Judy Tygard has earned a well-deserved promotion.
The five-time Emmy award winning CBS News senior producer has been named executive producer of 48 Hours.
Tygard has been a senior producer on the program since 2005, and she replaces Susan Zirinsky, who named CBS News president and senior executive producer earlier this year.
(As an aside, we also happened to see Zirinsky at the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame dinner on Monday in Las Vegas.)
“Judy Tygard is one of the best producers in all of television and an excellent leader,” Zirinsky said, in announcing Tygard’s promotion. “She lives and breathes 48 Hours. As an innovative senior, she’s expanded the franchise into new areas and will continue to push 48 Hours into the future.”
Tygard added: “48 Hours is in my DNA,” Tygard. “I joined as a producer in season two. We’re now in our 32nd season. I’m so proud of the work we do shining a light on the criminal justice system.”
Since arriving at the show 14 years ago, she has been the creative force behind 48 Hours: Live to Tell, a short-run series that features first-person accounts of people who have survived horrific events. Live to Tell has earned awards for documenting the challenges facing a victim of sex trafficking and the struggle of a survivor of the 2016 Brussels terror attack.
Additionally, Tygard has produced a number of CBS News’ prime time specials, including the upcoming Meghan and Harry Plus One and the Peabody-nominated 39 Days, a documentary about the student activist movement that followed the school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
More recently, she was co-executive producer of the The Gayle King Interview with R. Kelly.
Tygard began her CBS News career as a writer for anchors Bob Schieffer and Morton Dean at the CBS Evening News weekend editions. She also worked at CBS This Morning as a writer, copy editor, line producer and anchor producer. During her career, Tygard has covered a wide range of economic, political and international stories for CBS News such as the Moscow Summit, unrest in Cuba, Japan’s post-war reckoning, political conventions and the inaugurations of three presidents.
She joined 48 Hours in 1989 as a producer. She left for a brief stint at ABC News and later returned to 48 Hours.
Throughout her career, Tygard has focused on stories that examine the fairness of the judicial system, and has produced several editions of 48 Hours centered on cases of the wrongfully accused.