The annual list put out by Institutional Investor magazine includes a number of CEOs whose names pop up in RBR and TVBR. Only one, though, is the CEO of a pure-play broadcast station operator – David Field of Entercom, who made the list for the second year in a row. Among diversified media/entertainment companies, Disney’s Bob Iger was ranked #1, followed by Rupert Murdoch at News Corp., Richard Parsons at Time Warner, Les Moonves at CBS Corp. and Gregory Maffei at Liberty Media. In the cable and satellite media sector, the magazine’s top pick was Brian Roberts at Comcast, which may come as a shock to the folks at Chieftain Capital, a big Comcast shareholder which is trying to give him the boot. He was followed by Charlie Ergen at EchoStar, James Dolan at Cablevision and Glenn Britt at Time Warner Cable. And finally, in the publishing and advertising agencies category, the top ranking went to John Wren of Omnicom Group, with Terry McGraw of McGraw-Hill #2. Then, strangely, Neil Smit of Charter Communications is listed as #3 – not that he’s not a good CEO, but his company is clearly in the cable and satellite sector.
RBR observation: Wow, Smit must be an incredible CEO – the third best in a sector where his company doesn’t even compete!
