Paula Madison, a longtime NBC executive, who ran the news operation at WNBC before moving west and running KNBC, is retiring from NBCUniveral next month, Richard Prince‘s Journal-isms reports. Since 2006, Madison has been EVP and chief diversity officer for NBCUniversal.
Madison joined WNBC in 1989 as Assistant News Director and was named VP and News Director in 1996. In 2000, she was named President and General Manager of KNBC — the first African American woman to become general manager at a network-owned station in a top five market.
An announcement about Madison’s successor will be made “probably in a few weeks,” Nate Kirtman, senior vice president for publicity at NBCUniversal, told Journal-isms.
Madison and her family are majority owners of the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, and of the Africa Channel. She has also created the Madison Media Fund which invests and advises multicultural media.