Channing Dungey
Channing Dungey is chairman of Warner Bros. Television Group. She was previously vice president of original series at Netflix. In her role there, Dungey partnered with vice president of original series Cindy Holland in setting strategic direction. She also oversaw a large portion of Netflix's slate, which included projects that came from the company's overall deals with prolific, high-profile producers.
Prior to joining Netflix, Dungey served as the president of ABC Entertainment. In this role she had oversight of all development, programming, marketing and scheduling operations for ABC primetime and late-night. During her tenure at ABC, Dungey created a collaborative environment that supported visionary storytelling and became a hub for talented and provocative producers to realize their vision. With this in mind, she shepherded a wide variety of successful programming such as The Good Doctor, Roseanne and The Connors, as well as the return of American Idol. Additionally, she helped reinvigorate long-running series such as Grey's Anatomy, on which she worked from its first season and which has broken television records as the longest-running primetime medical drama.
Dungey previously was executive vice president, Drama Development, Movies & Miniseries, ABC Entertainment Group. In this role, she oversaw the development and production of all drama pilots, movies and miniseries, and the launch of new series for ABC Entertainment. Series she developed and launched include Scandal, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., How to Get Away With Murder, American Crime and Once Upon a Time. Prior to that, she was senior vice president, drama development for ABC Entertainment Group.
Earlier, Dungey was vice president, drama development, ABC Studios. In that role she was responsible for the development and acquisition of drama programming for the studio. Her slate of programming included the award winning and critically acclaimed ABC show Private Practice, CBS’s long-running drama Criminal Minds, the CW’s Reaper and Lifetime’s highest-rated series, Army Wives. Dungey joined ABC Studios in the summer of 2004.
Dungey began her successful career in entertainment as a development assistant for Davis Entertainment at 20th Century Fox. She then became story editor at Steamroller Prods., Steven Segal's Warner Bros.-based company. Following that, she joined Warner Bros. as a production executive, where she helped develop and supervise a diverse range of commercially successful, critically acclaimed films, including Bridges of Madison County, Heat, The Matrix, Twister, Rosewood, Space Jam and Practical Magic.
In the spring of 1998, Dungey became senior vice president at Material, a film production company with a first look deal at Warner Bros. After being named president in 2001, Dungey co-produced Queen of the Damned, adapted from the best-selling novel by Anne Rice, and Showtime, starring Robert De Niro, Eddie Murphy and Rene Russo; and The Big Bounce, based on an Elmore Leonard novel.
In January 2003, Dungey partnered with Pamela Post, a producer formerly with Team Todd, and formed Dexterity Pictures. The production partnership was focused on making both studio and independent films, as well as developing television series. In the summer of 2004, a TV pitch meeting Dungey took with an ABC executive resulted in an offer to join the drama team at ABC Studios, then known as Touchstone Television.
Dungey, who graduated magna cum laude from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, is a founding member of the Step Up Women’s Network, a national non-profit membership organization dedicated to strengthening community resources for women and girls. She is a Los Angeles member of BAFTA and serves on the Board of Governors of the Motion Picture Television Fund. Dungey also sits on the board of Children's Institute, a non-profit agency working to transform the lives of children exposed to adversity and poverty in Los Angeles, and teaches a graduate level course on Developing the Drama Pilot at UCLA TFT.