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Shake-up at News Corp’s Twentieth Television: Cook out, Meidel on deck

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Bob Cook, president of Twentieth Television, the syndication and distribution arm for News Corp.’s broadcast and cable operations, is leaving the company, to form his own company.

Although no replacement for Cook has been named yet, it is expected that Greg Meidel, a veteran television industry executive who currently runs News Corp.’s My Network TV, will get oversight of Twentieth Television as well. My Network TV is the company’s small broadcast network, but it has not made much headway in the marketplace and has scaled back its ambitions. A Fox spokesman declined comment, but said a search for Cook’s replacement is underway.

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For Meidel, a flashy salesman with one of the more arresting heads of blonde hair in the business, taking the reigns of Twentieth is a homecoming of sorts. He ran the unit in the mid-1990s before leaving for stints at Universal and Paramount.

He’ll have his work cut out for him. The Wild West heyday of the TV syndication business, where deals would be done on the golf links and in the bar, are long gone. Cable networks, which used to gobble up old episodes of dramas like ‘NYPD Blue’ that first aired on the broadcast networks, now prefer to produce their own shows. Local TV stations no longer cough up the big bucks for sitcom reruns and talks shows, and the ad market is in the tank. Other than that, it’s going swell.

Cook said his new company MBN (the initials of his three sons) has already signed a contract with the Fox-owned TV stations to work on developing their digital platforms, His contract at Twentieth is up in November but he anticpates leaving in the next few months once his successor is in place.

-- Joe Flint

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