Veteran pubcasting exec Mark Vogelzang has been appointed president and c.e.o. of the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, operator of statewide public television and radio networks with a budget of about $10 million. He succeeds Jim Dowe, MPBN president since 2006, who is retiring next month.
The appointment, announced Nov. 29, comes as Vogelzang completes an interim appointment as g.m. of WBFO-FM, the university-owned NPR News station in Buffalo that’s being sold to WNED, a community-licensed pubcasting operation that serves radio and TV audiences in Buffalo and Canada. The proposed $4 million sale has gained approval from New York state policy makers — including Attorney General Eric Schneiderman — and is now pending before the FCC.
When Vogelzang took over management of WBFO two years ago, his assignment was to lead the station and its university licensee through strategic planning. Merger talks with WNED later produced the sales agreement that was announced this summer.
MPBN Board Chair Henry “Hank” Schmelzer pointed to Vogelzang’s experience an earlier job — as president of Vermont Public Radio — in describing his qualifications as MPBN president. “Mark’s long tenure as the leader of a statewide public media network in northern New England with a roughly equal number of stations, individual donors and corporate supporters, combined with his deep knowledge of non-profit fundraising, makes him the ideal candidate to lead MPBN into the future.”
As president of VPR from 1993 to 2006, Vogelzang led the public radio network through a $10 million endowment campaign and a signal expansion project that split NPR News and classical music programming on two separate radio networks. Vogelzang served on the NPR Board of Directors for seven years and was interim executive director of the NPR Foundation in 2009.