NEW YORK -- Patricia Fili-Krushel, the first woman to run a broadcast television network as president of ABC, is quitting the network to join the Internet health-care company Healtheon/WebMD.
Fili-Krushel, who was the highest ranking woman executive in the television business, will become the president and chief executive of Healtheon's consumer division, WebMDHealth. The move, combined with the promotion of Robert A. Iger last January from president of ABC Inc. to president of Walt Disney Co., ABC's corporate parent, means that both of ABC's top two management positions have opened up this year.Iger named Alex Wallau, currently the president of administration and operations for ABC, to head the network on an interim basis. Fili-Krushel's appointment at Healtheon is effective April 10.
Healtheon/WebMD, started four years ago by James H. Clark, the founder of Netscape, is the biggest company that offers to link consumers, doctors, hospitals and health plans through Internet connections, but its own executives say there will be no profits for at least several years.
The company's 30-year-old chief executive, Jeffrey T. Arnold, has been a nonstop deal-maker who forged more than 80 deals in the last 18 months. In the latest, Healtheon bought two competitors, Medical Manager Corp. and CareInsite Inc., last month for $5.2 billion in Healtheon stock.
Arnold said in a telephone interview Tuesday that Fili-Krushel's experience running ABC "made her incredibly valuable and the ideal person to manage the media assets and drive our offline consumers to our Web site."
Among the company's media assets are the Health Net cable channels, weekly programs on the Fox News Channel and the Fox Sports Channel, and extensive advertising joint venture agreements with both the Fox network and CNN.
Fili-Krushel, who is 45, said that a combination of factors led her to jump from ABC to Healtheon, including the lure of working in new media and what she called the "blue chip people" running the Internet company.
"I've spent a lot of time in traditional media and I was looking at new media," she said. "But there are so many companies that are risky. These people are big players. This company is the gorilla of this business."
But another factor in her decision was the order imposed by Disney Co. that required virtually all the top management of ABC to move from New York to Los Angeles, the home city for Disney.
Fili-Krushel, who is the mother of two school-age children, said that "having to move to L.A. was a factor."
In a memo to the ABC management Tuesday, Iger praised Fili-Krushel's performance at the network, acknowledged that she was accepting a "terrific opportunity" and cited the fact that she and her family preferred "to stay in New York."
Fili-Krushel had been widely credited with managing the network well in her 18 months in the position, especially for her handling of negotiations with the network's affiliated stations, which resulted in a settlement favorable to ABC last June.