Valari Staab, president of NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations, has renewed her contract, according to an NBCUniversal source. Staab took over the group in June 2011 and, with the backing of new owners with an apparent commitment to local broadcasting, set out to invigorate the owned stations.
Terms of her new deal were not divulged.
Staab had been president and general manager of KGO, the ABC-owned station in San Francisco. Upon taking over the 10-station NBC group, then named NBC Local Media, she renamed it NBC Owned Television Stations, suggesting operational decisions made at the local level, as opposed to corporate.
More recently, Staab took on oversight of New England Cable News and the 16 owned Telemundo stations when those were shifted into the owned stations group.
The NBC-owned stations, which saw budgets slashed under GE's management, enjoyed increased investment when Comcast took control of NBC. That includes investigative reporting units at all 10 stations and better technology and newsgathering tools, such as a new helicopter in Philadelphia after WCAU split from the Local News Service co-op it had co-founded.
The group also scrapped its local Nonstop digi-nets in favor of the homegrown classic TV network Cozi TV.
