Jeff Bader was named President, Program Planning Strategy, NBCUniversal Entertainment in 2020. Bader is responsible for overseeing long- and short-term program planning and strategy for NBCU’s Entertainment Television portfolio, including the scheduling departments for NBC, Bravo, E!, Oxygen True Crime, SYFY, and USA Network.
Bader also supervises the windowing strategy for primetime and late-night programming across all NBCU platforms as well as interfacing with NBC News and NBC Sports. Further, he works closely with the East Coast’s network division to provide coordination with sales, affiliate, and distribution areas.
Most recently, Bader served as President, Program Planning, Strategy, and Research for NBC Entertainment and Chief Research Officer for NBCU, which included oversight across NBCUniversal’s television portfolio and spearheading a new corporate research and strategy group.
In his previous capacity, Bader’s research responsibilities expanded from overseeing the network’s West Coast Program Research Department to include oversight of the East Coast research functions for all entertainment programming at NBC as well as the Universal Television and Alternative studios.
Prior to joining NBC, Bader spent more than 20 years at ABC where he held numerous leadership roles. Most recently, he was Executive Vice President, Planning, Scheduling, and Distribution, ABC Entertainment Group. In this position, he served as ABC Entertainment’s senior executive in charge of primetime and late-night program planning and scheduling. Beyond these network-specific duties, he was responsible for windowing strategies for ABC Entertainment Group programs across all platforms, both domestic and international.
Bader joined ABC in 1988 as Supervisor, Audience Analysis. He became Manager, Audience and Program Research, in 1989; Manager, Program Planning and Scheduling, in 1991; Director in 1992; Executive Director in 1994; Vice President, Current Series Programming, in 1995; Vice President, Program Planning and Scheduling, in 1996; Senior Vice President, Program Planning and Scheduling, in 1998 and Executive Vice President ABC Entertainment in 2000.
Prior to joining ABC, Bader was a research manager at the MTM Distribution Group.
His first professional job was as a research analyst for NBC Entertainment.
Bader received a master’s degree with distinction from the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California. He graduated with honors from Williams College in Massachusetts.
Raised in Wayland, Mass., he now resides in Los Angeles.
