Beth Lawrence Named Executive Vice President of Ad Sales and Media Solutions for the Weather Channel Companies

ATLANTA--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--Beth Lawrence, vice president of agency development for Yahoo!, has been named executive vice president of advertising sales and media solutions for The Weather Channel Companies (TWCC). Lawrence will be based in TWCC’s New York sales office and will have overall responsibility for sales, sales operations and media solutions for The Weather Channel Network and The Weather Channel Interactive, including weather.com and The Weather Channel Mobile. She will report to Michael J. Kelly, CEO of The Weather Channel Companies.

“This is a great opportunity to be a part of a team that bundles these assets to build industry-leading cross-platform solutions for advertisers while growing toward its own limitless potential.”

In making this announcement, Kelly said “Beth is a dynamic sales leader with outstanding experience and industry relationships. Our audience across all screens is among the largest in the business and Beth’s experience developing integrated solutions for America’s leading advertisers make her an ideal choice to lead our sales team. Our goal is to be the industry leader in cross-platform media solutions. The addition of Beth to our strong interactive, cable TV and mobile sales teams will help accelerate our growth by providing advertisers unique ‘360’ media opportunities.”

Lawrence will begin at TWCC on January 4 and will lead the company’s 2010 Upfront efforts, which will focus on the cross-platform strength and reach of The Weather Channel.

As vice president of sales at Yahoo!, Lawrence managed a sales team that generated uninterrupted search and display advertising revenue growth, and handled the Internet ad portfolios of premium brand clients as well as large, performance-based marketers. In her most recent role, she led the team focused on agency development, making Yahoo! a partner of choice of major global agency holding companies and their Fortune 500 clients.

“The Weather Channel is a powerful brand with tremendous reach across television, the Web and mobile,” said Lawrence. “This is a great opportunity to be a part of a team that bundles these assets to build industry-leading cross-platform solutions for advertisers while growing toward its own limitless potential.”

Prior to joining Yahoo! in 2003, Lawrence held a series of sales management positions with AOL Time Warner, where she managed the health initiative and WebMD partnership as vice president of sales, and with DoubleClick, where she was the general manager of the Brand Network. Her media sales career began in 1981, and she has held print sales roles with USA Weekend magazine and ADWEEK magazine.

A New York City resident, Lawrence holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Kentucky.

About The Weather Channel Companies

The Weather Channel, a 24-hour weather network, is seen in more than 99 million U.S. households. The Weather Channel reaches more than 40 million unique users online per month through weather.com and products including The Weather Channel Desktop, making it the most popular source of online weather, news and information according to Nielsen//Net Ratings. The Weather Channel also operates The Weather Channel HD; Weatherscan, a 24-hour, all-local weather network; The Weather Channel Radio Network; and is the leading weather information provider for emerging technologies. This includes broadband and interactive television applications and wireless weather products including the most popular content site on the Mobile Web. The Weather Channel Companies are owned by a consortium made up of NBC Universal and the private equity firms The Blackstone Group and Bain Capital. For more information, visit www.weather.com/press.