Although the traditional path to general manager was once to rise from the ranks of the sales department, TVNewsCheck reports on a growing trend of news directors taking over the top spot at local stations:
News directors are being hired for stations’ highest managerial positions at a greater rate than ever, industry watchers say. And those who made the move earlier are moving up in market size.
And although the bulk of GM jobs still belong to people from sales, we can expect to see more and more news people assuming those coveted gigs in the very near future, according to media experts. The activity is the result of the new reality that news directors, charged with running increasingly complex and multi-faceted departments, are now more qualified to lead stations.
AdvertisementOn top of that, having someone make the leap from running a news operation to an entire station makes sense, given that news is typically a TV station’s largest department.