Originally published in Current,
May 13, 2002
By Karen Everhart
A behind-the-scenes player whose profound influence on public TV has gone largely unrecognized will retire in September [2002].
Peter McGhee has managed national productions at WGBH in Boston since the mid-1970s and guided development of PBS staples Frontline, American Experience and Antiques Roadshow and such distinguished miniseries as Vietnam: A Television History.
John Willis, a British television executive who has coproduced several major series with WGBH, will succeed him as v.p. of national productions this fall. [Willis returned to Britain less than a year later to take a coveted BBC job.]
McGhee, a native New Yorker, graduated from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 1960, before the esteemed school had an academic program in television. He didn't own a TV set or know what a documentary was in 1964, when he became associate producer of a film commissioned by National Educational Television, "Southeast Asia, The Other War."
"My first television encounter was a rather difficult one, but at the end I understood what it was about," he said. After producing several more programs for NET, McGhee took a leave of absence in 1969 to produce The Advocates at WGBH.
"The atmosphere in Boston was so exhilarating and so open to ideas and possibilities that there was never a question of going back," McGhee recalled. Arabs and Israelis, a major series he executive-produced in the mid-'70s, received a duPont-Columbia Award. McGhee became manager of national productions in 1975 and v.p. in 1991. By WGBH's count, programs produced with his oversight have won 37 Peabody Awards and 25 duPont-Columbias. Four of the latter were Gold Batons.
Nova, which was started by Michael Ambrosino in the early '70s, expanded under McGhee's leadership into the WGBH Science Unit, a prolific source of major PBS mini-series headed by executive producer Paula Apsell.
"When you create a series like Frontline, Nova or American Experience, you build a critical mass of talented people who can think about and execute a series, but also think more widely than that," he commented.
In addition to building a stable of production talent at WGBH, McGhee developed international coproduction relationships that resulted in programs such as Rock and Roll and The People's Century, and the "Millenium Day Broadcast" on New Year's Day 2000.
"The force of Peter's influence on our programming has been in part unacknowledged because it has been off-screen and private," says David Fanning, executive producer of Frontline, in a testimonial tribute to McGhee. "It has taken place in quiet conversation and closed screenings. ... His intellect has been the tutor to our enthusiasms; he has forced us to think hard, and carefully about the meaning and relevance of the ideas we all struggle to make into hours of television."
McGhee has an "uncanny ability to spot raw talent," noted Margaret Drain, executive producer of American Experience, and a philosophy to "vest talent with responsibility and then leave them alone. It is exactly that hands-off attitude that yields great results."
His retirement, which he planned three years ago when he turned 65, accidentally coincides with what McGhee regards as a rough spot for public TV.
"I think public TV is in great trouble," he added. "The whole institution is under enormous challenge at the moment, and we are not united on what the challenges are and what the response is. I'm afraid in that confusion there's irresolution and compromise of purpose when strengthening is what's called for."
He plans to go back to school upon retirement, but declined to say what he will study.
It was McGhee who first approached Willis about his interest in succeeding him. "John will be terrific," he said.
Willis earned his stripes as a documentary producer at Yorkshire Television and went on to direct production at Britain's Channel 4, Granada and United Productions. The popular feature films Four Weddings and a Funeral, Trainspotting and The Madness of King George were produced by Channel 4 under his leadership. During his time at United, the company co-produced Oliver Twist and Othello with WGBH for Masterpiece Theatre.
Willis is a columnist and ombudsman for The Guardian and a visiting professor at Bristol University.
Later article
Willis takes 'the only job' he'd leave WGBH for
Originally published in Current, April 21, 2003
By Karen Everhart
After less than year leading WGBH national productions, John Willis is returning to the United Kingdom as a top program executive at the British Broadcasting Corp.
The BBC announced Willis's appointment April 8 [2003] as director of Factual and Learning, a division with an annual budget of $450 million and staff of more than 2,000 employees creating television, radio and online content. Willis will join the BBC Executive Committee and report to Director General Greg Dyke. "It was the only job at the only broadcaster I would have left here to do," he said.
Willis turned down an offer to apply for the post early this year, and the BBC approached him again after interviewing other candidates, he explained. "They came back to me and said they'd like to offer me the job. Obviously I'd been thinking about it in the interim. It was a very, very difficult decision." He returns to Britain in June.
