The WGBH Educational Foundation (also known as GBH since August 2020) is an American public broadcasting group based in Boston, Massachusetts. Established in 1951, it holds the licenses to all of the PBS member stations in Massachusetts, and operates its flagship station WGBH-TV, sister station WGBX-TV, and a group of NPR member stations in the state. It also owns

WGBY-TV WGBY-TV (channel 57) is a PBS member television station in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States. Owned by the Boston-based WGBH Educational Foundation, it is a sister station to that organization's flagship and namesake, WGBH-TV (channel 2 ...

in Springfield, which is operated by

New England Public Media New England Public Media is a non-profit organization that operates the public broadcasting outlets in Western Massachusetts, including the Springfield area. It operates the region's NPR member, Amherst-licensed WFCR (New England Public Radio) ...

under a program service agreement. Nationally, WGBH is known as the distributor of a number of major PBS programs, including '' American Experience'', '' Arthur'', ''

Frontline Front line refers to the forward-most forces on a battlefield. Front line, front lines or variants may also refer to: Books and publications * ''Front Lines'' (novel), young adult historical novel by American author Michael Grant * ''Frontlines ...

'', '' Masterpiece'', and '' Nova'', among others; as the owner of Public Radio International until 2018, a syndicate of public radio programming; and for its role in the development of closed captioning and audio description technologies for broadcast television.

History

In 2003, WGBH and the City of Boston formed a joint venture for Boston Kids & Family TV channel that replaces one of the city's cable access channels. Boston Kids was launched on October 31, 2003. By December 2005, Boston’s WGBH and New York City's WNET were already broadcasting a local version of

World In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

on a subchannel. and added by April 2006, Washington’s WETA. Then, WGBH and WNET teamed up with PBS, APT and NETA to roll out a national version of the local channels as PBS World. The network was launched nationally on August 15, 2007. In July 2012, WGBH acquired Public Radio International (PRI). PRI would continue with its own board while WGBH would be able to distribute more of its programs through PRI. In November 2015, WGBH purchased GlobalPost, with editorial operation and reporting resources being merged with PRI's The World news staff. On August 27, 2020, it was announced that WGBH would shorten its name to "GBH" as part of a larger corporate reimaging (which saw the adoption of purple as a new corporate color, and a font originally commissioned for

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become a ...

as its new corporate typeface) The foundation stated that due to its present-day multi-platform operations, the full WGBH

call sign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally ass ...

was too synonymous with broadcast media; "WGBH" will still be used as part of the organization's formal name. All other WGBH-owned and operated stations similarly dropped the W from their respective brandings, such as WCRB rebranding as "CRB Classical 99.5".

Board of Trustees

Richard M. Burnes Jr. of Charles River Ventures is the chair of the board as of 2014, replacing Amos Hostetter Jr., who left the board. Henry P. Becton Jr., former WGBH President, and Maureen L. Ruettgers, the wife of former EMC Corporation CEO Michael Ruettgers, are vice chairs. Jonathan C. Abbott, as WGBH president, is also on the board. William N. Thorndike Jr., managing partner of the Housatonic Partners private equity firm, is on the board of trustees as the chair of the WGBH board of overseers. The presidents of four regional universities are institutional trustees: Joseph E. Aoun of

Northeastern University Northeastern University (NU) is a private research university with its main campus in Boston. Established in 1898, the university offers undergraduate and graduate programs on its main campus as well as satellite campuses in Charlotte, North Ca ...

, Jackie Jenkins-Scott of Wheelock College, Frederick M. Lawrence of

Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , p ...

, and L. Rafael Reif of MIT. The remaining board members are: * Amy Abrams, wife of Abrams Capital founder David C. Abrams * Terrie F. Bloom, wife of Berkshire Partners managing director Bradley Bloom * Laura A. DeBonis, former

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

manager and wife of hedge fund executive and State Department official Scott Nathan * Juan Enriquez, managing director of Excel Venture Management and husband of Cabot family heir Marjorie Cabot Lewis * Ann L. Gund, wife of architect Graham Gund * Susan B. Kaplan, daughter of Stanley H Kaplan and president of the Kaplin Family Foundation * Marjie B. Kargman, wife of Commonwealth Capital Ventures founder Robert Kargman * Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, sociologist * William A. Lowell, partner of the

Choate, Hall & Stewart Choate Hall & Stewart LLP, commonly referred to as "Choate", is a Boston-based law firm. The firm is known for having a one-office approach to its operations. Recognition In 2019, The Vault named Choate one of the top ten law firms to work fo ...

law firm * Richard K. Lubin, managing director of Berkshire Partners * Oscar F. Malcolm, president of Darien Capital Management * Christopher J. McKown, husband of

Fidelity Investments Fidelity Investments, commonly referred to as Fidelity, earlier as Fidelity Management & Research or FMR, is an American multinational financial services corporation based in Boston, Massachusetts. The company was established in 1946 and is o ...

executive

Abigail Johnson Abigail Pierrepont Johnson (born December 19, 1961) is an American billionaire businesswoman, and the granddaughter of the late Edward C. Johnson II; the founder of Fidelity Investments. Since 2014, Johnson has been president and chief executive ...

