Thomson Reuters Corp. said on Tuesday it had appointed former Nielsen Holdings President Steve Hasker as its new chief executive officer, succeeding Jim Smith. The parent of Reuters News also announced higher-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings.
Steve Hasker, a former McKinsey management consultant who has been a chief architect of restructuring Nielsen over the past several years, has stepped down as global president and COO of the world’s biggest media and marketing research company to become CEO of a new global unit of Hollywood talent agency Creative Artists Agency. Hasker is the most recent of several high-profile executives to depart Nielsen.
Nielsen’s Local Ratings To Get Set-Top Boost
Steve Hasker, Nielsen’s president of media product leadership, talks about the ongoing effort to improve the “fidelity” and “consistency” of the ratings most stations use to sell advertising through a number of changes, including incorporating set-top box data. He also says Nielsen intends to stay above the fray over using live-only or live-plus-same-day ratings as the best measure of local broadcasting — that’s better left to the buyers and sellers of advertising.
