Monday at NAB Show 2026 started and ended with two powerful sessions oriented toward the people running and building broadcast businesses: the Alliance for Women in Media’s AWM Breakfast and a Radio Ink fireside chat with Zach Sang, hosted by the BEA.
The AWM Breakfast drew industry leaders for a conversation on navigating uncertainty, with Graham Media Group President and CEO Catherine Badalamente, Amazon Head of Business Affairs for Creator Services Jordan Chatfield, and NewsBalancer President Lee Harris joining moderator and Skyview’s Sarah Foss for a panel titled “Riding the Rollercoaster: Leading Through Tumultuous Times.”
Badalamente, whose stations are in the middle of a broad newsroom technology overhaul, framed AI adoption as the clearest path to competitive differentiation in local news.
“People that lean into AI are going to be the winners,” she said, describing a strategic shift to reduce internal workflow friction so more resources can be directed toward field reporting and investigations. Harris offered a concrete illustration, describing a NewsBalancer tool that strips profanity from podcast-to-broadcast edits in 40 seconds rather than the four hours the task previously required.
Chatfield, whose work sits at the intersection of traditional and emerging distribution, said the deal-making landscape at Amazon has shifted toward platform-agnostic partnerships, with increasing competition from Netflix, Tubi, and other players accelerating the pace of change.
On leading teams through prolonged uncertainty, all three converged on transparency over false optimism. “There has to be a plan,” Badalamente said, describing a data-driven approach to keeping her organization focused on solvable problems rather than ambient anxiety. Harris said he has increasingly drawn on ideas from earlier in the org chart. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started taking more direction from levels 2 and 3 down,” he said, “because I’m finding that’s where a lot of the good ideas are.”
The session closed with a speed round asking each panelist what they wished industry leaders would do more of. Harris was direct: “I’ve been dealing with a few companies, not going to name names, where the decision makers seem to have their eyes on the door most of the time. And if that’s you, maybe you could replace yourself with somebody who’s going to be there for a while.”
Late in the afternoon, Radio Ink‘s fireside chat with Zach Sang drew a strong turnout of college students eyeing careers in broadcasting alongside executives from across the industry.
Before the session began, Broadcasters Foundation of America President Tim McCarthy addressed the room on the Foundation’s work as the only charity exclusively dedicated to providing financial assistance to radio and television broadcasters facing acute need due to critical illness, accident, or disaster.
Sang, who started his first radio station at 14 and spent a decade syndicated through Westwood One with The Zach Sang Show, covered the business of radio, on-air craft, breaking into the industry, and the skills most likely to matter for the next generation of talent in an AI-accelerated industry. The session reflected a recurring theme of the morning: that the broadcast industry’s path forward runs directly through the people willing to learn it, build it, and stay.
