Former TV Land Exec to Head Fox’s 2 Kids Channels

In a move signaling head-to-head competition between Fox Kids Worldwide and Viacom’s Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite, Fox on Thursday announced it is naming Nick veteran Rich Cronin as president and chief executive of Fox Kids Network and the Family Channel. Cronin will report to Haim Saban, chairman and chief executive of Fox Kids Worldwide.

Cronin, 43, will oversee all operations of both channels, including programming, marketing and ad sales. Fox Kids is a 7-year-old, 19-hours-per-week daytime program block on the Fox network. It has been particularly strong on Saturday mornings but has recently started to lose its edge to ABC (with its Disney-supplied cartoons) and the WB Network (with Warner Bros. cartoons).

The Family Channel is a cable channel reaching about 70 million households. It was acquired in the $1.9-billion purchase in September 1997 of parent International Family Entertainment by Fox Kids Worldwide--a co-venture between News Corp. and Saban Entertainment.

The Fox channels compete head-to-head with the MTV Networks/Nickelodeon channels, for which Cronin worked for 13 years. Nickelodeon announced last week that it had fired Cronin as president of Nick at Nite’s TV Land after the company learned he had agreed to take the Fox job.

Cronin downplayed the significance of direct competition between Fox and Nickelodeon in an interview but allowed that “there is more and more competition for the family and kids audiences on the part of the networks and everyone else.� He said he would be overseeing an “evolution� of both networks that will include new programming initiatives as well as “branding� efforts.

Cronin’s responsibilities will supplant the previous roles of former IFE Chief Executive Tim Robertson and former Fox Kids Network President Margaret Loesch. Both have been given titles that remove them from day-to-day operations. Loesch, who is credited with building Fox Kids since its launch in 1990, is said to be unhappy with the situation and negotiating out of her contract. She did not return a call seeking comment.

Cronin last year was inadvertently caught up in a much-publicized squabble between moguls Sumner Redstone, Viacom’s chairman, and Edgar Bronfman Jr., Seagram’s chief. The two companies were in the midst of a nasty legal battle for control of USA Networks, and Redstone, in legal testimony, disparaged Cronin as a “middle-to-lower-level, gung-ho guy who wants to run a TV channel.�

Cronin will move from the New York area to Los Angeles to run the two channels for Fox.