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Phyllis McGrady was named senior vice president of Creative Development in September, 2007. In this role, she is responsible for all the creative development associated with ABC News programs and digital outlets.
Ms. McGrady was senior vice president of Early Morning, Primetime and News Program Development in March, 2000. She oversaw “Good Morning America” and “Weekend Edition of Good Morning America,” “20/20,” “Primetime Live,” “Peter Jennings Reporting” specials, the John Stossel specials and all news program development for the Network and other entities.
Ms. McGrady was vice president and executive producer of special programming for ABC News, since May of 1998. In this capacity she was responsible for the development of special hour-long programming. In addition she was named the executive-in-charge of “Good Morning America” in January, 1999.
Ms. McGrady had been the executive producer of “PrimeTime Live” since 1994. She worked closely with Roone Arledge in developing “PrimeTime Live,” the newsmagazine which premiered in 1989, and she developed ABC News’ award-winning “Turning Point,” a return to the one-hour documentary, which she executive-produced when the program premiered in 1994. From 1989 through 1990 she was the executive in charge of long-form programming and executive producer of program development for ABC News. In that role she was responsible for Primetime, long-form program development, including ABC News specials and documentaries.
Ms. McGrady joined ABC in 1977 as a writer and field producer for “Good Morning America.” She left in 1979 to work on the West Coast, where she was a senior producer for NBC and developed pilots for a number of production companies. She returned to ABC News in 1980 in the Chicago bureau, where she did special projects for “World News Tonight.” She rejoined “Good Morning America” in 1982 and was that program’s executive producer from 1984 to 1986. From 1986-1988 Ms. McGrady was the executive producer of “The Barbara Walters Specials.”
An extraordinarily talented producer, Ms. McGrady has received numerous awards, including three duPont-Columbia Awards for her work on “Turning Point” and “PrimeTime Live”; many Emmy Awards; an Edward R. Murrow Award for “ABC 2000,” ABC’s millennium special which aired December 31; and four George Foster Peabody Awards, including one for a “PrimeTime Live ”investigative report and another for a two-hour documentary on Pearl Harbor. Ms. McGrady was also honored by New York Women in Communications for her many contributions to the field of broadcasting.
A native of Hillsville, Virginia, Ms. McGrady graduated from Northwestern University’s School of Radio, Television and Film in 1973. She began her career as a reporter at the Albany Times Union, and went from there to Washington, DC, where she produced “Panorama,” an Emmy-winning news-information program. She is married and lives in New York City and Bucks County, Pennsylvania.