GBH president will step down at end of 2022
Photo | Lou Jones for GBH
Jonathan Abbott, outgoing president and CEO of GBH
Jonathan Abbott, president and CEO of GBH, will step down at the end of the year, the public media organization announced Wednesday.
GBH is based in Boston but runs several other bureaus, including an outpost in Worcester, which opened in 2020.
Abbott has served as GBH’s chief executive for 15 years, and has been with the organization for 23. Overall, he has worked in public media for 34 years.
Under Abbott, GBH has grown to include 10 digital and broadcast media channels, spurring the group’s name change and rebrand in 2020. The organization had been known as WGBH. No longer just a broadcast network, the W was dropped.
Financially, Abbott helped grow GBH’s endowment from $63 million to $523 million, as well as oversaw the completion of a $215 million capital campaign last year. It was the largest campaign in public media history.
Abbott is credited with affiliating GBH with Public Radio International, as well as Public Radio Exchange, better known as PRX. He also enhanced partnerships with others, including PBS, with whom GBH launched PBS LearningMedia, a service that provides classroom resources to teachers across the country, among other accomplishments.
“Jon’s vision and passion for the mission of public media to serve all people and to promote educational equity and citizenship has made GBH both a vital resource and a local treasure,” said Ann Fudge, chair of the GBH Board of Trustees, in a statement.
Abbott began his public media career at the NPR/PBS station KQED in San Francisco, where he helped launch the country’s first all-news NPR station. He then moved to PBS in Washington, DC. He joined GBH as vice president and general manager in 1998.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments