Scardino Joins Saban as COO
Saban Brands has appointed Janet Scardino as the company’s COO. Scardino will oversee Saban Brands’ media operations across television, digital, and games, as well as content distribution and ad sales for all properties worldwide. In this new role, Scardino will work closely with president Elie Dekel and CFO William Kehoe to manage Saban Brands’ continued growth and expansion of the business globally.
Scardino joins Saban with highly relevant experience in building successful television, online, and mobile businesses for some of the world’s most iconic brands, including Disney, MTV, AOL, Reuters, and American Idol.
Most recently, Scardino served as CEO for the public company Viggle, the first loyalty program for television and an early entrant in Social TV.
LeapFrog Hires Adams
LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc., announced that Ken Adams has joined the company as senior vice-president of sales. In this role, Adams is responsible for developing and executing the overall sales strategy for LeapFrog in the U.S. including managing and building new opportunities for the sales organization and key retailers, in addition to overall sales team management and trade marketing.
Prior to joining LeapFrog, Adams was the vice-president of sales for emerging channels and business development at Hasbro, Inc. During his 28-year tenure at Hasbro, he led large sales teams in the U.S. directly responsible for success at key retailers including Toys “R” Us and Target.
Hampton Joins NBCUniversal
Russell Hampton has joined NBCUniversal in the newly created role of EVP of franchise management and global consumer products for the Media Innovation and Cross Company Initiatives Group, which focuses on the monetization of cross-platform content, driving innovation, and architecting a digital strategy across mobile, social, and the web.
For the past six years, Hampton was president of Disney Publishing Worldwide. Hampton was executive vice-president and general manager of The Baby Einstein Company after it was acquired by Disney in 2001. He also assumed management of The Muppets brand when it was acquired by Disney in 2004. He joined Disney in 1995.