President
ABC Owned Television Stations Group
Burbank, Calif.
Wendy McMahon was appointed president of the ABC Owned Television Stations Group in December 2017, effective January 2018. Widely regarded as the top station group in the U.S., she has overall responsibility for the company’s eight local TV stations and their digital assets in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh-Durham and Fresno. Based in Burbank, Calif., she reports to Dana Walden, chairman, Disney Television Studios and ABC Entertainment.
In this role, McMahon has leveraged her extensive brand, programming and digital leadership to expand and modernize content production, influence technology to drive organizational effectiveness and engage audiences and advertisers with enhanced experiences, products and capabilities. The eight local TV stations McMahon oversees are consistently market leaders in local news, collectively number one in local news among adults 25-54 for 11 consecutive broadcast seasons and in overall digital audience, video consumption and social reach and engagement. In fact, OTV stations just recently recorded 26 months of consecutive digital video growth.
In September 2018, she drew on the thriving demand for authentic and relevant local storytelling by launching ABC’s Localish, a new digital media brand that brings out the good in America’s cities through locally sourced, yet nationally relevant stories. The following month, she expanded her passion for serving local communities and announced a new Community Journalist program consisting of 20 reporters embedded in local communities informing and reflecting the audience they serve. By reimagining the future of local newsgathering to strategically meet the evolving demands of consumers and the community, McMahon has cemented public interest in rapidly growing local content and furthered the stations’ reach through the ever-expanding multiplatform space. In addition, she has continued to build on the strength of OTV’s leading local news and information brands with the expansion of local content in over the top (OTT) environments, leading to an increase in OTT consumption to 93% year over year on ABC’s OTT apps.
Previously, she served as senior vice president, Digital for the ABC Owned Stations Group, where she was responsible for the digital content, product/technology and audience development strategies and initiatives for the ABC Owned Television Stations. In that role, McMahon oversaw the group’s adoption of data-driven, mobile-first video strategies that drove historical growth and market leadership in on-platform video metrics, social reach and engagement. She also established a first-of-its-kind, local-branded content studio to extend the group’s content and distribution capabilities to premium partners and advertisers. Prior to that, McMahon served as vice president, Programming and Creative Services at KABC TV, the ABC-owned television station in Los Angeles.
Before joining KABC, McMahon served as the creative services director for CBS Owned and Operated Television Stations in Boston, Mass., and Minneapolis, Minn. Early in her career, she worked as a promotion manager for CBS affiliate stations in Jacksonville, Fla., and Savannah, Ga.
McMahon graduated summa cum laude from Louisiana State University with a degree in mass communications and was honored with Louisiana State University’s Young Alumnus of the Year Award in 2019. She currently serves on the board of the Broadcasters Foundation of America.
