People

Brisk pace of turnover among pubmedia’s top execs in 2013

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A new wind of change is blowing through public media organizations of all shapes and sizes, sweeping through executive offices as top managers opt to move on to their next jobs or retire. More than 50 public media outlets — from NPR to WKYU in Bowling Green, Ky. — are searching for a new chief executive or general manager or have completed such a search within the last ten months. Specialists in executive recruitment and outplacements say turnover in pubcasting’s top management jobs has accelerated sharply this year. According to Current’s analysis, 30 organizations went through similar changes during 2012.

People

Iowa Public Radio names new executive director

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Myrna Johnson, a former government relations associate for NPR who now directs a Boston nonprofit, has been named the next executive director of Iowa Public Radio. The Iowa Public Radio Board of Directors  announced Johnson’s appointment Nov. 5,  ending a  seven-month nationwide search for successor to Mary Grace Herrington, who was dismissed in February.  Herrington contested the firing and both parties agreed to a $197,000 settlement in May. Johnson departs the Boston Schoolyard Initiative, a public-private partnership that oversees renovation of  schoolyards in Boston’s urban neighborhoods, where she has worked as executive director since 2009.

People

Pat Fitzgerald, longtime WBGU g.m., dies at 69

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Pat Fitzgerald, g.m. of WBGU-TV in Bowling Green, Ohio, for more than two decades, died Oct. 30 of a stroke in his home. He was 69. Fitzgerald was known among colleagues as a strong advocate for educational television and community service. “He was in essence my mentor, my education,” said Tony Short, g.m. of production, engineering and educational services at WBGU and one of two managers who took over Fitzgerald’s duties at the station after his 2010 retirement.

People

Ray Suarez lands at AJA’s D.C.-based newsmag Inside Story

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Veteran public broadcasting newsman Ray Suarez, who resigned from PBS NewsHour Oct. 25 after nearly 15 years, will host Inside Story on satellite news channel Al Jazeera America starting Nov. 11. The program, an interview-driven newsmag airing at 5 p.m. Eastern time weekdays, covers the major stories of the week from AJA’s Washington, D.C., bureau. Suarez interviewed Al Jazeera EP Bob Wheelock in January, when the Qatar-based Al Jazeera Media Network bought Al Gore’s Current TV.

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Latino advocacy group criticizes PBS treatment of newsman Ray Suarez

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A grass-roots organization that protested Ken Burns’s exclusion of World War II Latino soldiers’ experiences from his 2007 documentary The War is speaking out in the wake of PBS NewsHour Chief National Correspondent Ray Suarez’s resignation from the program. Defend the Honor, headed by Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, sent an Oct. 31 email to its 5,000-member database saying it is “distressed that PBS has treated veteran journalist Ray Suarez so disrespectfully.” Suarez left the show Oct. 25 after nearly 15 years and subsequently told Fox News Latino in an Oct. 28 interview that he felt his contributions to the program had been minimized during his tenure.

People

WBAI interim p.d. quits over fundraising programming

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Andrew Phillips resigned last month as interim p.d. of Pacifica’s WBAI in New York, a post he accepted less than three months ago in an effort to rebuild the audience of the financially troubled station. Phillips cited a disagreement over fundraising programs airing on the station, including shows featuring products pitched by alternative-medicine promoter Gary Null, as the reason for his decision. “It’s a model destined to failure, and I don’t want to be a part of it,” Phillips said. Pacifica assigned Phillips to WBAI in August after imposing a workforce reduction intended to sharply reduce the station’s operating costs. To attract more listeners, Phillips introduced news and public affairs shows from Pacifica’s KPFA in Berkeley, where he had previously overseen programming, and Los Angeles station KPFK.

People

Elaine Rivera, former WNYC reporter, dies at 54

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Elaine Rivera, a reporter for New York’s WNYC from 2006–09, died Oct. 26. She was 54. The cause of death has not been released, but Rivera had previously battled liver disease. Raised in Cleveland, Rivera came to radio from print journalism, having previously worked for the Washington Post, Time and Newsday.

People

Bill Moyers ending Moyers & Company in January

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Bill Moyers announced today to his colleagues in public TV that the last broadcast of his Moyers & Company public-affairs show will air Jan. 3, 2014, when current funding commitments end. He also said that his production company is “exploring the possibility of continuing to serve that audience through BillMoyers.com with the goal of engaging them in the renewal of democracy.” The show has more than 315,000 Facebook likes, Moyers said, and that number “grows every day by the hundreds. They — like so many of our viewers — take their citizenship seriously.”

