PromaxBDA Announces 2012 Station Summit Speakers Valari Dobson Staab, Cory Bergman, Michael D. Hais & Morley Winograd

LOS ANGELES, March 1, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- PromaxBDA, the leading global association for marketing, promotion and design professionals, today made the first of many speakers announcements for the 2012 Station Summit.  Valari Dobson Staab, President, NBC Owned Television Stations; Cory Bergman, GM of BreakingNews.com, @breakingnews and founder of LostRemote.com; and Michael D. Hais and Morley Winograd, coauthors of Millennial Momentum: How a New Generation is Remaking America, will all be featured speakers at the second annual Summit, June 26-29, 2012 in Las Vegas.  Created for local station general managers, marketing, promotion and creative services executives, the Station Summit  is designed to focus on the issues, trends and needs of local stations and broadcasters.

"We are delighted to welcome this compelling group of speakers to the Station Summit," said PromaxBDA President and CEO Jonathan Block-Verk. "Each speaker offers a unique perspective about audience engagement and can share new insights with the marketing community as they play a critical role in driving success for local stations and broadcasters."

Valari Dobson Staab will participate in a state of the industry panel, Cory Bergman will discuss social media practices and its continued value as the driving force in marketing and engagement, and Mike Hais and Morley Winograd will focus on how "Millennials" are remaking every aspect of American life.

Valari Dobson Staab is president of NBC Owned Television Stations. In this role, Staab oversees the company's 10 owned television stations, its associated online properties and digital out-of-home division, its local lifestyle programming production company and its in-house marketing and promotion company. Staab has worked in local television for 30 years, primarily at the ABC Owned Television Stations, serving in a variety of roles in general management, research and creative services. Before assuming her current role, she was president and GM of KGO-TV, the market leading station in San Francisco, for eight years. Under Staab's leadership, KGO-TV increased the amount of locally produced programming by more than 50% and expanded its digital efforts to reach new viewers, including streaming newscasts, launching an iPad app and increasing its social media outreach. During her tenure, KGO-TV received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Northern California Emmy for Station Excellence and The Radio and Television News Directors Association's Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence. Before leading KGO-TV, Staab served as president and GM of WTVD-TV in Raleigh-Durham for a year and at KFSN-TV in Fresno for nearly four years. She worked at WPVI-TV in Philadelphia for a decade, where she held the roles of director of creative services and director of marketing and research.

Cory Bergman is the GM of Breaking News and @breakingnews, a social news startup that curates breaking news around the clock. He is also the founder of Lost Remote, an industry news site that covers social TV, or the intersection of social media and television. Prior to Breaking News, Bergman was director of new product development at msnbc.com working on entrepreneurial efforts, such as the acquisition and relaunch of the local news site EveryBlock. Before joining msnbc.com, he worked two decades in local TV news, winning several national awards during his stint leading KING5.com in Seattle.  Together with his wife Kate, Bergman co-founded a network of neighborhood news blogs in Seattle, Next Door Media, which went on to win two national journalism awards. Next Door Media is still one of the largest grassroots neighborhood news startups in the country.

Mike Hais, Ph.D., is partner at Mike & Morley, LLC. He served for a decade as VP of entertainment research and for more than 22 years overall at Frank N. Magid Associates where he conducted audience research for hundreds of television stations, cable channels and program producers in nearly all 50 states and more than a dozen foreign countries.

Morley Winograd is partner at Mike & Morley, LLC. He served as senior policy adviser to Vice President Al Gore and was director of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) from 1997 until 2001. Winograd also coauthored (with Dudley Buffa) "Taking Control: Politics in the Information Age." He is president and CEO of Morwin, Inc., a strategic planning consulting company for government and non-profit organizations. 

The 2012 Station Summit, a leadership summit for local station general managers, marketing, promotion and creative services executives, is designed to specifically focus on the issues, trends and emerging business opportunities driving success in local television. The Summit will be held June 26-29, 2012 in Las Vegas and will feature creative and strategic meetings with affiliates, studios, station groups and PromaxBDALocal speakers, sessions and Awards show. ABC, CBS, The CW and NBC will be hosting comprehensive affiliate marketing meetings as part of the event. Syndicators and studios slated to participate to date include 20th Television, CBS Television Distribution, Debmar-Mercury, NBCUniversal Television Distribution, Sony Pictures Television and Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution. Station groups CBS Television Stations, Gannett, LIN Media, NBC Owned Television Stations, Raycom Media, Scripps, Sinclair, Tribune and other station groups will also be attending.

For more information, or to attend, please visit promaxbda.org/local and for Station Summit updates, speaker information and promotions, follow PromaxBDA on Twitter at PromaxBDA and Facebook at facebook.com/PromaxBDA.

About PromaxBDA
PromaxBDA is a global, non-profit association dedicated to being the leading resource for education, community, creative inspiration and career development for marketing, promotion and design professionals within the entertainment/information industry.

Contact:
Liza Rindge-Peterson
[email protected] 
(310)789-1519

SOURCE PromaxBDA