Canoe NYC Office To Shut Its Doors May 23
Operator-Owned Advanced Advertising Venture Refocusing Efforts on VOD Ads
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 4/27/2012 5:20:10 PM
Canoe Ventures will officially shut the doors to its New York City office on May 23, which is the last date of employment for all New York employees who are not staying with the company.
The advanced-advertising company, backed by the six largest U.S. cable operators, in February announced it would lay off 120 of its 150 employees and vacate the Manhattan office as part of abandoning its interactive TV efforts. Instead, Canoe will refocus on dynamic ad insertion for video-on-demand content, and relocate all operations to Canoe's technical facility in space leased from the Comcast Media Center in Centennial, Colo.
Canoe's New York employees have largely vacated the space already, according to a company representative. Over the next few weeks, remaining staff will clear equipment, sell furniture and take other steps to leave the premises.
The venture's lease for the 40,000 square feet of office space in 1251 Avenue of the Americas, a building owned by Japanese real-estate company Mitsui Fudosan, expires in September 2012. Until that time, some small part of the space may be minimally used, according to the Canoe rep. The office, previously occupied by Lloyds TSB Bank, takes up the entire 39th floor of the building.
Canoe has appointed Joel Hassell, who previously was chief technology officer, as CEO under the new mission to develop enabling VOD advertising services. Senior executives leaving Canoe include CEO Kathy Timko, chief product officer Arthur Orduña, chief marketing officer Vicki Lins, senior vice president of sales and distribution Jim Turner and general manager for interactive television solutions Jonathan Bokor.
Meanwhile, public-relations responsibilities for Canoe have been reassigned to Comcast.
After three years of testing and development, Canoe had enabled the delivery of interactive TV ads to more than 25 million cable homes nationwide across eight cable networks: AMC, Bravo, Discovery, E! History, G4, Style and USA Network. But the company's owners decided the potential upside of national ITV ads were not worth the continued investment.