Station Manager - WHIO TV

Position Overview

Cox Media Group (CMG) offers an exciting leadership opportunity for a forward-thinking, experienced, top-tier Sales and Operations Leader to oversee our Dayton TV market. WHIO is a highly respected organization known for aggressive breaking news coverage, award-winning investigative journalism, innovative production, and its seasoned and trusted Severe Weather team serving Dayton, Ohio, and the surrounding Miami Valley. Year and year out, WHIO ranks as the #1 CBS affiliated station in the nation.

The leader accepting this role is entrusted with building on a rich legacy of award-winning journalism, transformative community service, financial success, and operational excellence across all aspects of the business.

The Station Manager oversees a team of top performers who drive market-leading audience numbers, ratings, and revenue across all platforms (linear, digital, streaming). They aim to maximize broadcast performance, including revenue, market share, margins, and client performance, working closely with CMG’s strong Dayton radio team located in the same building.

The ideal candidate for this role has a proven history of consistently enhancing business performance, an innovative mindset, and leadership abilities to lead change in our evolving industry.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Oversees all station departments, including news, sales, marketing, engineering, programming, production, creative services, and community affairs.
• Drives results by developing and executing the station’s short- and long-term strategic and operational plans; meets revenue, expense, and BCF/EBITDA targets aligned with the organization’s financial and operational standards.
• Builds and promotes a workplace culture that encourages high performance, engagement, teamwork, retention, integrity, and accountability.
• Embodies the company’s core values and serves as a key leader within the business, the Dayton community, and the industry at large.
• Works is close partnership with the team at CMG-Dayton Radio, which is also the top radio cluster in the market and co-located with WHIO-TV.
• Recruits, develops, and retains a strong leadership team; provides guidance and coaching to optimize their performance and speed up their professional growth.
• Offers an innovative approach to traditional television, digital, and streaming models, leading to better efficiencies and growth in business units.
• Fosters a digital culture to boost broadcast ratings and expand the digital audience, including mobile, mobile apps, and desktop.
• Builds and sustains relationships with advertisers, clients, viewers, and community leaders.
• Identifies strategic opportunities for the station to participate in community events and public affairs, and represents CMG Dayton on local, affiliate, broadcast, and industry-related boards and organizations.
• Ensures the station fully complies with all Equal Employment Opportunity, Federal Communications Commission requirements, and other applicable laws.

Minimum Qualifications

• Over 8 years of progressive experience in television station management with proven success in various leadership roles.
• Prior experience as a television station leader with revenue accountability strongly preferred.
• Working knowledge of local news, programming, sales (specifically TV advertising, including political and digital), marketing, production, technology, and research.
• Results-oriented, with a bias for action and a strong sense of ownership and accountability.
• Experience managing in a dynamic environment, leading multi-disciplinary and matrixed teams.
• Strong interpersonal skills, with an ability to work cooperatively and collaboratively with all levels of employees and leadership to maximize performance.
• Strong community relations, interpersonal and leadership skills, combined with executive presence and proven ability to communicate effectively both verbally and in writing.
• Proven ability to attract, hire, develop, and retain high-caliber talent to ensure bench strength in key areas of business.
• Bachelor’s degree in business, sales, marketing, communications, or media/broadcast preferred.