Rovi Corporation announced that Michael Hawkey has joined the company as senior vice president and general manager of the Discovery business group. In this role, Mr. Hawkey will lead the growth initiatives, overall strategy and product offerings in multiple areas across the Discovery group's product development, including product lifecycle management, program management and product marketing. He will also oversee the engineering, architecture and user experience of Rovi's Discovery products.

Mr. Hawkey will be based out of the company's headquarters in Santa Clara, California, and will report directly to John Burke, Rovi's executive vice president and chief operating officer. Mr. Hawkey has extensive experience managing the engineering and design of software systems, mobile applications and cloud based services for the digital entertainment market. Most recently, Mr. Hawkey was senior vice president and general manager for Sling Media, a division of EchoStar Corporation.

During his tenure of leading the executive management team of Sling Media, he oversaw all aspects of product development, engineering, service operations, sales and marketing, and managed the multi-year roadmap for consumer growth across the globe. Prior to this role, Mr. Hawkey was vice president of marketing and sales for EchoStar Technologies. He has also held leadership positions at Advanced Digital Broadcast (ADB) Americas and STMicroelectronics.