Abbott will succeed Becton as ’GBH head

Originally published in Current, Dec. 18, 2006
By Karen Everhart

Henry Becton won’t exactly retire when he leaves the presidency of Boston’s WGBH-TV/FM next October, but he will give his deputy, Jonathan Abbott, the reins that guided the station to national prominence as a production powerhouse and technological innovator.

The WGBH Board of Trustees on Dec. 6 unanimously elected Abbott, 44, who has served as c.o.o. and executive v.p. since 2004.

Becton, 63, will follow the pattern established in 1984 by his predecessor, David Ives: The past president will continue to work on a part-time basis as a senior editorial advisor, assisting with strategic initiatives, raising funds and representing the station on pubcasting committees. “I’ll be going from 60 hours a week to 40,” Becton predicted.

Amos Hostetter, WGBH chairman, said the board’s vote was a tribute to Becton, who had hired, promoted and recommended Abbott. “When the issue came up of doing a national search or appointing internally,” he told Current, “the board was unanimous that we already had the best talent in the system here.”

Becton timed the transition to occur after the staff, now scattered among a dozen buildings, has moved into WGBH’s new, $76 million headquarters in Boston’s Brighton neighborhood. The phased move-in begins in March.

“During Henry’s tenure the place has continued to attract tremendous creative and editorial talent,” said Hostetter, a cofounder and former chair of Continental Cablevision and AT&T director. Instead of being overwhelmed by the demands of technological change, WGBH has been “near brilliant in utilizing those technologies to its benefit to be seen as a national and local programming resource.”

The station now operates seven over-the-air or cable TV channels in Boston, as well as WGBY-TV in Springfield, Mass.; FM services for Boston, Cape Cod and nearby islands; and WGBH.org, one of public broadcasting’s most-used websites.

Since Abbott joined WGBH in 1998, he has played a substantial role in transforming WGBH into a multiplatform distributor, notably by collaborating with WNET to create the World and Create channels for DTV multicasting by stations across the country.

In 2003, Abbott and Paula Kerger, then his counterpart managing daily operations of New York’s WNET and now president of PBS, brought their staffs together to develop the channels. Both services launched as local channels in Boston and New York. Create went national this year and is now distributed to 166 stations through American Public Television. PBS will offer World for national distribution next summer.

One of Abbott’s first initiatives after arriving at WGBH in 1998 has also been widely adopted. He advocated the “big footprint” audience-building strategy, mobilizing both of WGBH’s Boston TV channels, scheduling multiple plays of selected marquee programs such as Ken Burns’ Jazz, and intensively cross-promoting for tune in.

“We’ve had a good chance to see John in the c.o.o. role dealing with a lot of the strategic issues the institution is facing, and it’s been very positive,” Hostetter said. Abbott has “recruited some very effective vice presidents” and “significantly upgraded the staff over time,” he said.

Hostetter said Abbott has been “a real force” in WGBH fundraising as well. Development was his specialty before moving to Boston. He served as v.p. of marketing and development at KQED in San Francisco, 1987-92, and was PBS’s senior v.p. for development until 1998, when he joined WGBH as v.p. and g.m. of television.

As the busiest production house for PBS, WGBH delivers roughly a third of the network’s primetime schedule, including Nova, Antiques Roadshow, American Experience, Frontline, Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery! Its children’s programs include Arthur, Postcards from Buster, Curious George and Fetch! And WGBH continues the how-to tradition that it started with Julia Child, recently launching Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie, distributed by APT.

Through a co-production with BBC World Service and Public Radio International, WGBH Radio produces The World, a weekday newsmagazine for Americans about the rest of the world.

Becton was schooled to be a lawyer but became a TV producer instead, joining WGBH in 1970 as a trainee. He was promoted to program manager for cultural affairs in 1974, overseeing production of Masterpiece Theatre, Evening at Pops and how-to programs. Four years later Becton was appointed v.p. and g.m. He succeeded David Ives as president in 1984.

“We have always focused on growth because there were always new programming challenges and audience needs to try to meet,” Becton said. Commercial television’s retreat from science programming, investigative documentaries, and historical shows led to Nova, Frontline and American Experience, respectively.

In the late 1980s, WGBH noticed that producers of PBS children’s programs had scaled back or stopped producing new shows. WGBH decided to try to fill the gap, Becton said, by investing $1 million in new children’s series. Long Ago and Far Away and Degrassi High led to its present stable of shows for kids.

With its continuing expansion, WGBH built its annual revenues from $60 million in 1984, when Becton was promoted to president, to $207 million in 2000. The national recession caught up with the station, however, reducing revenues to $187 million in 2003. After a brief rise to nearly $194 million in 2005, the figure returned to $187 million last fiscal year. Though WGBH lost underwriters on several major PBS series during the recession, its books showed small surpluses each year.

WGBH’s federal tax filings look much worse, with losses of $28 million and $17 million in fiscal years 2004 and 2005, but Controller John Madden said tax accounting rules distorted the picture — showing heavy spending in those years but not revenues that had come in earlier.

Becton doesn’t claim credit for WGBH’s successes. But past colleagues say he contributed significantly.

“Henry’s greatest accomplishment will be fostering a very creative atmosphere in which to work,” said William Grant, a production exec at New York’s WNET and former Nova producer. “There was something unusual about the atmosphere there and the way it supported creativity — it was almost like being at a college with departments and interest areas, each of which is able to develop on its own.”

The stable of creative professionals constituted an enormous resource, said former national production chief Peter McGhee. “That’s something that Henry understood and what he valued as well. Part of what he had a hand in building was a bunch of people who had these unusual skills.”

Becton has “shaped an institution that’s capable of producing really, really high-quality productions, and he kept the institution fiscally solvent,” said Margaret Drain, v.p. of national production. “He has rare skills in that he can operate in both the editorial world and financial world very comfortably and make really smart decisions.”

Becton has also forcefully protected WGBH’s editorial independence. In 2005, when PBS agreed to a demand from the U.S. Department of Education that it withdraw an episode of Postcards from Buster that featured children with lesbian parents, WGBH distributed the program to stations itself.

The stakes were even higher in 1980 when the Saudi government, the U.S. State Department, Mobil Oil and others pressed PBS and WGBH to withdraw “Death of a Princess,” a WGBH documentary that revealed the brutality of Saudi law. PBS stood up against the pressure, but WGBH bought satellite time in case the network didn’t.

The rough times have been those when we’ve been challenged to make sure our compasses were properly calibrated on mission,” said David Liroff, WGBH’s chief technology officer. “Those are the times when Henry’s been a most remarkable leader.”