The first African-American president of a major TV network in the United States, Channing Dungey, made the call Tuesday to cancel the wildly popular reboot of "Roseanne," after its star, Roseanne Barr tweeted a racist joke about former Obama administration official Valerie Jarrett.
Who is Channing Dungey and how did she rise through the ranks of television executives to become the network's first black president of ABC Entertainment Group?
Dungey became the first African-American president of a major TV network on Feb. 17, 2016, when she took over for the departing Paul Lee, according to ABC.
Before taking over as president of ABC Entertainment Group, Dungey was ABC's executive vice president for drama development, movies & miniseries at ABC Entertainment Group and served as senior vice president of drama development since June of 2009, Bloomberg reported.
She started her career as a development assistant for Davis Entertainment at 20th Century Fox, then worked as a story editor for Steamroller Productions and as a production executive at Warner Bros.
By 2004, when she met with network officials to pitch a program to Touchstone Television, now ABC Studios, they hired her and she's been with ABC ever since, Variety reported.
She’s behind such TV shows as “Scandal,” “How to Get Away with Murder,” “American Crime,” “Nashville” and “Quantico,” to name a few.
Dungey graduated magna cum laude from UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television.
She was born in Sacramento, California, on March 14, 1969, and is 49 years old.
She has two children, according to her biography.
Dungey is also a founding member and current board member of Step Up, a national non-profit membership organization dedicated to helping girls from under-resourced communities fulfill their potential.
Credit: Earl Gibson III
Credit: Earl Gibson III
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