketing officer. He previously co-founded digital marketing and strategy agency Underscore Marketing and prior to that, co-founded political marketing firm Pericle Consulting. He is also the founder of Classelist, a web and mobile platform for parents and schools.

As first reported by Multichannel News, which has been tracking this story ever since Dish applied to trademark the term back in September 2009, Hulu filed an opposition brief Thursday with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board.

The filing came less than one week after Time Warner Inc., along with the top five U.S. multi-system operators, issued a similar opposition document to the trademark office.

Reads Hulu’s opposition brief: “Third parties have already used the generic or merely descriptive term ‘TV everywhere’ in commerce to refer to an industry-wide initiative whereby subscribers of cable, satellite and other television services can access and watch video content (including movies and TV shows) on multiple devices, including desktop computers, laptops, tablet computers, internet-connected TVs, set-top boxes, gaming consoles, mobile telephones and other handheld electronic devices.”

Dish, which isn’t commenting on the opposition and has until next month to respond, is currently using the TV Everywhere moniker to market its Slingbox-enabled services that allow subscribers to watch live and recorded video content on multiple devices over the internet.

Time Warner and the major cable MSOs claim — accurately — that they started using the term to market services like HBO Go prior to Dish’s trademark-office filing.

So which dog does Hulu have in this fight?

Multichannel suspects that the online streaming service — which is jointly owned by NBCUniversal (NSDQ: CMCSA), Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Fox (NSDQ: NWS) — will soon be signing authentication deals related to the cable industry’s broader, generically termed TV Everywhere initiative.

Fox, for example, won’t stream fresh series episodes on Fox.com until eight days after they originally air. However, subscribers of cable, satellite and telco TV services that are signatory to the TV Everywhere initiative — a group that, ironically, includes Dish Network — can authenticate their subscription and watch these shows right away. If Hulu had a similar deal in place, these subscribers could also watch these shows on the streaming service with no delay.

– Digital First Media: Ray Chelstowski has signed on as SVP of national sales, overseeing all print and digital sales for the company that jointly manages MediaNews Group, and the Journal Register Company. Based in New York City, he will report to Kirk MacDonald, Executive Vice President of Sales for Digital First Media. Previously, Chelstowski was publisher of Newsweek/Daily Beast.

– thePlatform: The company makes some promotions: Alex Glass has been promoted to chief information officer, Marty Roberts is now SVP of Sales and Marketing worldwide and Michael Horwitz has upped to SVP (from VP) of Engineering. Glass had been VP of global operations and Roberts was VP of sales and marketing. Prior to joining thePlatform, Glass was with Digeo, Inc. where he worked as both a project and program manager. Roberts was previously an executive at GiftCertificates.com and Horwitz had held senior-level engineering positions at Comcast.

– Spanfeller Media Group: Jacqueline Stone joins as SVP of marketing, reporting to SMG Founder and CEO Jim Spanfeller. Most recently, Stone was SVP of marketing at WebMD (NSDQ: WBMD) and prior to that, VP of promotions, sponsorships and events at Digitas.

– Adara Media: Scott Garner was recently promoted to EVP of business strategy, now responsible for strategic partnerships and product strategy. Adara Media also made two new hires: Julie Kimball joins as director of sales, northeast and Canada, a position she most recently held at the Travel Ad Network. Heather Goeld has signed on as director of sales, midwest, having previously worked at Frommer’s Budget Travel.

The 2012 London Games, which run for two weeks starting July 27, will be the third consecutive Olympics in which NBCU will conduct this kind of research. With the company offering its coverage across many platforms over a finite period of time, the Games typically provide an optimal test subject to conduct research on new metrics, NBCU officials say.

This time, however, the company is approaching the development of a so-called “single-source” metric with a little more urgency. Powerful voices within the TV industry are calling for an overhaul of the current ratings system, which lacks tools to measure audiences across platforms.

At the Consumer Electronics Show last month, Warner Bros. (NYSE: TWX) TV Group president and TV Academy chairman Bruce Rosenblum struck an industry chord when he equated the current ratings system to living in the “dark ages” and said it was “embarrassing” to the business. Having conducted experiments for the 2008 Beijing and 2010 Vancouver Games with tiny panels of 60 viewers or less, NBCU’s research this time around will feature much bigger audience samples.

Google plans to create a panel of about 3,000 consumers, using a meter-based system to track viewership across platforms. Google will also create algorithms specifically designed to measure this usage.

