Norby Williamson

Norby Williamson

Executive Editor & Head of Event and Studio Production

In nearly four decades of work at ESPN, Norby Williamson has been involved in multiple aspects of the content and business areas of the company, with stints in programming, production and news among the many areas he has touched.

Williamson’s current role as Executive Editor and Head of Event and Studio Production was expanded in June of 2023 to include oversight of all of ESPN’s football content, including NFL, College Football, XFL, and SEC Network. He continues oversight of production of sports including baseball (MLB, CWS, LLWS), NHL, UFC, boxing, tennis and golf.

Williamson’s responsibilities also include oversight of SportsCenter, E60, ESPN Radio, the ESPN Features Unit, the Investigative Journalism Unit, newsgathering, and multimedia sponsorship integration. He has been in his current position since September of 2017.

Williamson joined ESPN in 1985 as an employee in the company’s mailroom and quickly rose through the ranks. He worked for two years as a production assistant then served as an associate producer (1987-89), highlights supervisor (1989), producer (1990-93), coordinating producer (1993-94), senior coordinating producer for SportsCenter (1998-99), assistant managing editor and news director (1999-2000) and vice president and assistant managing editor (2000-02).

From September 2002 until October 2005, Williamson served as senior vice president and managing editor at ESPN, responsible for the day-to-day content of all news and information programming on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNEWS.  He provided leadership and editorial direction for the largest television sports newsgathering operation in the U.S. From 2005-2007, he was executive vice president, studio and remote production, overseeing all domestic productions.

In 2007, he became executive vice president, production. In that role, he was responsible for all ESPN and ABC game, event and studio production work for domestic and international television and radio networks.

Williamson began a new role as executive vice president, programming & acquisitions in January 2012, overseeing all rights negotiations and managing relationships with rights holders for all ESPN entities.

In 2014, he was named executive vice president, production, program scheduling and development, splitting responsibilities between management of the many production areas and oversight of programming functions such as all rights negotiations, managing relationships with rights holders and the scheduling of ESPN’s networks.

Prior to assuming management responsibilities in 1999, Williamson’s production work on select ESPN studio programs received a total of five awards, including Sports Emmy Awards for SportsCenter (1990) and NFL GameDay (1988) and three CableACE Awards for SportsCenter (1990, ’91) and NFL GameDay (1989).

Williamson earned a bachelor’s degree in corporate/video communications from Southern Connecticut State University.  He is a member of the board of directors of the V Foundation.

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