Stephen Battaglio is currently a staff writer for The Los Angeles Times, covering media and television. He specializes in the television news business and trends in the changing media landscape. He appears regularly on television as a commentator on the TV business. He is also a television historian who has written three books.
Before joining the Times, Battaglio served as business editor for TV Guide Magazine, where he was the publication’s expert on industry trends. He has also written about television and radio for The New York Times, Fortune, the New York Daily News, The Hollywood Reporter and Adweek.
Battaglio is the author David Susskind: A Televised Life (St. Martin's Press), the 2010 biography of the influential talk show host and TV producer, which received a starred review in Publishers Weekly. He also wrote From Yesterday to Today (Running Press), a history of the first 60 years of NBC's “Today” show and Election Night: A Television History, 1948-2012, an e-book on TV's coverage of presidential elections. Election Night hit No. 1 on the iTunes list of best selling political and current affairs e-books in the fall of 2012.
Battaglio has appeared as a media industry commentator on “CBS Sunday Morning,” “NBC Nightly News,” CNBC’s “Power Lunch” and “Squawk Box,” “Entertainment Tonight,” NPR's “Morning Edition,” NBC's “Today,” ABC's “Good Morning America,” MSNBC's “Hardball with Chris Matthews” and “Morning Joe,” CNN, Scripps News, Fox News and “Inside Edition.” He was also a contributor for CNBC and hosted a daily advertising news program on New York radio station WNCN.
He was the featured television historian in “Pioneers of Thirteen,” a 2012-13 TV documentary series celebrating the 50th anniversary of WNET. His lectures and panel appearances include the Mid-Manhattan Library, the Writers Guild of America West, the Princeton Club, the Virginia Festival of the Book, the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design at Drexel University, New York University, the Paley Center for Media, the New York Television Festival, Norwalk Community College and the Westport Public Library.
You can follow him on X at @SteveBattaglio.