People in public broadcasting

They're admired by many for the work they do, scorned by others for not fulfilling all of public broadcasting's many promises. Many flourish in enviable creative freedom some languish under frustrating handicaps.

Here are some of the professionals who were profiled or made news in Current over the years

On-air people
Producers
Leaders & decision-makers
Funders

On the air

Kurt Andersen: a droll prince of New York's magazine world, hosts a weekly cultural commentary program, Studio 360, for public radio

John Callaway: the skilled interviewer, now retired from fulltime broadcasting, whose nightly show defined serious TV journalism in Chicago

Julia Child: public TV's breakthrough culinary star, who died in August 2004. David Stewart profiled the tall young woman who set out to seduce Mr. Child by cooking well for him. In 2002, her kitchen was put on display at the Smithsonian.

Andrei Codrescu: the piquant commentator from New Orleans who inflamed evangelicals with a commentary in 1995 (for which NPR apologized)

Alistair Cooke: The 22-year host of Masterpiece Theatre, who died in 2004, was better known in Britain for his weekly Letter from America, aired by BBC for 58 years.

Chris Douridas: the public radio deejay in L.A. who became a different kind of player in pop music — and host of a pop recital series on public TV

Bob Edwards: The reassignment of the longtime Morning Edition anchor in 2004 disappointed many listeners. Fans and columnists alike protested. Edwards never resumed regular appearances on NPR; he moved to XM Satellite Radio in October 2004. In 1988, Current interviewed the laconic voice of NPR's most popular program.

Mike Feder: a storyteller "too raw and too New York" for the rest of the country, but just right for WBAI.

Michael Feldman: the fast and funny host of Wisconsin's Whad'Ya Know?

Amy Goodman: Pacifica's tenacious advocacy journalist, who did not remain unaffected by the left radio network's internal struggles

Glen Jones: a deejay on Jersey City's WFMU-FM who broke the Guiness World Record for continuous hours on the air and alive

Garrison Keillor: the man from Lake Wobegon, who picked a fight with Jesse Ventura

Christopher Lydon: the Cambridge-style talk host who left The Connection in a dispute with WBUR in 2001 and lost his previous pubcasting job when WGBH ended its Ten O'Clock News a decade earlier

Gary Null: the longtime health/nutrition program host on Pacifica's WBAI, whose December 1998 public TV special stirred controversy over commercialism

Ira Glass: a longtime NPR producer/reporter who had to leave the organization to create an award-winning program of audio essays, This American Life, and described his principles of radio production in a 1998 talk

Felix Hernandez: the rhythm king of public radio in the early 1990s

Glen Jones: An unconventional deejay at the unconventional pubradio station WFMU in Jersey City, he aimed to set a world's record by spending 100 hours at the microphone.

Bill Kurtis: the former CBS newsman who quit his PBS science series in frustration and went to cable

Jim Lehrer: co-anchor or anchor of PBS's major news program for decades, still believes a writer makes his mark in fiction. People who claim there's no need for public TV today "do no actually watch public television," he said in a speech to station staffers in 2005.

Shari Lewis: the beloved ventriloquist/teacher, who was making her new series, Charlie Horse Music Pizza, when she was felled by cancer in 1998.

Edward Lifson: the NPR technician who made a successful switch to news correspondent

Ray and Tom Magliozzi: Click & Clack, the Car Talk brothers

Wynton Marsalis: the charismatic jazzman who had music education series on both NPR and PBS

Larry Matthews, a freelance reporter for NPR, lost his bid for review by the Supreme Court in 2000 and was expected to go to jail for trading child porn. Matthews protested that he was working as an undercover reporter. No matter, said a federal judge, who wrote in 1998: "a press pass is not a license to break the law."

David McCullough: prizewinning historian and longtime former host of The American Experience, gives his thoughts on public TV's accomplishments

Derek McGinty: the young Washington talkmaster who left for commercial TV.

Bill Moyers: Few hosts or producers have matched the range and volume of Moyers' public-affairs and cultural documentaries and interview series. His 2001 documentary Trade Secrets, produced with Sherry Jonesl, demonstrated the chemical industry's its long tolerance of risk to its vinyl chloride workers. In 1999, Moyers found himself in the unfamiliar situation of being questioned by press critics for interviewing subjects who receive funds from a foundation that he heads. A believer in public broadcasting who worked for President Johnson when it was being created, Moyers repeatedly speaks out for its virtues.

