Bryan McGruder, Board Member

NATAS Foundation

An experienced news executive with an extensive background in every facet of multi-platform content generation, curation and aggregation.

Bryan is currently the News Director for WZTV-TV in Nashville, TN. A position he has held since 2013.
During his time the station won its first Murrow Award. He expanded morning news by 1 hour/daily, evening news 1 hour/daily, added weekly sports and political shows. These news expansion occurred while reducing the headcount of the smallest newsroom in the market. As such multiple newscasts have achieved the highest ratings in the station’s history.

From 2002 until 2012 Bryan was Vice President of the News division at WDAF-TV in Kansas City, MO. Bryan was responsible for 59.5 hours of local news/week with a full-time staff of 94. He expanded news footprint to 4:30 – 5:00 a.m., 9:00 – 10:00 a.m. and 10:30 – 11:00 p.m. The station achieved 4-hour morning news win in HH and demo(A25-54) for the first time. The station won in the A25-54 demo in multiple morning and evening newscasts for the first time. Bryan also created the award-winning Problem Solvers investigative unit.

Bryan also was the Vice President of News for WHBQ-TV in Memphis, TN from 2000-2002.
From 1999-2000 he was News Director for WJCL/WTGS-TV Savannah, GA. At WHNT –TV in Huntsville, AL Bryan held many positions, Producer, Anchor, Report and Executive Producer all over a span of 10 years.

Bryan has also worked at WAPT-TV in Jackson, MS and WTOK-TV Meridian, MS.

He graduated from The University of Missouri-Columbia with a Bachelor of Journalism