ABC Owned Television Stations – Bios
Wendy Granato is president and general manager of ABC7/KABC-TV Los Angeles — the No.1 station in Southern California. She has overall management responsibility for the station, shaping its editorial vision and managing the strategies and teams that drive audience and growth across platforms.
Granato hails from Houston, where she was the president and general manager of ABC13/KTRK-TV, also No. 1 in the market on both broadcast and digital platforms. She spearheaded the launch of the station’s 24/7 news stream, delivering the most live, local coverage in the Houston market and cementing the station’s status as Houston’s leading source for local news and information across broadcast, digital and social platforms.
Under her leadership, ABC13 produced 13 hours of live news daily, including “ABC13 Weather Now,” a first-of-its-kind weather show. In addition to newscasts, the station produces 175-plus hours of premium content each year, including community specials, station drives and live events. Granato also led the station’s introduction of two advocacy journalism documentary series, “Unsolved” and “Texas True Crime,” that are so popular they’re now available on Hulu.
Prior to becoming general manager at ABC13, Granato served as the vice president of News for ABC13 for five years. In charge of all editorial decisions and operations, she was responsible for the successful merger of broadcast and digital departments, and helped the station become the No. 1 local news station in the market. Before that, she was executive producer of special projects and executive producer of the daily talk show, “Debra Duncan.”
During her tenure, the station has won 99 Emmys® and 13 Edward R. Murrow Awards. Most notably, as VP of News, she was instrumental in leading the station’s Emmy Award-winning coverage of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, during which time KTRK was on the air nonstop for eight consecutive days. Most recently, the station won both a regional and national Edward R. Murrow Award in Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for its piece “Taking Back Gulfton.” She has been named to Radio+Television Business Report’s Top Local Leaders list twice, was named among the Top 30 Influential Women of Houston in 2022, and most recently named 2024’s TV Market Manager of the Year by Media Alliance of Houston.
As a leader who is passionate about innovation and investing in skills of the future, Granato is a founding director of OTV University, an educational program for all eight ABC Owned Television Stations.
Granato is also passionate about the station’s community outreach efforts, working closely with partners such as Black Heritage Society, Crimestoppers, Goodwill Houston, the Houston Marathon Foundation, the Houston Texans, Latino Learning Center, League of United Latin American Citizens and VOICE of Asia News. Notably, the station supports Share Your Holidays, an annual food drive benefiting the Houston Food Bank; and hosts an E-cycle Drive, a collection/recycling effort for outdated electronic equipment in conjunction with Earth Day. The station also broadcasts the city’s major events, including The Chevron Marathon, the annual July 4th Freedom Over Texas celebration, and numerous parades such as Art Car, Cinco de Mayo, Dia de los Muertos, Galveston Mardi Gras, MLK, Pride and more.
Before joining ABC13, Granato was the news director for KNWS Houston. Earlier in her career, she was a news reporter and morning news anchor for KATC in Lafayette, Louisiana.
She studied at the Manship School of Mass Communication, where she received a degree in broadcast journalism from Louisiana State University.
Tom Cibrowski is president and general manager of KGO-TV, where he has overall management responsibility for KGO-TV/Channel 7 and all of its ancillary businesses.
Under his watch, ABC7 launched a new brand called “Building a Better Bay Area” focusing on comprehensive coverage of the most pressing quality of life issues facing San Francisco and the region with a solutions-based journalism approach. The station has won multiple Emmy® Awards for Overall Excellence and also won the regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for two consecutive years.
Cibrowski previously served as senior vice president of ABC News Programs, News Gathering and Special Events, since August 2014. Based in New York, he was responsible for the daily coverage and content across all ABC News programs and platforms. He was also responsible for the network’s coverage of the 2016 election.
Prior to that role, he served as senior executive producer of “Good Morning America.” He joined the program as senior broadcast producer in 2002 and was later promoted to executive producer in 2006. Under his leadership, the newscast won the Daytime Emmy® Award for Outstanding Morning Program three times and was nominated six times. The week of April 9, 2012, “Good Morning America” became the No. 1 morning newscast for the first time in 16 years, snapping NBC’s historic 852-week winning streak.
At ABC News, Cibrowski was a seasoned international and domestic news producer. He was with Diane Sawyer in Iraq immediately before the U.S.-Iraq war started in 2003 and returned with Robin Roberts six months after combat began. He also traveled to Bahrain and Kuwait with Charles Gibson to produce a series about the generals leading the war effort.
He began his career at ABC News as a desk assistant in 1990 in the Washington bureau. He has covered a wide range of news events on location, including the Bosnian war and Oklahoma City bombing, the downfall of dictators in Indonesia and Haiti, and the Clinton administration’s cruise missile attacks on Iraq in 1998. He won an Emmy for reporting on the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
Cibrowski attended Boston University and graduated with a degree in journalism.
Rob Elmore is president and general manager of ABC11/WTVD-TV Raleigh-Durham where he has overall management responsibility of the station’s operations and its ancillary businesses.
