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After scrambling to provide broadcast and online news coverage of the flood, the network is participating in a telethon benefiting Red Cross relief efforts.
WVPB-TV is returning to its roots as the Educational Broadcasting Authority of West Virginia as it shifts production priorities from local programming to digital content for teachers. When Scott Finn took over as executive director in February 2013, the board gave him a mandate to “specifically help pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade educators, parents and students,” he said. “That was clear when I was hired.” Finn has an educational background himself, having worked as a sixth-grade social studies and English teacher. So the Charleston-based station is cutting back longtime weekly shows Doctors on Call and The Law Works to occasional productions and focusing instead on new STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) interactive videos to help middle-schoolers think about future careers. Educators specifically asked for the content, Finn said.
When Scott Finn begins his new job as executive director of West Virginia Public Broadcasting Feb. 1, he faces an uphill task of re-energizing a network that has been beset over the past several years by funding declines and conflicts over its governance.
The host of Check, Please!, WTTW’s popular restaurant review series, is departing the Chicago show after 10 years. Alpana Singh plans to devote more time to her own new restaurant, The Boarding House, where she is also master sommelier. Singh took over hosting duties in the third season from the original host, Amanda Puck.
The State Educational Broadcasting Authority of West Virginia voted Jan. 10 to hire Scott Finn as the new executive director of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, the Associated Press reports. Finn previously served as a reporter and the news director of the network, but left in 2009 to become news director at WUSF in Tampa, Fla. He will replace Dennis Adkins, who is retiring on Feb. 1 and had been fighting the board for months over financial concerns.