IP Democracy: Microsoft's TV Division Gets Shook Up

I knew this was coming…Microsoft’s TV division head Moishe Lichtman is stepping down, ostensibly for family reasons. A few months back, a big institutional investor called me looking for the names of candidates who could head up…Microsoft’s TV division.

Now it’s official, and it’s a sign of the times. First, Ray Ozzie is shaking up the out-of-step Redmond software giant, as this interesting article by Fortune’s David Kirkpatrick illustrates. While the shake-up is intended to whip Microsoft into fighting shape so that it can take on Internet giants Google and Yahoo, not to mention open-source software competition, it’s clearly reached into the TV division.

Microsoft’s TV division has long been a troubled unit in the company, starting off as, well, an affront to cable operators who were the intended customers of Microsoft’s interactive TV software. Microsoft’s engineers wouldn’t listen to the old RF-hands, and the ITV platforms the company built couldn’t work with cable’s architecture.

The company then repositioned its TV software into a more useable product and started aiming it at not only cable operators but telcos; Microsoft is now a leading supplier to both AT&T and Verizon in their IPTV efforts.

All is not well there, either. So it makes sense that Microsoft will rejigger its TV division — the company is pulling in as a replacement for Lichtman Enrique Rodriguez, an exec from the hotter-than-hot Xbox division,

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on April 19, 2006 11:42 AM to IP Democracy