An award-winning local news executive, Elmore brings extensive experience leading teams in the multiplatform space including ABC7/KABC-TV Los Angeles, which serves the second largest market in the United States. As the vice president of KABC’s news division for the past five years, he has helped cement the station’s status as Southern California’s leading source for local news and information, expanding coverage to serve audiences across broadcast, digital and social platforms. Prior to KABC, Elmore spent 17 years at WTVD where he held the position of news director serving the Research Triangle Region of Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Fayetteville with the most trusted news information, entertaining content and inspiring storytelling.
At KABC, Elmore specialized in creating and executing content and format strategies to increase multiplatform viewership and engagement, helping to secure ABC7’s position as the No. 1 station in the country on digital and social. Most recently, KABC was honored in 2020 with four Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards for Overall Excellence, Breaking News Coverage, Excellence in Video, and Best Newscast in large-market television in Region 2 of the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA).
As news director of WTVD, Elmore spearheaded the opening of the first and only downtown Raleigh street-level studio, The Raleigh Eyewitness News Center, in 2005. In 2008, his team was the first in the country to deploy a live broadband mobile unit, Breaking News 1, for spot news and severe weather coverage. In 2011, he and the team created the Happening Now at 5 p.m. format, which has been replicated at local stations across the country.
Before joining ABC Owned Television Stations, Elmore was news director and assistant news director at News 10 NBC in Rochester, New York. Earlier in his career, he was a news producer at WSMV in Nashville, Tennessee, where produced the 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts; and WHAM-TV in Rochester, New York, where he produced the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts. He began his television career as a reporter at WWNY-TV in Watertown, New York, during summer and college breaks.
Elmore graduated magna cum laude from SUNY Geneseo with a Bachelor of Arts in speech communication.
Michael Koenigs serves as the executive producer of ABC Localish, developing shows for ABC that highlight the good happening in cities across America. He also serves as the host of ABC’s “More In Common,” a show about people coming together despite their political and personal differences.
Previously, Koenigs was a reporter for ABC News covering events ranging from presidential campaigns to breaking news. He began his TV career producing for Chris Cuomo at “20/20,” before joining Diane Sawyer’s team at “ABC World News Tonight.” As a senior coordinating producer for ABC’s Lincoln Square Productions, he developed original TV formats for Disney Channel, ABC and Hulu.
In 2016, he biked 1,000 miles across America for his original series “Election Cycle” which ran across ABC News platforms including “Good Morning America” and “Nightline.”
Michael Carr is president and general manager of KTRK-TV, where he has overall management responsibility for KTRK-TV ABC13 and its ancillary businesses.
Michael Carr previously worked as president and general manager of KFSN-TV, where he has overall management responsibility for KFSN-TV ABC30 and its ancillary businesses.
Carr has an extensive background in local TV journalism. He began his career as an intern at KFSN and has worked as an assignment editor, producer and executive producer prior to news director. In addition to Fresno, he has also worked in newsrooms in San Francisco and Sacramento.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in mass communication and journalism from California State University, Fresno, where he also played football for the Bulldogs. In 2017, Carr was named as a Fellow to the Fresno State Media, Communication and Journalism Department Hall of Fame. He is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.
Mike and his wife DeAnn have two teenage daughters.
Chad Matthews, president, ABC Owned Television Stations, has chief management responsibility for the eight ABC-owned television stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, San Francisco, Raleigh-Durham and Fresno, and its ancillary businesses, “Live with Kelly and Mark,” “Localish,” and “On The Red Carpet.” Under Matthews’ purview, ABC Owned Television Stations was named Broadcasting & Cable’s “Station Group of the Year” for 2022 and currently leads the nation in minutes streamed, having been No. 1 for six consecutive months in 2023.
Previously, Matthews was president and general manager of WABC-TV, and prior to that was the news director there from 2018-2021. In that role, he oversaw the overall function of exclusive content creation and operations for WABC’s television and digital channels, and the launch of connected TV apps on Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Apple TV and Roku. In 2020, he successfully transitioned the station to a remote workforce to produce Eyewitness News without interruption during the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, finishing the year with the largest audience of any television station in the nation and carrying a wider margin of success than it had in 2019.
Matthews is a multi-award-winning news executive, receiving nine Emmy® Awards. In 2020, under his leadership, WABC-TV New York was awarded 17 Emmy Awards and three regional Edward R. Murrow Awards for Overall Excellence, Best Newscast and Best News Documentary, including a national Murrow award for Best Newscast. At the close of 2021, Broadcasting and Cable named Matthews GM of the Year for 2021.
He serves on the board of directors of the Broadcasters Foundation, TVB and NAB Leadership Foundation. Matthews was honored at the 2023 annual benefit of the NYC nonprofit “Dance to Unite,” an organization he supports that provides free dance instruction to inner city youth. He’s a member of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists and serves as a senior adviser and executive champion on PRIDE at ABC News and ABC Owned Television Stations Business Employee Resource Group.
