Embattled ABC News president Kim Godwinis reportedly in hot water with Disney's corporate leadership as staffers become increasingly "frustrated" with her continued mismanagement, RadarOnline.com has learned.
Godwin was effectively demoted in February when Disney tapped veteran executive Debra OConnell for a newly created position that oversees ABC News after its flagship program Good Morning America dipped perilously close to falling behind CBS This Morning in ratings.
Since her arrival, according people familiar with the matter, OConnell has been astounded by Godwin's lack of leadership — laying off veteran staffers, failing to fill the network's vacant head of talent position for over a year, losing Washington bureau chief Jonathan Greenberger to Politico, reneging on a formal offer to hire CNN PR veteran Lauren Pratapas as head of communications, and attempting to promote a member of her inner circle to executive vice president without the required CEO sign-off.
Godwin has also faced backlash for scandals under her tenure including former GMA3 co-hosts Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes’s secret love affair and Whoopi Goldberg’s short suspension from The View, and OConnell is now said to be conducting a formal leadership review that could shake up the executive suite.
“She has to take swift moves,” a person familiar with the inner workings of ABC News told CNN of OConnell. “People there are restless. They are extremely frustrated.”
But when Godwin was appointed ABC News president in 2021, she became the first Black woman to lead a major American broadcast news division, and sources with knowledge of Disney leadership's suggested that they are worried about the optics of firing her. "Kim's success is our success," Disney CEO Bob Iger reportedly told top ABC News talent when Godwin first came under scrutiny in early 2023.
"Race in the workplace is so nuanced that it can be easily weaponized by all sides and bad actors of any race,” a Black ABC News veteran told Puck. "Disney fell into the trap of the soft bigotry of low expectations and appointed someone everyone knows is unqualified to do the job… Now [they] are worried that firing the first Black woman would be an act of racism, when she is simply bad at her job."
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Godwin did sign a three-year contract extension when OConnell was promoted, but that doesn't necessarily mean that her job is safe.
“This is the beginning of the transition,” one source close to the network told the New York Post at the time. “Everyone gets renewed and then dumped. It’s the ABC News and Disney way.”
“It’s called the cost of doing business,” a former Disney executive added. “Renew her. Guarantee three years of money and then let her de-select and decide it’s time to go write her leadership book, which she is planning.”