Chad Matthews

Chad Matthews, president, ABC Owned Television Stations, has chief management responsibility for the eight owned television stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh-Durham and Fresno.

Matthews was previously president and general manager of WABC-TV, and had overall management responsibility for ABC7/WABC-TV and its ancillary businesses, including operation oversight of “Live with Kelly and Ryan.”

Matthews was also the news director of WABC 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. During his tenure, he has been pivotal in growing the station’s digital presence, and shepherding record growth across digital platforms. In the last year, WABC grew its digital unique viewers more than 20 percent prior-year growth in viewers across platforms, most notably experiencing tremendous gains on connected TVs, including a 41.5% increase in unique viewers and 215 percent increase in total minutes watched.

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.

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 Ft. Lauderdale airport shooting incident before returning to WABC as the assistant news director later that year.

Matthews has a Bachelor of Arts in mass communication from Westfield State University. In 2020, he proudly served as a board member for the nonprofit organization Dance to Unite, which provides free dance instruction and promotes diversity for inner-city children. 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.