Wick Rowland, president of Colorado Public Television for more than a decade, announced today that he will retire at the end of March 2013. He’ll continue as president and c.e.o. emeritus through September, during the leadership transition.
Rowland
“I have deep passion for public media,” he said in a statement, “and it’s been a pleasure to be able to work with this talented staff and dedicated board to foster and build the special CPT12 brand of independent public service television.”
Rowland has been president and c.e.o. of KBDI since 1999. He previously served on the KBDI Board of Directors and was its chair from 1992-98. He also was PBS’s first research director, and director of long-range planning. He holds a doctorate degree in communications, and from 1987-99 was dean of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at University of Colorado at Boulder.
Rowland also served as chair of the Affinity Group Coalition, the Beta Group and the Small Station Association. The Denver Post named him TV Person of the Year in 2010, the Association of Public Television Stations presented him with its National Advocacy Award in 2009, and the Colorado Broadcasters Association named him Broadcast Citizen of the Year in 2005.
Over the years, Rowland often wrote about leadership and funding of public media. In a two-part analysis in Current in 2010, he contended that public broadcasting’s failure to put time and money into formal research and planning has left it “adrift, mute and helpless” on the periphery of federal policymaking about media and spectrum, and suggested how the system could develop a more coherent, visionary agenda.