Suze Orman: a personal finance evangelist who dazzles station fundraisers with skills honed on a home shopping network

Mark Plotkin: WAMU's commentator on local politics who has become a distinctive character and a force for self-government in Washington, D.C.

Diane Rehm: the WAMU talk show host who grew from local volunteer to national recognition on NPR, and then faced a rare illness that threatens her ability to speak.

Bill Riley: A broadcasting legend in Iowa, Riley did pledge pitches for Iowa Public Television and became known as Mr. State Fair.

Fred Rogers: the children's program host who died in February 2003, deeply influenced many viewers and TV producers as well (an Illinois public broadcaster, David Thiel, recalls a childhood love for Rogers that survived in adulthood). Rogers wrapped up production of his series after more than 30 years—a series that, in the view of media scholar George Gerbner, stands for the opposite of television's worst

Louis Rukeyser: the longtime star of PBS's finance weekly, who refused to accept a smaller role in Wall $treet Week in 2002 and launched a competing show on CNBC. A critique compares his new show to his successor on PBS.

Daniel Schorr: the CBS News veteran who analyzes the news for NPR with a "matchless sense of history"

Jae Sinnett: the up-and-coming jazz drummer who spins discs for public radio in Norfolk

Jeff Smith: the former chaplain who made food his ministry on The Frugal Gourmet, and was brought down by charges of sexual abuse, settling a lawsuit with former teenage assistants. He died in 2004.

Susan Stamberg: Listeners found something to sing about in the NPR correspondent's recipe for cranberry goop that she sneaks into NPR programs every November. Hear for yourselves!

Michael Taylor: once homeless himself, he found his calling in community radio at Pacifica and was trying to start a pirate station serving South Central L.A. — when he was killed in 1996

Nina Totenberg: the NPR reporter who made the Supreme Court a star beat

Roy Underhill: the host of The Woodwright's Shop saved the life of a dog and overcomes writer's block at the same time.

Kathryn Tucker Windham, former NPR commentator, and Sam Hendren, then of Alabama Public Radio: two who reported on the rural South of the past and the present

Daniel Zwerdling: an NPR investigative reporter and former program host whose layoff in 2002 roused colleagues to complain about the network's values.

Behind the camera and the mike

Orlando Bagwell: the filmmaker known for bios of Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass and his new historical series on slavery, Africans in America, now serving a stint as grantmaker with the Ford Foundation.

Ofra Bikel: the tireless documentarian whose Frontline films turned around a famous child-abuse case and freed a young man erroneously convicted of robbery.

Ken Burns: the star filmmaker behind Baseball and Jazz and a full schedule of ambitious historical documentaries, who explained in 1999 House testimony why he makes program for public TV

Ric Burns: the producer of The Way West and a multi-part history of New York City, who apprenticed with elder brother Ken

Dave Connell: first executive producer of Sesame Street and The Electric Company, remembered by CTW founder Joan Ganz Cooney

Norman Corwin: a leading producer of CBS's golden age, who made a comeback on public radio in the 1990s

Judy Crichton: a Q&A with the founding (and former) executive producer of The American Experience who made her way in the man's world of early TV. She died in 2007.

Margaret Drain: the experienced producer with the challenge of leading The American Experience

Jennifer Fox: the Hi-8 chronicler of an extraordinary biracial couple, interviewed in 1994

Rob Gardner: the award-winning documentarian who produced Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land and Islam: Empire of Faith

JoAnne Garrett: the Wisconsin documentarian with collaborators across the country

Henry Hampton: the producer who chronicled the civil rights movement in Eyes on the Prize and brought along a generation of nonfiction filmmakers. Hampton, who insisted on telling "messy history" with all of its complexity, was eulogized after his untimely death in November 1998. Six years earlier he called public TV "a place where seekers can ply their crafts." His survivors completed his last series, This Far by Faith, in 2002.

