TiVo Gets a Head

After nearly six months of sealed lips on the matter, TiVo (Nasdaq: TIVO  ) finally announced its choice of new president and CEO today. TiVo Vice Chairman Tom Rogers will take the helm as both president and CEO effective July 1. and though it will be difficult, I will try to keep the Mr. Rogers jokes to a minimum.

If you recall, back in the wintertime, Chairman and CEO Michael Ramsay announced his intention to step down and function only as chairman, a development that was rather quickly followed by news of the outright resignation of then-president Marty Yudkovitz.

Any investors who are a little bit surprised, maybe even disappointed, that this decision took nearly six months to occur might take some amount of solace in the fact that TiVo lauds Rogers, who started his tenure with TiVo way back in 1999, as having been one of the players in wheeling and dealing an agreement with Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA  ) , which is one of the major reasons that TiVo shares have seen some recent appreciation.

On the other hand, given the fact that Rogers was already active in the company's affairs as vice chairman, one wonders what the heck took TiVo so darn long to make this decision.

Rogers is described as a media veteran (one might say "new media") who has worked for such companies as Primedia (NYSE: PRM  ) and General Electric's (NYSE: GE  ) NBC Cable, where he was part of the team that created CNBC and the MSNBC deal with Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT  ) .

It will come as no surprise to anyone that subscriber additions will be Rogers' major initiative. What may be a bit more surprising -- even a bit disturbing -- is that Rogers actually lives on the East Coast. (According to The Wall Street Journal, he will divvy up his time between Alviso, Calif.-based TiVo headquarters and his East Coast home.)

TiVo, a Motley Fool Stock Advisor pick, still faces a challenging road despite the fact that investor sentiment concerning the DVR maker has definitely improved since winter's darker days. I personally feel it would have been nice had the decision come sooner and find the idea of a company head with loyalties on the opposite side of the country a bit odd. However, it seems to me that TiVo investors should, on the whole, be relieved that a decision has finally been made.

For more TiVo "head" lines, don't miss:

• First one, then the other.
• Relive the excitement over the Comcast deal.
• Long-time Fool Rick Munarriz predicted TiVo stock's prospects would improve.

TiVo is a Motley Fool Stock Advisor pick. To find out what other companies are favored by Tom and David Gardner, click here .

Alyce Lomax does not own shares of any of the companies mentioned.