Pandora picks Sling TV boss as new CEO
OAKLAND » Pandora Media on Monday named Roger Lynch as the new chief executive at the internet radio company.
Pandora selected its new boss almost two months after company co-founder Tim Westergren stepped down from the job.
In addition to becoming Pandora’s CEO, Lynch becomes the company’s president and will join its board of directors. Lynch comes to Pandora from Sling TV, where he was CEO of the internet-TV streaming company. Pandora also said that Michael Lynton, chairman of Snapchat parent company Snap, will also join its board of directors.
Chief Financial Officer Naveen Chopra, who had been serving as Pandora’s interim CEO since Westergren’s departure, will remain as its CFO, the company said.
Pandora investors liked the move. They sent the company’s shares 4.3 percent higher, to $8.41, in after-hours trading Monday.
For the year, however, Pandora’s stock price has fallen more than 35 percent.
And those investors have to be hoping that Lynch will provide some stability to Pandora, which for more than a year has been marked by concerns about its future in the music-streaming market.
Westergren came back for a second stint as Pandora’s CEO in early 2016. From the start, he faced calls to explore selling the company as Pandora faced more challenges in the music-streaming market from the likes of Apple Music and Spotify. Those companies offered on-demand subscription music-streaming options long before Pandora got its $9.99-a-month Pandora Premium service up and running in March.
Westergren stepped down from Pandora’s CEO post on June 27, less than three weeks after Pandora sold a 19 percent stake in the company to satellite radio company Sirius XM for $480 million. Pandora also sold off Ticketfly, its concert-ticketing business, to Eventbrite for $200 million.
Under terms of the deal with Sirius, the satellite radio provider was given the right to pick three new members for Pandora’s board of directors, including its next board chairman. Since then, some have speculated that Pandora could end up selling a controlling stake of itself to Sirius, or even Liberty Media, which owns a majority share of Sirius’ stock.