System/Policy
Board of Peoria’s WTVP to cut $1.5 million from budget
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The public TV station is reeling from the unexplained death of former CEO Lesley Matuszak and disclosures of “questionable, unauthorized or improper” expenditures.
Programs/Content
WTVP plans launch of multicast channel for at-home learning
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The public TV station and local school system forged a partnership to improve at-home learning for students with limited internet access.
System/Policy
Illinois stations end dual-CEO arrangement
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Moss Bresnahan has led both WTVP-TV and Illinois Public Media since 2014.
Programs/Content
Peoria station marks debut of PBS Kids channel with party
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Local childhood education experts, elected officials and even a skunk joined children at a special event recorded for later broadcast.
Obituaries
Stacey Tomczyk, WTVP program director, dies at 45
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“Stacey’s love of public broadcasting, her creativity, her kindness and her sense of humor made her a joy to work with.”
System/Policy
In Illinois, WTVP takes over TV broadcast operations for WQPT
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The broadcast signal for WQPT-TV in Moline, Ill., is now originating from WTVP-TV in Peoria, about 90 miles to the southeast. WQPT previously outsourced its master control operations to Westar Master Control Services in Cedar Hill, Texas. The station’s signal now travels across fiber from WTVP to WQPT’s transmitter in Orion, Ill. The change “provides financial savings for WQPT, a new source of revenue for WTVP, valuable technological advances for both stations and an invaluable chance for the sister stations to work together,” said WTVP President Chet Tomczyk in an Aug. 8 announcement.
People
Bresnahan to lead two Central Illinois TV stations as dual president
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Moss Bresnahan will become the public television system’s first dual president when he takes over in September at WTVP-TV in Peoria, Ill., and WILL-TV, 90 miles to the east in Urbana-Champaign. He succeeds interim dual General Manager Chet Tomczyk, who delayed his retirement from WTVP to temporarily lead the two stations. Tomczyk has been in charge of WTVP, a community licensee, and WILL, part of the College of Media at the University of Illinois, since September 2013. The unique agreement was designed to foster more collaboration on content between the stations and to save on salary costs. “We have two great stations here, and the staff at each is so dedicated and has such a great legacy,” Bresnahan said in an announcement Friday.
People
WILL, WTVP start ‘dating’ by sharing general manager
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The arrangement grew out of a neighborly collaborative relationship between the stations as well as a desire to save personnel costs.
People
Philip Weinberg dies at 86; brought pubcasting to central Illinois
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Philip Weinberg, “the man responsible for bringing public broadcasting to central Illinois,” according to the Peoria Journal Star, died Thursday (Feb. 2) in Peoria, Ill. He was 86. “Not only did he start public radio on the Bradley [University] campus,” said Chet Tomczyk, g.m. of WTVP-TV, “but when he came across Sesame Street, produced by the Children’s Television Workshop, he decided that here was a show that people in this community needed to be exposed to.” So Weinberg arranged for the program to play on another local channel for six months before it could be carried on the pubTV station that Weinberg put on the air in June 1971, Tomczyk said.