Judy Girard, president of HGTV, assumed her position in November 2005 after serving as president of Shop At Home Network. During her tenure at Shop At Home, she managed the network’s integration into the television commerce strategy for Scripps Networks and its lifestyle television brands: HGTV, Food Network, DIY Network and Fine Living.
Previously Ms. Girard served as president of Food Network, where she was responsible for programming, marketing and promotions for the network and content on foodnetwork.com. Before being named president, Ms. Girard was senior vice president and general manager of the network.
Additionally, Ms. Girard served as senior vice president of programming and content development for Scripps Networks. She was responsible for the planning and coordination required for using programming content generated by all the Scripps Networks brands and the development of the DIY Network.
Ms. Girard, a long-time television executive, also served as senior vice president of programming for Americast, a joint venture of Disney, BellSouth, SBC Communications, Ameritech and GTE Corp., where she oversaw video and interactive services. At Americast, Ms. Girard worked with Disney and other partners to build a 125-plus channel programming entity.
Prior to Americast, Ms. Girard was senior vice president, programming and production at Lifetime. At Lifetime, she was responsible for revamping the company’s programming department, launching “Intimate Portrait” and developing a new monthly movie franchise, Lifetime Original Movie, which included the highly-successful, “Almost Golden: The Jessica Savitch Story.”
From 1991-1993, Ms. Girard was vice president of broadcasting at New York’s WNBC-TV. Her position encompassed programming, operations, promotion, public affairs and standards and practices. From 1989-1991, Ms. Girard served as vice president of program development for the NBC owned-and-operated stations, where she helped launch the Jerry Springer and Jenny Jones shows in Chicago and the Sunday late-night sports update program, George Michael’s “Sports Machine.” Ms. Girard also was instrumental in developing successful syndication partnerships between Multimedia Entertainment talk shows, such as “Phil Donahue” and “Sally Jessy Raphael,” and the NBC-owned stations. She joined NBC in 1987 as director of operations and programming, and in 1989 was named director of broadcasting for WNBC-TV.
From 1979-1987, Ms. Girard held various positions within Hearst Broadcasting including director of programming operations and promotion for WTAE-TV, Pittsburgh and WBAL-TV, Baltimore. From 1973-1979, she served as station manager at WOWK-TV, Huntington, West Virginia and program manager for WBNG-TV, Binghamton, New York. Her television career began in 1968 at WPVI-TV, Philadelphia.
Ms. Girard graduated from Ithaca College with a Bachelor of Science degree in radio-television-film. She resides in Knoxville, Tennessee and Wilmington, North Carolina.