Scott Wilder Promoted to EVP. Production/Operations for Fox

FOX News Media has promoted Scott Wilder to Executive Vice President of Production and Operations, announced CEO Suzanne Scott. In this capacity, Wilder will oversee all technical, field and production operations of FOX News Media’s special events and breaking news coverage, including the 2024 presidential election.

In making the announcement, Ms. Scott said, “For the past 27 years, Scott has been an integral part of the FOX News Media family. His extraordinary work has helped transform our field operations and events coverage, ensuring our platforms continue to deliver best in class coverage from around the world.”

Wilder added, “I am truly honored and humbled to take on this role after developing an established Field Engineering team and look forward to enhancing our production for this year’s election coverage and beyond.”

Scott Wilder

A FOX News Channel (FNC) original, Wilder joined the network at its inception in 1996 as a field photographer. Since then, he has helped innovate and enhance all aspects of FNC’s breaking news and events programming, including all the network’s election coverage over nearly three decades. In his previous role as senior vice president of field production and operations, Wilder oversaw the first two Republican presidential primary debates of the 2024 cycle. 

The first, co-moderated by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum in Milwaukee last August, delivered 13 million viewers and was the highest-rated non-sports telecast in cable for the year. In September, he oversaw the production surrounding FOX Business Network’s debate moderated by Dana Perino and Stuart Varney in Simi Valley, California, which drew nearly 10 million viewers. Additionally, in November 2023, he spearheaded Sean Hannity’s The Great Red vs. Blue State Debate: Newsom vs. DeSantis in Alpharetta, Georgia which pulled in more than 5 million viewers making it not only the highest-rated program of the night, but also out-rating the third non-Fox primary debate which took place the following week.

 

In 2022, Wilder led the network’s midterm election coverage, including several town halls and election night special programming, which was the most watched in all of television. Throughout his tenure with the network, he has overseen the production and operations for all major political events, including international presidential diplomacy trips and numerous G8 summits. He has also helped create the signature look for FOX Nation’s annual Patriot Awards, which just held its fifth celebration at The Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville. Notably he oversaw the production of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral in 2022 as well as President Biden’s inauguration in 2021 along with special live coverage of his first joint address to congress.

Wilder also helped engineer more than 40 remote studios across the country as the pandemic mandated a global shutdown in 2020, ensuring FOX News Media platforms continued to deliver news and information to millions of viewers nationwide. Throughout the pandemic, Wilder led all special events coverage, from the presidential campaign trail and the conventions to numerous COVID-19 related town halls, including with former President Donald Trump and his task force, to the social justice protests following the death of George Floyd and the memorial services honoring civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, all while maintaining social distancing and health safety protocols. As a result, FOX News Channel’s breaking news coverage helped deliver the highest-rated year in television history, outpacing broadcast networks for the first time in history during the third quarter of that year.

In addition to overseeing all of FOX News Media events coverage, Wilder has also helped innovate and advance the network’s technical and field operations units. In 2019, he was elevated to vice president of field operations where he transformed the production team, implementing a collaborative field production unit that created news-specific environments to broadcast around the world. From 2017-2019, he served as director of field and aerial operations where he helped integrate new technologies into network coverage, including innovative drone footage that was used across breaking news and live events coverage. Previously, he served as ENG field operations supervisor from 2007-2017 and prior to that was the field photographer and coordinator of ENG operations.