John Malone, chairman and controlling shareholder of Liberty Media, appointed Maffei, a former Microsoft chief financial officer, to replace Robert Bennett, who is retiring.
Malone said Maffei had the experience to help with the company restructure, which has been mooted to improve Liberty's stock market valuation.
In the last two years, Malone has already spun off Liberty's international assets into Liberty Media International and its stake in Discovery Communications and Ascent Media into Discovery Holdings.
The first stage of the proposed new spin-off is to create a new stock called Liberty Interactive in the first half of 2006. This would track the value of Liberty Media's "interactive" assets, which include shopping channel QVC and Liberty's stakes in InterActiveCorp and Expedia.
The second stage, two to three years from now according to Liberty, would be to create a separate company housing those assets.
This would leave the original company owning US cable movie channels Starz, and its much-discussed 18% stake in Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
Malone took Murdoch by surprise in late 2004 by doubling Liberty's stake in News Corp. Murdoch responded by instigating a "poison pill" defence to repel a Liberty takeover of News Corp.
Speculation has raged over Malone's intentions and he has been tipped variously to sell back the shares in exchange for News Corp assets or to intervene in the News Corp succession in the event of Murdoch's retirement or death.
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