TURNER SHUFFLES RESEARCH

Turner Broadcasting System's new research chief created a new corporate research unit to address companywide issues involving audience measurement and research.

The unit is one of a series of changes instituted by Jack Wakshlag, who was appointed to his current post earlier this year. ?The pace of the industry and complexity of our business demand a research function that anticipates trends, interprets their significance and identifies opportunities for our company.? He said the goal of the changes is to meet both the internal needs of the Turner networks and other business units and to ?remain the cable industry's research authority.?

The Corporate Research group, assigned to strategically address company-wide issues involving audience measurement and research, will be headed by Greg Gajus, VP-audience analysis, David Kudon, VP-marketing science and forecasting and Robin Thomas, VP-forecasting and planning.

At the same time, Jon Marks was put in the newly created position of SVP-entertainment research, overseeing the network research heads at TBS Superstation, TNT, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies and Turner South, plus the New York-based ad sales research team.

COURT TV'S CANADA CASE

Shaw Communications' Star Choice in Canada suspended carriage of Court TV U.S. to its 320,000 subscribers last week. In Canada, Court TV's distributors have to honor copyright restrictions on programming that appears on the channel's U.S. feed. But Court TV says that issue does not affect its daytime trial and news coverage in Canada. ?Court TV U.S. is both surprised and disappointed that Shaw and Star Choice have unilaterally acted to drop the Court TV U.S. service,? said Court TV SVP-business affairs Glenn Moss. In September, Court TV Canada was launched with Chum Television. ?It is most unfortunate that Shaw and Star Choice have proceeded to drop the Court TV U.S. service prior to reaching a carriage agreement for CourtTV Canada,? said Peter Palframan, VP-finance and administration, Chum Television.

PROGRAMMERS SPEAK

The NCTA says all of the major programmers will take part in its annual convention and that top executives including Peter Chernin, Tom Freston, John Hendricks, Robert Iger and Jamie Kellner, will address its general session.

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