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Cited by Fortune as one of the fifty most powerful women who influence corporate America, Patricia Fili-Krushel has consistently broken down barriers for women in the executive suite. When she was named president of the ABC television network in 1998, she became the highest-ranking woman in the broadcasting industry. During her tenure, ABC moved from third to first in the ratings, propelled in particular by the phenomenal success of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. As importantly, she has helped to defuse the stereotype of the manic, single-minded female executive embodied by Faye Dunaway in the movie Network. Fili-Krushel is very conscious that “there’s a responsibility to be a certain role model for women” while running a company. She has tried to create a working environment of tolerance and mutual respect. Throughout her career, Fili-Krushel has overseen programming and management issues in a wide array of media: broadcasting, cable, and the Internet. She has been particularly sensitive to programs that connect to women’s issues, helping to launch The View at ABC and renew The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd at Lifetime, where she helped define the identity of the service by developing original programming and introducing world-premiere movies. As Fili-Krushel once said, “TV for the most part is a female vehicle. TV viewers are about two-thirds women. We’d better reflect our viewers’ interests.”
Graduating from St. John’s University, Fili-Krushel began her career answering phones at ABC Sports. She rose through the ranks at ABC, eventually becoming program controller of the sports division. In 1979 she left the broadcast world to join a burgeoning premium cable channel, Home Box Office, as director of sports administration. Very quickly, she assumed more and more responsibility: director of sports and specials, program budgeting in September 1980; director of production in July 1981; director of production and programming administration in 1983, and finally vice president of business affairs and production in December 1984. During the early eighties, she also received an MBA from Fordham. She was able to earn the degree “while continuing to invest in my career and that’s where I started to develop the experience and networks that have kept my career growing over the long term.”
Fili-Krushel expanded her horizons, mostly forged in the sports world, by joining Lifetime in 1988. She participated in the basic cable service’s switch to catering exclusively to women and was responsible for a multitude of programming issues: acquisitions, development, production, scheduling, and on-air promotion. She was senior vice president of programming and production of Lifetime and later group vice president of Hearst/ABC-Viacom Entertainment Services. The channel audaciously created forty new episodes of the acclaimed The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, which originated on NBC. The success of such original movies as The Killing Mind with Stephanie Zimbalist also boosted the ratings. Fili-Krushel recognized that she “became sensitive to women’s issues while I was at Lifetime.”
In 1993 Fili-Krushel returned to her former network, ABC, where she oversaw daytime programming. She was responsible for leading ABC daytime into the number-one position among the most-coveted demographic for daytime advertisers, women 18-49. She also encouraged her soap operas to tackle contemporary social issues, most notably General Hospital’s major story line on AIDS. In 1999 she reflected on those groundbreaking stories: “I remember thinking to myself, this is what I love most about working in television. That our shows can address real life issues. That we can merge entertainment with information to enlighten and empower our audience. When you work in daytime...it’s sometimes hard to step back and appreciate what a unique and important role soap operas play.” Fili-Krushel also encouraged her daytime serials to employ lead minority characters in core story lines and increase minority employment behind the cameras.
In 1998 Fili-Krushel was appointed president of the ABC television network, becoming the most powerful woman in the business. She assumed responsibility for all programming and business areas of the network: news, sports, daytime, and children’s. In addition, she oversaw sales, affiliate relations, marketing, broadcast operations, and engineering. She also conceived and implemented SoapNet, a twenty-four hour soap opera cable channel. In creating the service, Fili-Krushel was conscious of the demands of a working woman: “There is a large audience of women who aren’t home during the day anymore. Why not show the same episode of All My Children twice in one day using a cable channel to maximize the audience?”
Fili-Krushel was also able to negotiate a favorable deal with the affiliate stations, but realized the bigger picture did not augur well for the networks. She was concerned with the high cost of programming and the erosion of the audience. In 2000 she decided to leave traditional media, ABC, to become president and CEO of a new media company, WebMD Health, the consumer division of Healtheon/WebTV. In the new position she oversaw the company’s flagship website and the Health Network cable channel (later renamed WebMD Television). She thought her broadcast background complemented the aggressive plans of a new media contender: “The company is in a unique position to transform the healthcare arena, and my experience in developing programming, delivering information to the consumer marketplace and in growing integrated media companies will help accelerate Healtheon/WebMD’s position.”
In July 2001 Fili-Krushel returned to the world of large media corporations and became executive vice president of administration at AOL Time Warner Inc. Working with the senior management team, her responsibilities include oversight of corporate human resources, employee development and growth, compensation and benefits, corporate philanthropy, real estate, facilities, and security. Time Warner’s cochief operating officer Richard Parsons welcomed Fili-Krushel back to the fold where she began more than twenty years before at HBO: “Throughout her impressive career, Pat had been a proven leader, with a wide range of operational and managerial responsibilities in virtually every area of the media, entertainment and Internet landscape. She brings a high level of expertise and energy to her new position at AOL Time Warner (now Time Warner Inc.), where she will help ensure that we have the organizational programs and systems, and the people management policies and practices, to reach our goal of becoming the world’s most valuable and respected company.”
Throughout her career Fili-Krushel has been recognized for her achievements as a pioneering woman in management and programming. In 1999 she received the Women’s Project & Productions’ Women of Achievement Award. In 2000 the New York Women in Communications gave her their prestigious Matrix Award, honoring distinguished women in the field. As importantly, in the words of producer Sonny Fox, “she’s collaborative and supportive and focused, and everywhere she’s been, she has delivered the goods.”
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