ComScore, meanwhile, will cull 750 Olympics enthusiasts from the 10,000-member audience panel it developed with AT&T (NYSE: T) AdWorks. Viewership data from this group will be compiled from a combination of AT&T U-verse set-top boxes, electronic meters and the self-reporting by panelist.

NBCU will not aim to create a true national sample with this research, but rather a proof of concept that shows the broadcast and advertising industries that such single-source metrics can indeed be created. “Cross-platform measurement is extraordinarily challenging, but we believe the unique and complimentary nature of these research projects will bring us one step closer to cracking the code of single-source measurement,” NBCUniversal research president Alan Wurtzel said in a statement.

NBCU has coined its research the “Olympics Billion Dollar Lab,” a reference to the $2.2 billion its shelling out to license London Games coverage across its broadcast, cable, Internet and mobile platforms. It has not announced programming plans across its various platforms yet. But it has confirmed that it will offer more than the 835 hours of coverage it offered for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

Citing third-party data from Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) and mDialog, NBC says 2,105,441 unique users in the U.S. streamed the game on either NBCSports.com, NFL.com or through the NFL Mobile channel that’s available to Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) subscribers.

NBC also said that 78.6 million total minutes of game coverage were streamed and that 1.83 million game clips and Super Bowl ads were viewed digitally. CBS’ coverage of the NCAA’s “March Madness” men’s basketball tournament actually recorded more than 3 million digital viewers for individual-day of coverage last spring. But no single game came close to the 2.1 million mark.

Although it was the first time the Super Bowl has been streamed, NBC routinely streams its Sunday Night regular-season NFL coverage, which averages around 300,000 unique viewers, the network said.

Prior to the game, sports buyers for several large media agencies told us they were reluctant to spend a mid-six-figure sums for Super Bowl digital advertising time, noting that they were concerned that the game wouldn’t attract a big viewership number. This is appointment viewing, they noted, the kind of game for which fans go to viewing parties and watch the game on a big-screen TV.

Sunday’s numbers might cause them to reconsider future digital buys for big sports events.

“The question that remains to us is: what’s the actual value of the Super Bowl in comparison to other things that are streamed?” said a sports media buyer for a top agency, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he’s involved in negotiations for NBC’s live stream. “What are the usual viewing tendencies for the audience? Streaming is probably something less significant for the Super Bowl than it might be for other sports or other properties.”

NBC has taken in an average of around $3.5 million for a 30-second spot for the traditional television broadcast of the Super Bowl, typically the year’s highest rated TV event. Last year’s game averaged 111 million viewers in the U.S. alone. NBC, which had been streaming its Sunday night regular season and post-season NFL games since 2008, notified a half-dozen of the league’s premiere sponsors before the playoffs that it would stream the Super Bowl for the first time this year, too.

These advertisers – which include Nike, Visa and Anheuser-Busch — were offered the ability to purchase digital packages that include impressions not only in the big game, but in NBC’s Wild Card playoff and Pro Bowl coverage as well. In fact, the majority of the impressions are actually served in post-season football coverage other than the live Super Bowl stream.

With 11 days to go before the big game, there’s still lots of digital inventory left for the Super Bowl, buyers tell paidContent. (NBC wouldn’t comment on the status of its digital sales effort for the Super Bowl, but a source close to the network insisted its sales were “at capacity.”) So with ad time for the traditional Super Bowl telecast in typically short supply, why are media buyers insisting there’s plenty of digital inventory left?

Despite the huge popularity of the game, media buyers don’t believe NBC’s Super Bowl stream will draw a digital audience that much greater than the 200,000 to 300,000 unique viewers that NBC says typically watch its regular season contests online or through mobile devices. Buyers theorize that the typical NFL fan might not interrupt his Sunday activities for, say, an early-January Wild Card matchup between the New York Giants and Atlanta Falcons, and will catch up on the game on a tablet or smart phone while he’s out and about.

However, the Super Bowl is, in the words of one media buyer, “destination viewing in its highest form,” with viewers striving to watch the game with friends and family in front of large high-definition TV screens. The same dynamic applies to CBS’ and Turner Networks’ digital sales of the NCAA’s “March Madness” men’s basketball tournament: Even though the championship game draws the biggest TV ratings, it’s the early-round playoff games that show the highest spikes in internet and mobile usage.

