In The Spotlight: Media guru who is aiming to breathe some new life into BBC America

Herb Scannell

The man who brought SpongeBob SquarePants to television (and to cinemas, theatre stages, lunchboxes, pencil cases and children's' bedspreads) has been hired to work his magic for the BBC's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide.

Herb Scannell spent almost two decades at Nickelodeon, the cartoon channel inside media giant Viacom, and he has been lured back into television by Auntie after three years working on an internet start-up.

His most recent company, Next New Networks, has been making cheap video content exclusively for the web – but now he gets to play with some of the Beeb's biggest properties.

Mr Scannell, 53, has been immersed in the business of media his whole adult life, having run his university radio station at Boston College and turned it into a wildly successful alternative music station.

A New York native, he was born to an Irish father and a Puerto Rican mother, both social workers. His mother's heritage qualifies him for the lists of the most powerful Latino business leaders in the US, and you can easily make him reminisce about childhood summers spent sleeping outdoors and snorkelling in San Juan. He is bilingual, bright and brimming with energy.

His task now is to do for BBC America, the Beeb's US cable channel, what he did for Nickelodeon: get it into more homes across the country, make its roster of shows among the most talked about, then squeeze money out of merchandising. He is already talking of increasing the amount of US-produced content for BBC America, which relies on reheated gruel such as Cash in the Attic marathons. Mr Scannell lives not in a pineapple under the sea but in Manhattan, with his wife and two daughters.