Timeline: Current’s first 30 years

March 17, 1980 — At National Association of Educational Broadcasters, James Fellows hires Steve Behrens to launch Current as a journalistic service, replacing NAEB's association house organ Public Telecommunications Letter.

February 1981 — Brooke Gladstone, later to become co-host of WNYC's On the Media, arrives as assistant editor in time to cover the NPR fiscal crisis.

Sept. 28, 1981 — Last Current issue published by NAEB. The longtime association dissolves by vote of its members Nov. 3, 1981.

March 31, 1982 — Current resumes publication under Current Publishing Committee.

January 1983 — The newspaper begins serializing "Snookered 50 Years Ago," Eugene E. Leach's history of a crucial political battle between commercial and educational radio in the 1930s.

January 1984 — Elizabeth T. Robinson is promoted to editor when Behrens takes a magazine job. (Behrens returns seven years later.)

September 1984 — Joy Mastroberardino is promoted to succeed Elizabeth Robinson as editor.

February 1986 — J.J. Yore, later to become executive producer of Marketplace, is promoted to editor, succeeding Joy Mastroberardino, after joining staff as associate editor in August 1985.

July 1986 — Current gets a bold redesign by freelance Art Director Mark Jenkins.

September 1986 — Current moves its office from overheated basement on 16th Street to an apartment above a purple doorknob store (pictured at right) in D.C.'s Adams-Morgan neighborhood.

March 1987 — The History of Public Broadcasting, by John Witherspoon and Roselle Kovitz, begins serialization. Later in the year, Current publishes the history in paperback.

January 1987 — David Giovannoni begins regular radio audience column; George Hall begins technology column. David and Judith LeRoy begin a TV audience column a year later. Skip Pizzi and Steven Vedro technology columns are added in 1993 — all subsidized by CPB.

July 1987 — Fellows and Yore switch Current from single-copy subscriptions to a Group Subscription Plan to expand circulation, offering lower per-copy prices to stations. It also creates a larger reader base to support advertising sales, which become the major revenue source.

December 1987 — Current hires its first display ad salesperson, Harold Crabill; display ad sales begin growing. In fiscal 1989, Crabill doubles ad revenues and pulls Current out of the red.

March 1988 — Former Current Business Manager Val Taylor begins comic strip, "As Current Flows," starring pubcaster fatale Muriel Aerial.

November 1988 — Richard Barbieri, who has worked as associate editor with J.J. Yore in March 1986 to July 1987, begins two years as editor, succeeding Yore. (Yore moves to Marketplace and after a while becomes its executive producer. Barbieri later edits Legal Times, the leading lawyers' newspaper in Washington, D.C.)

December 1989 — Current features Christopher Whittle, the businessman who sold ads on the classroom TV service Channel One, at the top of the paper's year-end "15 Who Made a Difference" profiles, and PBS drops its subscription in protest for a year or two.

March 1991 — Steve Behrens returns as editor, establishes present design in April. Begins pandering to new PBS stars (pictured at right).

June 1992 — Karen Everhart, associate editor, begins annual Pipeline surveys of future public TV series, now published annually in November.

August 1993 — The paper moves its offices to an actual office building on K Street.

Fall 1994 — Aides to CPB President Richard Carlson, critical of Current coverage of the corporation, withdraw CPB-funded audience research and technology columns from the newspaper. CPB mails out the columns separately and later puts them on the Web, but readership withers. After Carlson leaves, Giovannoni brings his columns back to Current for the Audience 98 study.

May 1995 — In a random-sample survey of readers, 68 percent rate their satisfaction with Current as "good" and 26 percent as "excellent." Just 4 percent say "fair," and no one says "poor."

Oct. 10, 1995 — Current launches its website. For a tour of Current's home pages of the past decade, go to The Wayback Machine, which captured many old sites.

January 1996 — The paper begins serializing David Stewart's book about public TV programming, later published by TV Books as The PBS Companion. (1999).

Spring 1997 — The newspaper's business staff (pictured at right) begins giving away hot-pink plastic yo-yos and other tchchokas at booths during major conferences.

Taryna Wong, Denese Scott and Stephanie Briggs

February 2000 — Current publishes a new paperback edition of A History of Public Broadcasting with updated chapters by Robert Avery and Alan Stavitsky (cover pictured at right). Current and National Public Broadcasting Archives collaborate on a companion website for the history book, Public Broadcasting PolicyBase (www.current.org/pbpb), which offers major documents in pubcasting history.

December 2003 — Founding Chairman James Fellows seriously injured in traffic accident and retires from active involvement in the newspaper.

August 2005 — After 25 years in Washington, Current moves from K Street, a realm of turbo-lobbyists, to Takoma Park, Md. (map), mere yards outside of D.C., a haven of acupuncturists, azaleas and traditional stringed instruments.

January 2011 — WNET transfers stewardship of Current to American University School of Communication.