Ethel Winant's career as a casting director, producer, program developer. and network executives spanned the history of television. and she was among the most important and influential women ever to have worked in the television industry.

Winant's television work began after she watched the anthology program Studio One. She was struck by the quality of the show, wrote the producers to inquire about the production, and was subsequently invited to watch a rehearsal of the program. She shrewdly parlayed that meeting into a job running errands for the crew. Not long thereafter, when one actor failed to appear for a particular episode, Winant quickly managed to track down a replacement for him, thus launching her career as a casting director.

Winant subsequently went to work for Talent Associates in 1953, casting episodes of such anthology programs as Armstrong Circle Theater and Philco Playhouse, and she continued to distinguish herself within the anthology genre while employed as a casting director at CBS. For Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone, Winant cast such beloved episodes as "Eye of the Beholder" and "Long Distance Call," and she both cast and helped produce episodes of General Electric Theater and Playhouse 90, working alongside some of the most important creative figures in early television, including John Frankenheimer, John Houseman, Arthur Penn. George Roy Hill, and Sidney Lumet.

For Playhouse 90, Winant developed a casting strategy that added to the show's reputation as one of  the most prominent and prestigious programs on television. Throughout its run, Playhouse 90 strove for all of the markers of high culture available in television. Winant recalled of the show, "Everything we had learned the previous ten years came with  that show. It was the best of Philco /TV Playhouse] and U.S. Steel, the best writers and directors. It all came together and produced this magical moment. That was Playhouse 90" (Kisseloff, p. 230). The producers had hoped to cast big-name Hollywood stars to underscore the show's prestige, but the highest tier of film stars refused to do television, and only fading and lesser-known stars would agree to appear. As a result, Winant utilized a strategy she called "stunt casting," or off-casting the star and then publicizing that performance as prestigious and artistic because of its uniqueness and creativity, no matter the status of the featured actor. Examples of stunt casting on Playhouse 90 included teen idol Tab Hunter playing a Soviet spy, comedian Ed Wynn portraying an embattled boxing trainer, and affable actor Mickey Rooney depicting an egomaniacal, destructive, and crass television comedian, a role for which he received an Emmy nomination. This successful strategy illustrated that Winant's talents lay not just in choosing actors, but also  in  matching them with perceptive programming decisions.

These combined abilities helped Winant ascend through the ranks at CBS, and in 1973 she became the first female network executive in the television industry after a promotion to a vice presidency position, which gave her the power to cast all network pilots, se­ries, and specials, as well as responsibilities for pro­gram development. Winant said of this advancement:

I'm not really sure why they made me vice president. I guess someone in the corporate world decided they wanted a woman, which probably had to do with the Women's Movement. It never occurred to me that I'd be a vice president. I wasn't interested in climbing the corporate ladder. I just wanted to make shows. (Gregory, p. 11)

She did precisely that through the 1970s. She cast the principal actors for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, left CBS in 1975, and went on to produce the 1977 PBS miniseries The Best of Families for the Children’s Television Workshop. She subsequently moved to NBC in 1978 as a vice president of talent and later a senior vice president of miniseries and novels, developing such notable miniseries as Shogun, Murder in Texas, and Little Gloria… Happy at Last.

Winant’s career was briefly derailed after she went blind from macular degeneration in the mid-1980s, but she persevered in learning Braille, mastering it so thoroughly that she subsequently taught it to others. She then returned to a steady career of producing and consulting, working on such projects as World War II: When Lions Roared and Fail Safe, and reteaming with John Frankenheimer on the Emmy-nominated Andersonville and George Wallace, as well as the 1998 feature film, Ronin.

Known for her tenaciousness, liberal spirit, and high energy, Win At let her creative passions guide her entire career. She died December 2, 2003.