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The Godwin Delusion

Fresh reporting from inside West 66th Street on Disney’s promotion of Debra OConnell to oversee ABC News—and, of course, the layering of network president Kim Godwin.

kim godwin
On some level, Kim Godwin was part of a dispiriting trend in which a new generation of less handsomely paid executives were overhired into roles and forced to clean up some of the mess of their successors while ruthlessly managing costs. Photo: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
Dylan Byers
February 16, 2024

In January of last year, a rumor started coursing through ABC News headquarters on West 66th Street that Kim Godwin, the president of the division, was on the verge of losing her job. The alleged catalyst was her prolonged and indecisive mismanagement of the T.J. Holmes and Amy Robach affair, which had exacerbated a tabloid mini-scandal into an unabating headache for her bosses in Burbank, including Disney Entertainment co-chair Dana Walden.