At year’s end, a longtime face of the sales advocacy group for the broadcast television industry and a woman who has served as the organization’s chair — in addition to her full-time role at The E.W. Scripps Co. — will be concluding their respective careers.
What have Abby Auerbach and Missy Evenson learned across the years, in particular when asked to embrace change?
For Evenson, VP of Sales for Local Media at Scripps, reflected back on the last several years. While she is confident that she and Auerbach are leaving organizations and an industry in the hands of some really smart people, she also addressed how we are in “a time of change for an industry” — one she labels “an exciting change.”
With reduction-in-force initiatives at Scripps’ peers and a major reshaping of Scripps’ local broadcast stations under Dean Littleton’s leadership, 2024 has been a year full of monumental change for broadcast TV. Evenson believes it’s important, and future-thinking.
“It is a very vibrant time and a time to change, and a lot of exciting things are going to happen for this industry in the last five years,” Evenson noted, alluding to forthcoming potential nontraditional revenue opportunities associated with ATSC 3.0-powered broadcast internet and addressable advertising solutions.
Auerbach, the longtime TVB EVP/Chief Communications Officer Abby Auerbach, is also saying farewell to the industry. What led her to make the decision? In a “Coffee With …” webinar sponsored by WideOrbit shared on Thursday (12/19), she noted that she’s explored various opportunities across her quarter-century at the TVB and, before that, for 17 years at Ogilvy, and that she believes that era of her life is now complete. She recalled her time spent embracing the issues of “her day” and now is the time for the next generation of leadership to address the issues of today and tomorrow, including AI and automating advertising.
For Auerbach, it is just the right time for what’s next … and not “retirement.” She explained, “When I think of moving ahead, I have been adopting the idea of ‘graduation,’ taking those skills and experiences to those next places in life.”
How has Everson adapted to change across her career? She’s always been a person comfortable in a space for change, she said. But, Everson added, there are “a whole lot of people that don’t think that way, and it is paralyzing for some.”
