David Kenny said he doesn't want to make any changes as the new chief executive of the Weather Channel. He just wants things to move a little more quickly.
Kenny, a Yahoo board member with a background in media, Internet and advertising, was named CEO and chairman of Atlanta-based Weather Channel and its associated companies Tuesday.
He replaces Mike Kelly, who will remain on the Weather Channel's board and be an adviser to Bain Capital, one of the private equity groups that owns the network.
"My focus is not to change anything, it's to go faster" in areas such as digital and mobile and long-form programming, Kenny told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Weather Channel is said to be on the list of companies Yahoo is interested in owning as part of a tax-efficient asset swap with Alibaba Group Holding and Softbank, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month.
A Weather Channel spokeswoman said the report is "all rumor and speculation."
"My mission here is to build a lasting institution," Kenny told the AJC. "I think the Weather Channel is a great asset on its own."
Kenny said the Weather Channel doesn't see a conflict if he remains on Yahoo's board, but he said Yahoo just found out he was joining the Weather Channel at the same time the news was being made public. "I have to have that discussion with Yahoo now," he said. "Yahoo has to make that call."
Kenny said he has been friends with Kelly and the other Weather Channel board members for years but that discussions about him taking over the network started just 90 days ago.
"I wasn't expecting it," Kenny said. "The company is doing very well, I didn't know they were talking internally about a change."
The Weather Channel is owned by a consortium, including NBC Universal and two private equity groups, Bain Capital and the Blackstone Group. The group bought the cable network in 2008.
"David brings a strong leadership background, having served as chief executive at global companies across different aspects of the media industry," the company said in a statement.
Kenny is the former president of Web infrastructure company Akamai. He is co-founder of VivaKi, the digital media company that owns Atlanta-based Razorfish, and also was chairman and CEO of Digitas Inc., an internal integrated brand agency.
Kenny lives with his family in a suburb of Boston. He said they will move to Atlanta in June.
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