Fox Makes Two Executive Promotions

Nicole A. Bernard, who has served for the past six years as SVP, broadcast standards and practices for Fox Broadcasting Co., has been promoted to SVP, audience strategy for the Fox Group, reporting to Fox’s president of entertainment, Kevin Reilly.

Additionally, Elizabeth Casey, Fox Cable Networks’ SVP of business and legal affairs/broadcast standards and practices has added responsibilities to her current portfolio and has been promoted to EVP, standards and practices for the Fox Networks Group (FNG). Casey will continue to report to Rita Tuzon, FNG general counsel.

Audience strategy is a new department at The Fox Group that will identify programming, content and services that are compelling and relevant to increasingly broad audiences. The role will also expand upon the responsibilities of the company’s diversity initiatives and more closely align them with business imperatives and results.

Bernard, who previously headed up Fox’s broadcast standards efforts, will be assuming a broad new cross-divisional role. She will have immediate responsibility for providing strategic guidance to and collaborating with senior leaders across the company’s Los Angeles-based entertainment business units (filmed entertainment, broadcast television, cable television and digital media) to develop, conceive and execute system-wide strategies and initiatives to ensure that policies, content and operations reflect broadening audiences. She will also work with corporate diversity in New York and Washington, headed by Pamela Fisher, to extend News Corp.’s outreach to national media coalitions, local political leaders and other stakeholders through community engagement, procurement and educational initiatives.

Prior to joining Fox in 2005, Bernard was SVP, new business development for New York’s Apollo Theater Foundation, where she was responsible for all new business development opportunities. She was also an attorney of counsel at Davis, Shapiro & Lewit in New York, where she specialized in assisting musical artists, industry executives and recording companies to expand their brands into other entertainment platforms.

Bernard earned a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism/communications from Howard University and holds a Juris Doctor degree from Georgetown University Law Center.

Fox said Casey’s expanded role reflects FNG’s overall restructuring to consolidate functions across broadcast and cable platforms. In her previous position, she oversaw standards and practices and commercial clearances for Fox’s extensive portfolio of cable networks. She will now also be responsible in these areas for the Fox Broadcasting Co. Comprising both program content and paid advertising content review, FNG standards and practices will handle approval and compliance processes across all Fox’s domestic programming services. Casey will also work closely with the company’s Washington-based regulatory affairs office on TV ratings and content issues.

Casey has spent the last 11 years at Fox legal in increasingly responsible positions. She joined the company in 1999 as VP of litigation and was promoted to SVP in 2006. In 2007, she was again promoted to SVP, business and legal affairs/standards and practices for Fox Cable Networks.

Casey earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Claremont McKenna College and holds a Juris Doctor degree from George Washington University Law School.