Bill Fine is the President and General Manager of WCVB-TV/DT Channel 5 and TheBostonChannel.com. A Boston native and WCVB veteran, Fine returned to the station in August 2005 after serving seven years as President and General Manager of WBAL-TV, Baltimore's dominant market leading news station. Both WCVB and WBAL are owned and operated by Hearst-Argyle Television.
Under Fine’s leadership, WCVB has won a national Edward R. Murrow Award for “Spot News Coverage” and recognized as “Station of the Year” for three of the last four years by the Associated Press. WCVB has also been lauded with a third-place award in the prestigious National Headliner Award competition for “Best Newscast” and honored, in 2006, with the prestigious national Gabriel Award as “Television Station of the Year.” In 2007, the station was inducted into the Boston Business Hall of Fame.
WCVB, the market’s ratings leader, became the first television station in Boston to broadcast its newscasts in high definition on May 14, 2007. In October 2006, WCVB’s acclaimed nightly newsmagazine, Chronicle, began broadcasting in HD. The station’s website, TheBostonChannel.com has always led every other web site of Boston’s television stations, sometimes combined, in unique visitors and page views.
During his tenure at WBAL, the station received a 2004 Peabody for its “Chesapeake Bay Pollution Investigation” and a third place finish as the “Nation’s Best Newscast” in the National Headliner Awards competition. Under Fine’s leadership, WBAL consistently boasted the market’s top rated newscast at 5, 6 and 11 PM, in addition to weekend mornings and evenings. In 2001, MediaWeek magazine named WBAL-TV one of America’s top “Ten Stations That Do It Right.” Baltimore Magazine named Fine the city’s “Best CEO” in 2000 and one its “50 Most Powerful Leaders” in 2003. In 2004, he was presented with the American Advertising Federation’s “Silver Medal Award,” in recognition of his “Outstanding Contributions to Advertising.” Baltimore Smart CEO Magazine honored Fine in 2005 as one of the region’s “25 Leaders We Admire.”
In the Boston community, Fine serves on the boards of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, the United Way of Massachusetts Bay, and on the Advisory Committee for the Friends of Shattuck Shelter. He also serves as a member of the Boston Medical Center Leadership Council, Ad Council / Boston Leadership Committee and is a Coleen-Chairperson of the Catholic Schools Foundation/Inner City Scholarship Fund.
In the world of broadcasting and media, Fine currently serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of Governor’s of the ABC Television Network Affiliates Association and is Chairman of the Entertainment Committee. Fine is also the immediate past Chairman of the Massachusetts Broadcasting Association. Previously he has served as Chairman of the Television Bureau of Advertising’s Sales Advisory Committee and a three-year term on TVB’s Board of Directors. Fine has also served as Chairman of the ABC Television Sales Advisory Committee, First Vice President of the New England Broadcasting Association of Greater Boston and member of The Board of Directors of the Advertising Club of Greater Boston.
While in Baltimore, Fine was active in numerous civic and philanthropic organizations serving on the boards of the Greater Baltimore Committee; Cystic Fibrosis Foundation; Signal 13; Baltimore Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Board of Visitors for Johns Hopkins Medicine and the R.Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center. Fine spent four years working on the Chesapeake Region 2012 Olympic Coalition Board of Directors in an attempt to bring the 2012 Games to the Baltimore/Washington DC area.
A Summa Cum Laude graduate from Boston University’s College of Communication, Fine graduated with a BS degree in Broadcasting and Film. He began his career as Sports Director of WPTZ-TV (1977-1979), today a Hearst-Argyle station, in the Burlington, VT/Plattsburgh, NY, market, before joining the station’s sales department as an account executive. After serving as an account executive at TeleRep, Inc. in New York (1980-81), he became an account executive, National, and Local Sales Manager for WCVB-TV (1982-1993), and subsequently, General Sales Manager of WBAL-TV (1993-1996) before returning to WCVB-TV (1996-1998) as Vice President and General Sales Manager.
Fine resides in Wellesley, Massachusetts with his wife, Gail, and has three children.
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