Jay Kernis: the key producer behind NPR's morning programs, who returned to NPR as program chief after 14 years at CBS News

Anna McHugh: With her first radio documentary, a young California journalist not only won a top award but also set off a series of events that shook up the public defender's office in her hometown.

David Isay: The young independent producer is a prizewinning portraitist of people on the margins of society. His "Execution Tapes" broadcast in 2001 breached NPR's role as pubradio's main gatekeeper. His work with teenagers LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman yielded wrenching documentaries from a Chicago housing project. His Yiddish Radio Project sampled the radio creations of a bygone American civilization.

Stephen Ives: the filmmaker who made The West with Ken Burns

Steve James, Frederick Marx and Peter Gilbert: the team that invested well-spent years in Hoop Dreams, the most-raved-about Oscar non-winner

Larry Lancit and Cecily Truett: the couple behind Reading Rainbow and Puzzle Place, who took Lancit Media Productions to the stock market with unexpected results

Bill Marimow: the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor hired as NPR's managing editor in 2004 and news v.p. in 2006.

James Lee Mathes and Fred Burgess: longtime public broadcasters in southern California, who retired to Kansas together in the 1980s. They died seven months apart in 2007.

Isaac Mizrahi: a born multimedia guy who won his "stripes" as a public TV producer in Los Angeles

Russ Morash: the innovative how-to program producer in Boston who brought The French Chef and This Old House to the tube

Jonathan Rice: the late programming innovator who co-founded KQED in San Francisco

D. Roberts: an audio auteur struggling with funding — and with acclaim

Warren Steibel: the liberal producer William F. Buckley Jr. trusted to make Firing Line

Jac Venza: a Q&A with public TV's leading talent scout and impresario in the performing arts, executive producer of Great Performances

Ellen Weiss: head of NPR News since spring 2007, she came up through the ranks in the news division unlike her three predecessors

Fred Wiseman: The eminent documentarian filmed a state legislature in action in Idaho in 2004. His many PBS broadcasts have given viewers unparalled opportunities to interpret human behavior. His subjects are sometimes uncomfortable with the way they look — his 1968 film High School didn't air in the city where it was made until 2001.

Leaders and decision-makers

David Brugger: public TV's head lobbyist and president of APTS, who retired from the association at the end of 2000.

Wayne Bundy: Albuquerque-based iconic advocate of rural broadcasting who helped generations of public broadcasters to start and expand stations. Obituary, 2007.

Bill Buzenberg: the former correspondent who led NPR News to acclaim as a reporting organization, 1990-97, and enunciated the key distinctions of public radio news in a commentary

Stanford Calderwood: he wasn't president of WGBH for long, but he put together the deal that kept Masterpiece Theatre going for more than 30 years

Elizabeth Campbell: The founder of Washington's major public TV and radio combo, WETA, died in 2004 at the age of 101. She looked back on the early days of public TV in a 1993 Q&A. Volunteers like Campbell started many of the public TV stations that will be passing the half-century mark in coming years. The first of them, Houston's KUHT, turned 50 in 2003.

Richard Carlson: the 1992 Republican appointee who helped save pubcasting's federal aid, as president of CPB until 1997, and fought with many of his board members

Jane Christo: the decisive manager of WBUR, Boston's fast-growing, news/talk public radio station, and one of a handful of women who manage many of the largest public radio stations

Bob Coonrod: the unassuming former No. 2 at CPB who was named in 1997 to succeed Richard Carlson as president, discussed his plans in 1998. In a Q&A in 2003, he elaborated on initiatives to assist public TV.

Kathleen Cox: the No. 2 officer at CPB succeeded Bob Coonrod in 2004 as president of the nonprofit organization that dispenses federal aid to pubcasting.

Bruce Drake: After many months as acting head of NPR News, the former newspaperman got the job officially in August 2000.

Ervin Duggan: PBS's fourth president, appointed in 1993, who defended pubcasting eloquently during the battles of 1995-96, including his National Press Club remarks and IRTS speech, opposing commercialism. Duggan developed a mission mantra of "citizenship, culture and education," tangled with stations over national/local roles, and pursued a view of PBS as a "modern media corporation," that shares revenues with stations under a "station equity model." Beset by numerous conflicts with stations, Duggan resigned in 1999.

