Melinda Witmer is Time Warner Cable’s Executive Vice President and Chief Video and Content Officer. In this role, she oversees Time Warner Cable’s video and content products and strategy, on demand and online video distribution operations, and all content-related business—including acquisition and distribution arrangements for content across all platforms. She also has management oversight of the company’s 34 regional and local news, sports, traffic, weather and lifestyle channels, including flagship NY1, as well as two new regional sports networks featuring the Los Angeles Lakers, which debuted in October 2012.
Melinda and her team manage the company’s relationships with programmers and content providers across the entertainment industry—including movie studios, broadcast and cable television networks, and Internet and interactive providers—as well as sports leagues, teams and conferences. Her team also has oversight of the company’s consumer-facing video products, including video on demand, packaging, navigation, TV Everywhere and TWC TV sites and applications on all devices and platforms. Prior, she served as the company’s Chief Programming Officer from 2007. Previously, she was Senior Vice President of Programming and, before that, Vice President and Chief Counsel of Programming in the company’s Law Department.
Before joining Time Warner Cable, Ms. Witmer served as Vice President and Senior Counsel at the Home Box Office, Inc (HBO), where she worked from 1994 to 2001. Earlier in her career, she was an associate with the law firm of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, working in New York and Los Angeles.
Melinda’s many accolades are a testament to her influence in the industry, among them: 2011 USO Woman of the Year, 2009 Wonder Woman (Multichannel News), 2010 and 2011 “50 Most Influential People in Sports Business” (SportsBusiness Journal), 2011 “Game Changers: Women in Sports Business” (SportsBusiness Journal), 2010 and 2011 Most Powerful Women in Cable (CableFAX Magazine), 2012 “Women in the Game” (B&C/Multichannel News), and the 2013 Executive Leadership Award from the T. Howard Foundation for her commitment to diversity and inclusion in the industry and throughout her career.
Ms. Witmer is chairperson of the board of iNDemand, the leading provider of on-demand movies and event programming to the cable industry. She is a member of the New York and California Bar Associations, Women in Cable and Television (WICT), and Women in Film and Television. She earned her BS in accounting and finance from the University of Arizona in 1984, and her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1987.