NBC will stream the match-up between the Giants and the New England Patriots on NBCSports.com and NFL.com, offering HD resolution, DVR-style controls, multiple camera angles, in-game highlights, and live statistics and interactive features. This stream will be accessible through PCs and tablet devices; Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ), which has an exclusive mobile deal with the NFL, will broadcast NBC’s live stream to its Android-equipped subscribers, just as it does for regular-season Sunday night games.

So how many football fans will watch the live stream of the Super Bowl? Neither NBC or media buyers seem exactly sure – it’s not easy to gauge based on previous NFL live streams, because the Super Bowl tends to attract a much broader viewership. There is a feeling among all parties, however, that rather than cannibalizing the game’s TV audience, the digital broadcast will actually enhance it.

“What we found with March Madness is that it didn’t take away from the broadcast ratings – in fact, it increased them by creating more engaged viewers,” the sports media buyer said.

“We’re still shaking out the monetization of this, but I don’t see it diluting the broadcast in any way,” added Neal Pilson, a former CBS (NYSE: CBS) Sports president who now serves as a sports broadcast consultant.

As for NBC’s asking price for its digital packages, Pilson noted, “That’s a lot to ask for.”

It appears so far that this is less about any issues with Kelly’s performance and more about getting Kenny. Kelly will become an advisor to TWCC and to Bain, and Kenny begins in his new role effectively immediately.

Kelly had been CEO of TWCC since July 2009 and other past roles have included head of media at AOL (NYSE: AOL). Kenny, meanwhile, brings with him some skills that could help TWCC’s growth in the years ahead. He comes from streaming and content delivery giant Akamai (NSDQ: AKAM), where he had been president. Prior to that, Kenny racked up of years of experience in digital marketing and interactive advertising: he co-founded VivaKi, the digital and television arm of Publicis Groupe, and he was chairman and CEO Digitas Inc. He also sits on the board of Yahoo.

In an interview with paidContent a few moments ago, Kenny said that the offer of a CEO job had come out of initial conversations for him to join the board of The Weather Channel. “We’d been talking about how to move faster on programming and other areas,” and that gradually progressed to the subject of Kenny taking on a bigger role.

He told paidContent that the three key areas he hopes to focus on as CEO are to invest more in programming, digital assets and international expansion. In programming, the emphasis will be on making more long-form content, while the mobile apps and the website will focus on more basic weather information. Both of these are largely ad-supported at the moment, and Kenny said this is how they will remain.

As for international, this is where you can see the Akamai content delivery expertise coming into view: “TWCC has been more focused on the U.S. up to now, but there is an opportunity globally and I believe you will see a much more global enterprise going forward,” he said.

In a departing internal memo to staff, which paidContent has obtained and is copying below, Kelly gave Kenny a full endorsement in the role: “TWCC will be in good hands with David Kenny at the helm,” he wrote. He noted also that the pair have been good friends for many years.

Under Kelly, TWCC has seen some huge growth in its digital media business — specifically around its many apps for mobile devices.

Being about weather — a subject that is continually changing — these apps have picked up a particularly loyal following.

At paidContent’s mobile conference last year, Kelly noted that mobile users use The Weather Channel’s apps 26 days a month, with 30 million of the company’s apps getting downloaded in 2010. Overall reach for the company, as reported last year, was 35 million people, covering access from TVs, PCs, and mobile devices. During one period last year the company launched 10 separate apps in 11 weeks.

Kelly’s memo:

As you know, this morning we announced a change in leadership for TWCC. As we make this transition, let me take a moment to thank you for making the last two and a half years such a pleasant and rewarding experience.

I came to The Weather Channel with many goals, including building a strong team, developing long term plans and moving the business forward. A part of these efforts included our “one company” initiatives, which I believe have been a tremendous success. I’m proud of these accomplishments and even more proud of the teamwork it took to get it all done. I will continue to be involved in the company, serving as a special adviser to David and the Board of Directors and I will also serve as an adviser to Bain Capital.

TWCC will be in good hands with David Kenny at the helm. We’ve been friends for many years and I am certain he is the leader who will keep things moving forward and secure a great future for the company.

Thank you again for your hard work and dedication. We’ve come a long way together and we’ve seen the power of one company and the power of vision and values. In the past years, we’ve seen record viewership and page views and saw our mobile business reach unimaginable heights. The resulting economic growth has put us in a strong position. Thanks for the great teamwork. Keep growing.

Sincerely,
Mike Kelly