TV news station in SWFL promotes official to president, GM

Longtime Southwest Florida TV news director and station manager Darrel Lieze-Adams has been promoted to president and general manager of a pair of area stations, WBBH-TV and WZVN-TV, that provide news for NBC and ABC in Fort Myers and Naples. 

The promotion was announced by Hearst Television, which acquired WBBH in 2023 and is the market’s NBC-affiliated television station. WBBH provides programming services to WZVN, according to a statement, which is the area’s ABC affiliate. 

Courtesy Image

“Darrel knows Southwest Florida intimately and has been instrumental in helping build WBBH and WZVN into the respected brands they are today,” Hearst Television president Michael J. Hayes says in the release. “His leadership, especially in times of crisis as demonstrated through severe weather events in recent years, distinguishes him as an invested executive serving the Gulf Coast and our teams in Southwest Florida.”

Lieze-Adams came to the station as news director in 1997 and added the title vice president, news, digital, marketing and production in 2019. Among other accomplishments during his time supervising the stations’ news operations, he “expanded the number of newscasts and oversaw the recreation of the WZVN/ABC7 studio and set with multiple production innovations,” the release states. He was promoted to vice president and station manager in 2021.

Lieze-Adams joined then-WBBH owner Waterman Broadcasting in 1997 from Hubbard Broadcasting’s KSTP-TV, the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis-St. Paul, where he held a number of positions before ultimately becoming senior executive producer of broadcasts.

Hearst Television owns and/or operates 35 television and two radio stations serving 27 media markets across 39 states reaching over 24 million U.S. television households.