Jeffrey Dvorkin: the CBC News veteran named to head NPR News in 1997 discusses the challenges of the job in a Q&A

Fred Friendly: the late journalist legend and colleague of Edward R. Murrow who played several key roles in public TV

Greg Guma: the progressive activist and journalist from Vermont named national executive director of Pacifica Radio.

Larry Hall: the late, strong-willed retired physicist who pushed public broadcasting to share its federal aid and airtime with independent producers.

Ron Hull: a passionate advocate for cultural and historical programming on public TV, who served as longtime program chief of the Nebraska network and helped start American Experience during a stint at CPB. On retirement he looked into his personal heritage.

Paula Kerger: the successful fundraiser and station exec from New York hired to run PBS in 2006 after the rocky presidencies of two outsiders

Bill Kling: a Q&A with public radio's most dynamic entrepreneur — president of Minnesota Public Radio, founder of American Public Radio and then American Public Media

Kevin Klose: the longtime newspaperman hired in 1998 to succeed Delano Lewis as president of NPR

John Lawson: the public TV lobbyist who returned to APTS as its president in 2001

Delano Lewis: president of NPR for five years, 1993-98, spoke at length in a Current Q&A in 1997, a few months before announcing his retirement. He was later named ambassador to South Africa.

Richard H. Madden: A v.p. at CPB until his death in February 2002, Rick Madden seeded many of pubradio's strongest series and supported research and policies supporting the field's growth. The previous year, CPB honored him with its highest award in radio. In his acceptance speech, Madden aimed to put to rest the "smaller is better" mindset of pubradio's youth.

Jack McBride: now retired as head of Nebraska ETV and its many related agencies, epitomizes the energetic station builder in public TV's first generation.

Peter McGhee: the WGBH executive, who announced his retirement and received the Ralph Lowell Award in 2002, has overseen more top series than any other public TV program decision-maker. He spoke with Current for an extended Q&A about the objectives of public TV, the localism issue, ratings and producers' risk-taking.

Alisa Miller: a young media dealmaker promoted to run Public Radio International in 2006.

Pat Mitchell: a CNN production executive named president of PBS in 1999. Mitchell squeezed in her wedding ceremony after a Sundance Institute meeting in 2000 and quickly qualified for the nickname "Our Lady of Perpetual Motion." She initially concentrated on renovating PBS's schedule, and then on system funding and other issues. Her Digital Future Initiative panel gave its report shortly before she moved to the Museum of Television & Radio.

Craig Oliver: a leading public radio programmer who helped introduce the medium to its audience.

Kathy Quattrone: PBS's second chief program executive, 1996-2000, appointed after the resignation of Jennifer Lawson.

Steve Salyer: longtime president of Public Radio International, who had a big hand in creating Marketplace, The World and Public Interactive before moving to the head of an international conference center in 2005.

Pat Scott: former executive director of the Pacifica Foundation, played a major role in reorienting the left-wing network toward professionalism and larger audiences — triggering a bitter internal rift. Accused of union-busting by opponents, she replied that Pacifica must be directed effectively to serve its progressive purposes.

Ruth Seymour: the maverick manager of Santa Monica's unconventional, eclectic KCRW-FM.

Laura Walker: the former children's TV (and athletic shoe) executive who led the country's biggest public radio station, New York's WNYC, as it bought its freedom from the city government and became a major program producer.

Funders

Paul Allen: With WGBH, the co-founder of Microsoft is co-producing the Global Health Project, a major TV-radio-online project examining health in the developing world (Bill Gates' foundation is a major funder). Allen's Vulcan Productions earlier collaborated with WGBH on Evolution and The Blues.

Joan Kroc: In 2003, the McDonald's heiress surprised NPR by leaving it $200 million in her will. The network decided to spend three-fifths of the bequest's first year investment proceeds to expand its news operation, hiring 45 staffers over three years.

Herbert Schmertz: The public relations executive made Mobil Oil public TV's biggest corporate backer by adopting Masterpiece Theatre and, later, Mystery!

People in public broadcasting

On the air

Behind the camera and the mike

Leaders and decision-makers

Funders

Other articles