Willis, a former chief programmer for Channel 4, said he had settled happily into his job as WGBH's top production exec, but was enticed by the chance to work at the BBC.
"In the end I just couldn't resist," he added. "I thought I would regret this if I didn't take it." He said the BBC, funded by license fees on TV sets, operates on a "fantastic scale" at the center of mainstream British cultural and political life.
"It's such a great opportunity for him--it's one of the top jobs in the world," said WGBH President Henry Becton. "He's a great person, and a friend, and if he could be anywhere else in the world, this is where I'd want him to be." The BBC division he will head frequently co-produces programs with WGBH, and Willis will be in a position to spur collaboration with American pubcasters, he noted. Becton plans to appoint a new national production chief “within the next month or two.”
Willis succeeded Peter McGhee, who retired as WGBH v.p. of national productions last fall.
Willis's stature and leadership as a television executive was a creative boon to WGBH, said Paula Apsell, executive producer of Nova. "He had really begun doing a fabulous job for us and it would have continued to pay off," she said. “I’ve loved working with John — I think he’s terrific,” she added. “He’s kind. He’s nice. He’s fun to be with. He’s so good at what he does that you just want to follow his example.”
Willis advanced the WGBH Science Unit's Mayflower project, a big-budget reality series recreating the Pilgrims' 17th century voyage to the New World. “He worked extremely hard on it and was instrumental in helping us bring it to fruition,” Apsell said. [WGBH and British partners gave up on the series by 2005.]
He also adapted a successful British historical discovery format for PBS. In Time Team, archeologists race against the clock to dig up an artifact, excavate a building or otherwise investigate an archeological detective story, he explained. WGBH has developed the concept with American archeologists and awaits a green light from PBS.
The "great advantage" of Willis’s move back to Britain is that "he now understands the issues facing public television, and he recognizes, given the peculiar nature of our system, what it takes to make programs," said David Fanning, e.p. of Frontline. "I think he will continue to be a close ally and friend."
Public television’s endemic financial struggles worsened in the past year with steep declines in corporate underwriting and continuing revenue losses at stations, but public TV "continues to make a lot of wonderful programs and get very good audiences," said Willis. The system would be stronger if “individual interest groups and stakeholders” would work together, he added. “The only way to create a critical mass of activity is to make sure that every dollar is spent in a coordinated way and we’re all singing from the same song sheet,” he commented.
In his new job, Willis will manage the BBC’s ongoing relationship with Discovery Communications, a major PBS competitor that has the first option on factual BBC television content. “For the programs that clearly don’t fit the Discovery agenda, I hope there’s room to make more programs with public television,” he said.
Web page revised Feb. 22, 2005
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LATER ARTICLES
Willis takes 'the only job' he'd leave WGBH for, April 2003.
WGBH promotes Margaret Drain to production chief, effective June 2003.
OUTSIDE LINKS
BBC announces hiring of Willis, April 2003.
American pubTV "with its talented programme makers could be a counterweight" to the worst of media, "but it is so financially anorexic that PBS sits irredeemably on the margins of U.S. broadcasting," Willis said in a November 2004 speech back home.
HE SAYS
Willis joining ‘a station that knows what it believes in’
In his June 10 column in London's Guardian newspaper John Willis listed the woes of British TV and said it's "probably a good time to take on something fresh." He continued:
"In the homogenised world of American media, PBS may seem marginal, but it reaches around 100 million viewers each week and makes programmes that no one else will. For me there is an attraction in joining a station that knows what it believes in: WGBH is underpinned by an ethos to which its programme-makers can subscribe. These days their range of output is wider than you will find most of the time in the UK. That is not to say that PBS does not have its problems.
"Economic uncertainty and military conflict are not a recipe for stability at any time. PBS is fighting hard to hold on to audiences big enough to justify not just its public funding, but its relevance to the American people. Moreover, the funding mechanisms are so complex that I will need an Enigma machine to decode them.
"Yet for all this, PBS produces finely polished jewels that the whole world envies: a commitment to more than 20 weeks a year of high-end current affairs in peak time in the shape of Frontline, the ground-breaking children's reading series Between the Lions, and poetic documentaries such as Civil War from Ken and Ric Burns."