Larry Flynt has hired marketing honcho Arthur Sando to head communications at Flynt Management Group, Sando told TheWrap.
Sando is a public relations veteran who, after starting his career as a broadcast journalist, founded the PR department at Turner Broadcasting System and helped launch HLN, then known as CNN2. After nearly a decade there, he headed PR for King World, a distribution arm of CBS TV.
Until Flynt hired him a month ago, he was an independent communications consultant for ION Media and the MLB Network.
"I've been fortunate to work for several people who have made their mark in this industry," Sando told TheWrap, listing off television magnates Ted Turner and Roger King and, now, Flynt. "It's an exciting opportunity to work with a trailblazer."
At Flynt, Sando will oversee PR for the group's various companies, including Hustler and a variety of magazines, television outlets, apparel businesses, websites and gaming companies.
He said he was drawn to Flynt for his history of free speech activism. Flynt was left wheelchair-bound after a sniper shot him in Georgia in 1978 during one of his numerous legal fights against obscenity charges.
The porn publisher's court battles were chronicled in the 1996 film "The People vs. Larry Flynt" starring Woody Harrelson.
"He's a guy who has paid an enormous price for what he believed in," Sando said. "He has stood up for the First Amendment in historic ways for the greater good."
