The firm has hired Philip Duddy, formerly VP of research at Tennis Channel, to the role of client services director, where he will work with customers of Rentrak’s TV Essentials audience measurement service.

Before his time at Tennis Channel, Duddy was director of ad sales research for TV broadcaster Scripps Networks and he was previously director of ad sales research for Fox Cable and FX Network.

He has also had spells with MTV Networks as senior research analyst and Granada Media Sales in the UK, where he was a senior research analyst.

Carol Hinnant, SVP of national network sales and the AMI division, said: “Philip has an impressive history of developing highly efficient research infrastructures that engineer top performance and ad sales growth. Rentrak looks forward to harnessing his creative insight to service the needs of our clients.”

Also within the AMI division, Rentrak has promoted Chris Behnke to vice president of software development, Dustin Encelewski to vice president of product management and Kim Hadfield to director of software development.

• In other news today, Meredith Corporation has signed up to Rentrak’s local TV audience measurement offering, StationView Essentials, in two markets. The media and marketing agency will use the service to count audience numbers for its CBS-affiliate channels WGCL-TV in Atlanta and WFSB-TV in Hartford-New Haven.