Matthews has an extensive background in local TV journalism and significantly in the tri-state region. He started his career at WABC in 2000 and later promoted to senior executive producer in 2002. He spent 12 years in senior roles for Eyewitness News and won both a Peabody Award in 2001 as the live control room producer for the station’s 9/11 coverage and an Emmy Award in 2007 for Best Evening Newscast. In 2012, Matthews temporarily left WABC for a five-year stint as assistant news director at NBC-owned WTVJ in South Florida. At WTVJ, he won another Emmy Award in 2017 for breaking news coverage during the Fort Lauderdale airport shooting incident before returning to WABC as the assistant news director later that year.
John Idler has overall management responsibility for the top-rated station in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest television market. Under his leadership, ABC 7 continues their 40+ year’s news ratings dominance and claims the strongest streaming audience in Chicago, and is among the top local streamers in the country. Idler also oversees additional businesses, including the Localish Network on 7.2, abc7chicago.com, as well as its streaming, mobile and other new media businesses. This is the third time Idler has called ABC 7 home, after serving in key sales positions at the station earlier in his career. He has served as president and general manager of ABC 7 Chicago since 2012.
Idler began his broadcast career in Chicago in 1991. He has been active in various industry associations and community groups. Idler is the immediate past chairman of the board of directors, Illinois Broadcasters Association. In that role, he initiated the ILLINIOS BROADCASTERS UNITING AGAINST HUNGER campaign, which raised more than $1.5 million dollars for Illinois food banks during the COVID-19 crisis.
He has co-chaired the American Cancer Society’s Real Men Wear Pink of Greater Chicagoland campaign to raise awareness and funds to save lives from breast cancer. Idler also serves on the boards of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, USO of Illinois, 100 Club of Chicago, Greater Chicago Food Depository, as well as the Executive Club of Chicago. He received a mayoral appointment to serve on the State Street Commission. Additionally, he is active with the American Red Cross and spearheaded a partnership that has resulted in the collection of more than 1,800 units of blood, making it the largest single-day Red Cross Blood drive in the country.
Prior to joining ABC 7 Chicago, Idler has served as president and general manager of WTVD-TV in Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville since December 2007.
He has held local TV management posts in Chicago and Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville since joining the ABC Owned Television Stations Group as a WLS-TV sales account executive in 1998. He moved to WTVD-TV as a sales manager in 2000, and subsequently returned to WLS-TV as a sales manager in 2002. Idler was named WLS-TV vice president and general sales manager in 2004 before his promotion to president and general manager at WTVD-TV in 2007.
Idler earned his Bachelor of Science degree in history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and his Master of Business Administration from the University of New Haven. He and his wife have two children.
Bernie Prazenica is president and general manager of WPVI-TV/6abc in Philadelphia. The top-rated news and entertainment television station in the Delaware and Lehigh Valley, WPVI-TV is an ABC owned television station in the country’s fourth largest television market. It is nationally recognized as one of the preeminent stations in news, local programming and community involvement, with a ratings dominance that spans nearly 45 years.
Under Prazenica’s leadership, the station completed construction of a state-of-the-art, 110,000-square foot, all-digital facility next to its previous home on City and Monument Avenues in 2009. He also oversees 6abc.com, its mobile applications and two digital channels. The station’s website is the most popular television website in the Delaware Valley.
Prazenica’s career in television spans 43 years and across a number of stations and markets. Prior to current role, which he assumed in 2007, he served as president and general manager of WTVD-TV, ABC’s owned station in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he guided the station in construction of the market’s first street-level studio, started a 10 p.m. News program, and brought a new commitment to local programming. In 1994, Prazenica was appointed as director of Sales for WPVI-TV, after representing ABC Owned Television Stations in the mid-Atlantic region in their ABC National TV Sales department. He began his career at Pittsburgh’s WPTT-TV as an account executive, before transitioning to WXEX-TV in Richmond, Virginia, and then returning to his college town of Philadelphia to begin a long stand with WPVI-TV.
Since returning to Philadelphia, Prazenica has continued a long tradition of WPVI-TV community involvement. He is actively involved on various boards such as Pennsylvania Visitors and Convention Bureau, Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters, Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce Executive Committee, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Corporate Council, City Avenue Special Services District, and Castlemans Disease Collaborative Network Board of Advisors. He is also a past chairman of the Police Athletic League and chairman of Temple University’s Klein College Board of Advisors.
In 2009, Prazenica was the proud recipient of the Lew Klein Alumni in the Media Award. In 2014, Temple University also inducted him into its Gallery of Success in the School of Media and Communication. That same year, he was recognized by Philadelphia Magazine as one of the City’s 75 Most Influential People and in 2020 he received the Police Athletic League of Philadelphia’s highest award.
Prazenica graduated cum laude from the Klein School of Media and Communications at Temple University with a Bachelor of Arts in communications, radio-TV-film.