WQED Elects New Board Members

WQED MULTIMEDIA ELECTS FOUR NEW MEMBERS TO ITS BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Annual Meeting Highlights Accomplishments

PITTSBURGH - At its annual meeting today, the WQED Multimedia Board of Directors named four key community leaders to its board and six new members to its Community Advisory Board.

WQED Chair Debra Caplan noted that WQED continued to break new ground in Fiscal Year 2012 by adding a new digital television channel (WQED Showcase); a new radio stream (WQED Concert Channel); and launching new initiatives of its iQ: smartmedia educational initiative: iQ Smart Parent and iQ Kids Radio.

“Despite the loss of state operating funding and the threat of federal funding cuts, WQED continues to serve the community by becoming more entrepreneurial and growing its membership base,” said Deborah L. Acklin, President and Chief Executive Officer.

“The retail arm of WQED hit a home run in 2011 and 2012 with the sale of Pittsburgh From the Air and Pittsburgh from the Air II, which generated more than 11,000 DVD and Blu-ray sales. WQED now rents Studio on Fifth for weddings and banquets and to advertising agencies and independent producers. Fiscal Year 2012 marked the 13th straight year that WQED generated net revenues from operations.”

Fiscal year 2012 also brought news of a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to support production of a national documentary on the life and work of Pittsburgh native and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson.

August Wilson: The Ground On Which I Stand will be a 90-minute high-definition television documentary and the first in-depth exploration of the life, work and cultural impact of the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning African American playwright and Pittsburgh native (1945 – 2005). The program will be a co-production of WQED and the PBS series American Masters and will air in late 2014.

New board members elected to a three-year term today were:

- W. Thomas McGough, Jr., Chief Legal Officer, UPMC
 - Darlene Motley, Ph.D., Associate Dean, School of Business, Robert Morris University
- Dr. Mildred S. Myers, Teaching Professor of Management Communications Emerita, Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business
 - James Singer, Partner, Fox Rothschild LLP

Debra L. Caplan, Senior Vice President, Allegheny General Hospital, remains Chair of the Board of Directors and Michael Bryson, retired from BNY Mellon, remains Vice Chair of the Board.

Outgoing board member Clyde Jones was named a member of the WQED Honor Board.

WQED’s Board of Directors also approved six new members to its Community Advisory Board (CAB):

 - Paul Homick, Director of Major Gifts, Carnegie Mellon University
 - Chaz Kellem, Manager of Diversity Initiatives, Pittsburgh Pirates
 - Laurie Mizrahi, President and CEO, Mizrahi, Inc.
 - Suzi Neft, Owner, Suzi Neft Promotes
 - Conor J. Platt, Founder, Confluence Capital Management
 - Devon Smeal, Music Educator, West Mifflin Area School District

WQED Pittsburgh has a proud history of honors, including 134 National and Mid-Atlantic Emmy® Awards, an Academy Award, and many, many others, including two Emmy® Awards for Station Excellence. WQED was founded in 1954 as the nation’s first community-supported broadcaster. The people of WQED create, produce and distribute quality programs, products and services to engage, inform, educate and entertain the public within their community and around the world. WQED Pittsburgh is one of the first broadcasters in the country to be fully high-definition (HD) in its studio and field production capabilities. It is the parent company of WQED-TV (PBS); WQED: The Neighborhood Channel; WQED: The Create Channel; WQED Showcase; Classical WQED-FM 89.3/Pittsburgh; Classical WQEJ-FM 89.7/Johnstown; the Pittsburgh Concert Channel at WQED-HD2 (89.3-2FM) and online at www.wqed.org/fm; local and national television and radio productions; WQED Interactive (www.wqed.org) and iQ: smartmedia, WQED’s Educational initiative (www.wqed.org/edu).
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Posted on behalf of Dreamweaver Marketing Associates.  Joyce Kane is the owner of Cybertary Pittsburgh, a Virtual Administrative support company, providing virtual office support, personal and executive assistance, creative design services and light bookkeeping.  Cybertary works with businesses and busy individuals to help them work 'on' their business rather than 'in' their business.  www.Cybertary.com/Pittsburgh