* Cathy E. Minehan, former president of the

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, commonly known as the Boston Fed, is responsible for the First District of the Federal Reserve, which covers New England: Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont and all of Connecticut excep ...

* Paul R. Murphy, former partner at the Foley Hoag law firm and former counsel for

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educati ...

* Melinda Alliker Rabb,

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

professor and wife of Stop & Shop heir James Rabb *

Henri A. Termeer Henri A. Termeer (February 28, 1946 – May 12, 2017) was a Dutch biotechnology executive and entrepreneur who is considered a pioneer in corporate strategy in the biotechnology industry for his tenure as CEO at Genzyme. Termeer created a busine ...

, retired chairman, president, and CEO of

Genzyme Corporation Genzyme was an American biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since its acquisition in 2011, Genzyme (also known as Genzyme Transgenics Corp or GTC Biotherapeutics) has been a fully owned subsidiary of Sanofi. In 2010, Genzyme ...

* David T. Ting, president of Mugar Enterprises, the investment firm of

Star Market Star Market is a New England chain of supermarkets based in Greater Boston. It was owned by the Mugar family and started in 1915. The company was sold to The Jewel Companies, Inc. in 1964 and later to Investcorp, which in turn sold the chain t ...

heir David Mugar * Hans Ziegler, retired senior managing director of Bernstein Global Wealth Management

Units

* First 8 Studios, learning mobile app design group for kids ages 8 and younger * Forum Network, a Lowell Institute funded online lecture * GlobalPost * PBS Distribution, a joint venture with PBS to distribute PBS and WGBH programs to various markets, home video, foreign, and commercial * PBS LearningMedia, a joint venture with PBS to distribute teacher material related to PBS programs * WGBH Education

Radio

* WCAI * WCRB *

WGBH WGBH may refer to: * WGBH Educational Foundation, based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States ** WGBH (FM), a public radio station at Boston, Massachusetts on 89.7 MHz owned by the WGBH Educational Foundation ** WGBH-TV WGBH-TV (channel 2), ...

* WNAN * WZAI WCAI, WNAN, and WZAI are the Cape,

Coast The coast, also known as the coastline or seashore, is defined as the area where land meets the ocean, or as a line that forms the boundary between the land and the coastline. The Earth has around of coastline. Coasts are important zones in n ...

, and Islands (CCI) NPR stations, serving part of southeastern Massachusetts.

Former Radio Properties

* Public Radio International (merged with Public Radio Exchange in 2018)

Television

* WGBH-TV: the foundation's flagship station * WGBX-TV: its secondary Boston station *

: Springfield, Massachusetts station; Operated by

under a program service operating agreement. *

Create (TV network) Create is an American digital broadcast public television network broadcast on digital subchannels of PBS member stations. The network broadcasts how-to, DIY and other lifestyle-oriented instructional programming 24 hours a day. History Create ...

, a joint venture network with American Public Television (APT), WGBH, WNET, and

National Educational Telecommunications Association National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, c ...

(NETA). * World Channel, a joint venture network with WNET, NETA, and APT.

Public Media Management

Public Media Management is a joint venture of WGBH and

Sony Electronics , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

for remote TV master control services over the internet. Public Media Management was tested for a year. The services were available starting April 1, 2015, just before the two Las Vegas shows, PBS's April 8–10 TechCon and NAB Show April 11–16, to be able to showcase the service during the shows. WGBH's two Boston stations went live with PMM first followed by its Springfield, Massachusetts station WGBY in early May 2015.

New Hampshire Public Television New Hampshire PBS (NHPBS), known as New Hampshire Public Television (NHPTV) prior to October 1, 2017, is a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member network serving the U.S. state of New Hampshire. It is operated by New Hampshire Public Broadcast ...

launched the system next. In August 2015, Maryland Public Television switched to using their system.

References

External links

*
WGBH alumni websiteforum-network.orgfirst8studios.org
{{Authority control 1951 establishments in Massachusetts Culture of Boston Educational organizations based in the United States Mass media in Boston Non-profit organizations based in Boston Organizations established in 1951 Peabody Award winners Public Radio International Radio organizations in the United States Television organizations in the United States