Shaw Media is creating a unit to take digital sales in-house.

The Toronto-based broadcaster said it has named Graeme Mackrell to lead a new digital sales team to pull broadcast sales back from Postmedia Network.

“As digital increasingly becomes an important part of our clients marketing campaigns, we want to ensure that we have strong expertise in-house to work with our sales and marketing ventures teams,” Errol Da-Ré, senior vice president of sales at Shaw Media, said Monday in a statement.

Mackrell was most recently director of marketing ventures at Shaw Media.

His first hire is Lyna Sapijonis, who becomes manager of digital sales after also serving as part of the marketing ventures team.

Postmedia Network, the Canadian newspaper chain, is similarly aligning its print and digital sales teams with the recent appointment of Jennifer Sage as vice president of digital sales.

Both Postmedia Network and Shaw Media were part of the former Canwest Global Communications Corp. group before its break-up.