People

Morgese accepts GM post at KUED-TV

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Veteran pubcaster James Morgese will take over  Dec. 1 as GM of KUED-TV in Salt Lake City. Morgese has more than 30 years of experience in public broadcasting management, programming, production, engineering, development and community outreach. In October 2012 he signed on as g.m. of dual licensee WKYU in Bowling Green, Ky. Previously he worked at Rocky Mountain PBS in Denver, Idaho Public Television and WUFT in Gainesville, Fla.

People

Walter Sheppard, former grant officer for PTFP, dies at 82

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Walter Sheppard, a veteran public radio general manager who worked for the federal government’s Public Telecommunications Facilities Program for more than two decades as a federal program officer, died Oct. 19 at the age of 82. Over the course of Sheppard’s career, which began in 1947, he held roles at several public radio stations across the country, including WITF in Harrisburg, Penn.; Boston’s WBUR; and the West Virginia Educational Broadcasting Authority (today known as West Virginia Public Broadcasting), where he served as deputy director in the 1980s and added more radio stations to the network. He joined the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in 1990 to manage grant portfolios as part of PTFP. Sheppard managed several different regions of the program during his 21 years there, including the South and Northeast.

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PBS Station Services chief to exit next week

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Joyce Herring, s.v.p. of station services for PBS, is leaving the network Oct. 31, President Paula Kerger announced today in an email to station executives. Kerger attributed Herring’s departure “to a series of unexpected circumstances requiring her immediate attention.” Herring, who joined PBS in 2007, is the third senior executive to depart in the past month. John McCoskey, the network’s top engineer, recently left to join the Motion Picture Association of America; Jason Seiken, head of digital media, took a position with the Telegraph Media Group in London.

People

Ken Rudin offers public radio a new weekly dose of “Political Junkie”

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The demise of NPR’s Talk of the Nation ended Ken Rudin’s regular appearances on many public radio stations, but the “Political Junkie” is aiming to reengage his devoted audience with a weekly radio segment that launched yesterday. The 8-minute Political Junkie segments, distributed by Public Radio Exchange, reprise many of the features Rudin wove into his TOTN appearances. The first installment features Rudin and NPR Senior Political Editor Ron Elving discussing the aftermath of the government shutdown. Rudin also plans to offer Political Junkie in extended form as a podcast. Since TOTN wound down in June and Rudin departed from NPR, thousands of listeners emailed the commentator to ask for his return to the Web and to radio.

People

NPR unveils new voice of underwriting credits

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NPR hired voice-over and theater actress Sabrina Farhi as the new voice of its underwriting credits, with her on-air debut to come next month. Farhi has previously lent her voice to ads for TIAA–CREF and Bioré Skincare and performed extensively in independent theater productions in New York. She will work out of NPR’s Washington, D.C., headquarters in her new job. “Out of hundreds of voices, Sabrina’s immediately stood out for its warmth and conversational approach,” said Eric Nuzum, NPR’s v.p. of programming, in a press release. “We think listeners and supporters will find her engaging.”

In a brief audio introduction (hear it here), Farhi reveals that she enjoys Scrabble and Mad Men and tells listeners that “I’m not as serious as I sound.”

“I wanted to be an actress when I grew up, and all things considered, this is a dream career I never thought of as a kid,” Farhi says.

People

NewsHour founders to transfer ownership

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The decision by retired founders Jim Lehrer and Robin MacNeil, which has the approval of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions (MLP) majority owner Liberty Media, will secure future journalistic independence for the news magazine.

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Veterans of KQED Newsroom return to

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A group of some 80 pubcasters will gather Friday night in San Francisco to celebrate the return of KQED Newsroom, that title of a groundbreaking early public TV series that has been revamped as a multiplatform production. Many attendees worked on past versions of the program, which debuted during a 1968 newspaper strike. KQED Newsroom was the first nightly news series to be produced and broadcast by a public television station. It preceded The Robert MacNeil Report, a national news show that debuted in 1975 and was later renamed The MacNeil/Lehrer Report. KQED Newsroom aired for nine years, backed by a $750,000 Ford Foundation grant. The new TV series premieres Oct.