Ellis Watson moves over to Currant.Bun
Ellis Watson, marketing director of The Sun and News of the World, is moving to become acting general manager of News International’s free Internet service provider CurrantBun.com.
Watson, who has dubbed himself “head baker”, has been working on CurrantBun since last December. The service launched two weeks ago, with front page advertising in The Sun.
CurrantBun is part of the newly formed division called News International Digital Publishing (NIDP). It is expected that the division will concentrate on extending The Sun brand into other products, such as TV or radio.
Watson says: “I will be turning my mind to whatever business opportunities come in the future. It may well be TV, it may well be radio, but at the moment I’m very, very busy servicing an exciting new business.”
Clive Milner, general manager of News Group Newspapers, says: “Ellis’ strengths as a marketer were used to conceive and make The Bun and the company should let him turn an amazing launch into a profitable enterprise.
“He can’t do the two jobs for much longer and we are now looking in and out of the company for his successor on the newspapers.”
Milner claims that the full management structure of NIDP has yet to be finalised, but in the interim there is a need for Watson to focus on revenue generation for CurrantBun.
News International unveiled NIDP after pulling out of Internet service provider Line One, a venture set up with BT and United News & Media, in order to become a service provider in its own right.
