Jillian O’Brien, assistant news director at Hearst Television’s KSBW Monterey-Salinas, Calif., has been named executive producer of Hearst’s weekly syndicated news show, Matter of Fact With Soledad O’Brien.
O’Brien, who is no relation to the show’s host and producer, succeeds Rita Aleman. She began her career as a desk assistant at CNN, and then moved to KSBW for her first tour. She was then executive producer at KRON San Francisco, before moving back to CNN as a senior producer with CNN International and later with Headline News. In 2012, she returned to KSBW as assistant news director.
“Jillian is the ideal successor to build upon the very solid foundation developed by Soledad, Rita and the Matter of Fact team,” said Emerson Coleman, senior vice president, programming at Hearst Television, who is the show’s executive in charge of production.
Related: Emerson Coleman Upped to SVP of Programming at Hearst Television
Tolleah Price also joins the staff as the program’s first supervising producer. She launched her career as a producer at WJRT in Flint, Mich., later moving to WPTY Memphis and then became a writer/producer at Fox’s WTTG Washington, D.C. She also served as a digital journalist for CBS News, and then joined the team at NBC in Washington where she worked on the investigative unit.
"I'm thrilled that Jillian and Tolleah are so well positioned to build on our great success of the past year," said Soledad O’Brien, Matter of Fact host and producer.“They are savvy and highly experienced, full of ideas and have impressive backgrounds in journalism.
Matter of Fact, which is produced by Hearst Television and distributed by Sony Pictures Television, airs on TV stations covering approximately 85% of the United States.
