Awards

The Media School Distinguished Alumni Award - 2018

About Ed Spray

Spray, a native of Seymour, Indiana, came to IU to major in radio and television with a minor in journalism. He served as president of Sigma Delta Chi Journalism Society, VP of Kappa Delta Rho, and a member of the IU Student Foundation. During his student years, he worked for Indianapolis TV stations, filming campus activities. While completing his Master's degree in Communication at IU, he worked part-time as producer/director of IU Radio and Television Services. After graduating in 1969, he began working as film editor at WISH-TV in Indianapolis. He then moved on to WMAQ-TV in Chicago, as producer/director and laded five Chicago Emmy awards during his nine years there.

Spray then took a job as director of broadcasting at WBBM-TV, where he earned many coveted awards, including two Peabody's, several DuPont Columbia Awards, two national Emmys, and more than seventy-five local Emmys. In 1986, he moved to Los Angeles to another CBS-owned station, KCBS. It was there that he served as station manager and was quickly promoted to a CBS corporate VP position. Spray left Los Angles in 1992 to take a position as associate professor at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Communications.

E.W. Scripps Company hired him in 1994 to launch a home and garden cable TV network, now known as HGTV. Within two years, the company acquired the Food Network, and in 1999, the company started its third network - DIY - establishing Scripps Networks and naming Spray president.

Spray retired in 2005 and was bestowed the honor of distinguished professor of journalism and communications at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he had taught for four years. In 2004, he was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame. He was also honored in 2012 by the Chicago Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences with membership in the Chicago Silver Circle, for his outstanding contributions to Chicago television.