celebrates the women who make this city’s $60 billion entertainment industry come alive — and thrive. This year, we looked beyond familiar names to showcase 66 executives, producers, directors, writers and actors who deserve to be seen. The women who appear on the pages that follow have broken barriers, navigated TV’s streaming wars, produced indie movies on a budget Marvel would consider chump change and contributed to New York’s rich artistic landscape.
A longtime lieutenant of Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav, Finch has gone from overseeing legacy Discovery lifestyle brands to running nearly 30 U.S. channels combined under the merged company, including TLC, TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network/Adult Swim and TCM. “The cable business represents a very large part of Warner Bros. Discovery, certainly from a revenue standpoint and from a staffing standpoint,” Finch says.
Kaufman received not one but two major promotions in 2022, first to head of Paramount Global’s consumer products and experiences and then to CEO of international markets after a shake-up in that division. Kaufman’s background in nurturing brands ranging from “SpongeBob SquarePants” to “Paw Patrol” is proving invaluable as she works to extend Paramount’s reach across multiple continents.
The past year was a huge success for NBCUniversal’s Entertainment and Sports divisions and its local media arm, but not without challenges. The local arm is in the middle of pivoting from a broadcast news mindset to streaming. “Innovation and change are not easy, but our stations are doing a really great job at maintaining their high-quality, regularly scheduled newscasts while going live often with streaming content on their 24/7 FAST channels,” Staab says.