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Media CEO Paula Madison on Diversity in Television

Paula Williams Madison, Chairman and CEO of Madison Media Management.

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. speaks with Paula Williams Madison, Chairman and CEO of Madison Media Management LLC and Williams Group Holding LLC. It's a Chicago-based, family-owned company with significant investment in media – The African Channel

Madison has moved from award-winning journalist to history-making top executive at NBCUniversal. Today, she is the chairman and CEO of the LA Sparks, and a member of the WNBA Board of Governors. Also she recently was appointed to the Board of Commissioners of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Madison began her career as a newspaper reporter in New York and Dallas/Fort Worth. After a few years at television stations in Texas and Oklahoma, she returned to her native New York City by joining NBC's owned and operated station WNBC in 1989 as Assistant News Director. Madison rose to the station's Vice President and News Director in March 1996.

During her 22 years with NBCU, she held a number of successful leadership roles, including President and General Manager of NBC4 Los Angeles, Los Angeles Regional General Manager for NBCU’s Telemundo TV stations and Vice President and News Director of NBC4 New York.

In 2007, she was appointed to lead diversity for NBCU. It was the first time a company executive assumed a full-time responsibility as the business-lead for diversity. That same year, Madison was named a Company Officer for GE, then the parent company of NBCU, now operated by the Comcast Corporation.

John L. Hanson is the producer and host of the nationally syndicated radio series In Black America. It’s heard on home station KUT at 10 p.m. Tuesdays and 6:30 a.m. Sundays — and weekly on close to 20 stations across the country. The weekly podcast of IBA, the only nationally broadcast Black-oriented public affairs radio program, is one of KUT’s most popular podcasts.
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