Alison Clayton, Rogers Communications’ choice to sit on the board of the Canada Media Fund, has seen her career as an industry consultant often intersect with an evolving cable TV set-top box.

A onetime kids TV producer, Clayton was recruited by Rogers and Shaw Communications during the mid-1990s to spearhead their new V-chip technology, made available through the digital set-top box to block offensive TV programming.

Clayton developed initial guidelines for a TV rating system that was eventually embraced by the Canadian broadcast industry’s Action Group on Violence on Television, for which she served as co-chair of the classification committee. What’s more, Canada’s V-chip technology and an accompanying TV rating system became the forerunner of anti-TV violence technology adopted by American broadcasters.

Clayton’s next big assignment for Rogers and Shaw came in 2000 as general manager of new digital TV channels The Biography Channel, MSNBC Canada and TechTV Canada.

This was the early days of diginets, with few Canadians having invested in digital cable set-top box technology to receive them. So Rogers and Shaw lined their newcomer channels up behind American partners like A&E and Microsoft’s Paul Allen, whose own U.S. channels supplied much-needed library content to get the Canadian services off the ground.

Clayton’s other executive stints include serving as executive director of the Rogers Cable Network Fund, and vice-president of programming for The Movie Network, Moviepix and Family Channel. She has served on the boards of the Ottawa Art Gallery and the Alliance for Children and Television.

The Ottawa-based policy maven is also no stranger to the Canadian Television Fund; she was selected in 2007 by the then-Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association to sit on the industry fund’s board.