MTV Names Mika Salmi President of Global Digital Media

MTV Networks has appointed Mika Salmi to the newly created position of president of global digital media. He will be tasked with working across the company's portfolio of multiplatform brands to further develop and implement what it describes as its "strategy of building an engaging universe of music, games, entertainment, networking and interactivity for its communities of targeted audiences." He will report directly to MTV Networks chairman and CEO, Judy McGrath, and will become a member of her senior strategy team. Salmi, of course, was formerly the CEO of broadband video company, Atom Entertainment, which he co-founded and which was acquired by MTV Networks in August for $200 million (for an in-depth interview with Salmi, see [itvt] Issue 6.76). "MTV Networks is an amazing global entertainment community reaching targeted audiences through all of its TV, online and mobile brands," Salmi said in a prepared statement. "What MTVN calls its 'maniacal consumer focus' will be the driving engine for our global digital media strategy. We will engage consumers with an industry-leading digital experience through interactivity and community in all media including video, music and games."

Salmi founded a company called AtomFilms in 1998, which merged with Shockwave.com in 2001 to form Atom Entertainment. Its assets include the consumer Web sites Shockwave.com, AtomFilms, AddictingClips and AddictingGames. Prior to founding AtomFilms, Salmi headed up business development for the media and entertainment industries at RealNetworks. His career also includes an eight-year stint in the music business, working for TVT Records, Sony Music and EMI. According to MTV, he discovered bands such as Nine Inch Nails and The Presidents of the United States of America. A native of Finland, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Wisconsin, and holds an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.

MTV Networks currently has 30 broadband sites, and has a significant presence in the mobile video space. It offers content for download through partnerships with AOL, Amazon, Apple and Google. It claims that its in-house-originated Web sites and the line-up of Web sites it has acquired in the recent past registered nearly 35 million unique users in September, and ranked as the number-one online entertainment destination and the 10th most popular overall destination on the Internet (according to US-only figures from Media Metrix). Its broadband sites include (in addition to Salmi's Atom Entertainment) NeoPets, GameTrailers, Xfire, Y2M, IFILM, MTV Flux, The Click from The N, MTV's Virtual Laguna Beach, and Nickelodeon's ParentsConnect.

Originally Published: November 6, 2006  in [itvt] Issue 7.03 Part 1

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