Emily Barr Named ‘B+C’ Broadcaster of the Year

Emily Barr testifying on STELAR in Congress in October 2019.
Emily Barr of Graham Media Group testifying in Congress in October 2019. Photo by Jay Mallin. (Image credit: NAB)

Emily Barr, president and CEO of Graham Media Group, is B+C’s Broadcaster of the Year, an award she will receive at TVB’s Alt Forward Conference on Thursday, Oct. 1. Barr will be profiled in B+C’s awards issue on Sept. 21. That issue of the magazine also will include recipients of the new B+C Awards.

Barr has led the broadcast TV division of Graham Holdings since 2012. Under her leadership, Graham Media Group was named B+C’s 2016 Station Group of the Year. Previously, she was president and general manager of ABC-owned stations in Chicago and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Among her individual accolades, Barr received the Golden Mike Award from the Broadcasters Foundation of America in 2018. 

She is TV Board chair for the National Association of Broadcasters and the vice chair of the NBC Affiliate Board. She also serves on the boards of the Associated Press and the Television Bureau of Advertising and has been an active member of the National Association of Broadcasters and the Illinois Broadcasters Association. She was inducted into the 2016 Silver Circle of the Chicago/Midwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. 

Chicago-based Graham Media Group comprises seven local media hubs, Graham Digital and Social News Desk, delivering local news, programming, advertising solutions and digital media tools for television, online, mobile, OTT, podcasts and audio devices. GMG operates in six states: KPRC–Houston, WDIV–Detroit and WSLS–Roanoke (NBC); KSAT–San Antonio (ABC); WKMG–Orlando (CBS); WJXT–Jacksonville (fully local) and WCWJ–Jacksonville (CW).  Based in Detroit, Graham Digital is a digital media and technology development group widely recognized as a leading industry innovator. Social News Desk, headquartered in Atlanta, provides its 2500+ worldwide newsroom-customers with a single dashboard to publish, measure, curate and monetize local news content on social platforms.

Previous recipients of the Broadcaster of the Year award include Hilton Howell of Gray Television (2019), Jack Abernethy of Fox Television Stations (2018) and Jordan Wertlieb of Hearst Television (2017).