Television
January 17, 2001
Jed Petrick Named As The First-Ever President & Chief Operating Officer For The WB Network
(January 17, 2001 - Burbank, CA) — Jed Petrick, one of the original executives of The WB and the network’s only head of advertising sales, has been promoted to the newly created position of President & Chief Operating Officer of The WB Network, it was announced today by Jamie Kellner, CEO of The WB.
In his new role, Mr. Petrick, who will remain headquartered in New York, will assume a tremendous amount of added responsibility from his current role as Executive Vice-President, Network Sales. His new job will find many departments currently reporting to Mr. Kellner, now reporting to Mr. Petrick, who will continue to report to Mr. Kellner.
Mr. Petrick will continue to oversee the advertising sales department. His new responsibilities include; Network Distribution, The WB 100+ Station Group, Standards & Practices, Research and TheWB.com.
“Jed Petrick has been a vital part of The WB’s success and has run the most effective sales department in the industry,” said Mr. Kellner. “His leadership and business instincts will help lead our network to the next phase of our business expansion, which includes being one of the Big 5 networks.”
Mr. Petrick is one of a number of senior executives at The WB that came with Mr. Kellner from the Fox Broadcasting Company, signing up for the start-up in 1994 when Mr. Kellner put together his original executive team.
“For the past three season’s The WB has established a unique position in youth marketing in this country and Jed Petrick deserves a great deal of the credit by bringing in over a half billion dollars of advertising this season alone,” said Mr. Kellner. The WB is the only network to sell its advertising based on it 12-34 demographic audience delivery.
SAID MR. PETRICK:
“I’ve enjoyed helping to build The WB the network into a very special opportunity for advertisers. We know the years ahead provide tremendous growth opportunities in all areas of the company. Maturing our distribution system will provide ongoing ratings growth. In addition, our brand and network demographics are perfectly suited to play an important role on the Internet. I look forward to working with the exceptional team in place at The WB to help us achieve all of our growth goals and thank Jamie for having the confidence in me to create this position.”
Mr. Petrick is also credited, along with Mr. Kellner, with bringing the hottest show in kids television to come along in many years, “POKÉMON” to The WB. That one show has been a financial success to many divisions within the Warner Bros. family including helping surge Kids' WB! into the #1 position in kids broadcast television. It also brought a very profitable feature film and home video franchise to the studio and helped to greatly increased the sales volume in the Warner Bros. stores from selling POKÉMON merchandise.
Prior to working at The WB, Mr. Petrick was Vice-President of Sales at The Baseball Network, a unique joint venture between Major League Baseball, NBC and ABC. He also created his own sports marketing company, working with Caesar’s Sports and QVC. Mr. Petrick was one of the early executives at Fox, starting out as an Account Executive shortly after its launch and eventually becoming the network’s first Director of Fox Sports, where he built the foundation for future agreements between Fox and the NFL.
He began his television career in 1983 at the CBS Television Network after spending four years in the media planning department at Grey Advertising.
Mr. Petrick was born in Summit, NJ and graduated from Ohio Weslyan University with a B.A. in Journalism and minors in Management and Broadcasting. He lives with his wife Patty and two children in Mt. Kisko, NY. # # #