The channel's managing director and executive vice-president, Neville Meijers, said that Dickie, most recently senior director in charge of marcoms, impressed "with his creativity, understanding and knowledge of our business and the Asian market".
Dickie introduced "a few things that were a little different" in the past year, among them the focus on developing a customer relationship management programme which enhanced communications with core viewers and he introduced a "value added" programme for advertising clients.
The CRM initiative, first launched in Singapore last year and later extended to include Taiwan, has a database of 60,000 people, who are sent monthly emails highlighting upcoming programmes. These people can also be requested to take part in surveys aimed at improving Discovery's offering.
Other initiatives over the past year include the recruiting of a graphic designer to work on in-house creative projects.
An advertising sales and marketing manager dedicated to developing creative solutions for corporate clients was also hired.
Dickie joined the network in 2000 from Shandwick International, where he was a director handling Discovery and Animal Planet, in addition to a range of other multinational brands, such as MasterCard, Hewlett Packard and TNT.