Remembering Jonathan Goell, by Russ Fortier

From Russ Fortier: Chris (Wenger) Goell texted me yesterday to tell me that Jonathan Goell died on September 7th. According to Chris, Jon had been in hospice, at home, and died quietly and peacefully. Some might remember Jon as the host of The Photo Show, a WGBH show that premiered in 1978 and was produced…

Read More

Celebrating Bob Ferrante

I’d like to raise a glass to Bob. He was a really special person. We all miss him terribly. There’s an awful lot to savor and celebrate.

Read More

Why has WGBH had such an impact? Five views

Fred Barzyk: “I have asked several long time producers at WGBH to take a crack at the question of ‘Why does WGBH, a local public TV station in Boston, have such an impressive impact on media, culture and innovation?’ What follows are several responses to the question.”

Read More

Fred Barzyk’s Snapshots: Scene 2

I was asked to produce and direct a program for college kids during the summer of 1967. The show featured a young Englishman who was lecturing at Tufts University. His name was David Silver and he looked a lot like Mick Jagger.

Read More

Don Fouser, Executive Producer

From Fred Barzyk: I worked with Don Fouser as his director on one of the early docu shows called Dollar Diplomacy. It was a 6-part series on America’s Vietnam experience. Don traveled with a 16 mil. Bolex film camera and shot all the material himself.

Read More

Creating NOVA (1971-76)

This entry is part 9 of 12 in the series The Michael Ambrosino Collection

From Michael Ambrosino: Science is a part of our heritage, our present culture, and a major force in determining our future. Its absence from television [in the 1970s], spoke to the ignorance of many of its gatekeepers…. Science, medicine, technology, engineering, architecture all impact our culture by determining how we live our lives!

Read More

Paik and the Video Synthesizer

From Fred Barzyk: I remember Nam June Paik telling me to stand back since TV sets sometime exploded when he did this. I backed off. The TV did not explode but gave forth a dazzling array of colors, buzzed and slowly died, never to live again.

Read More

We’re in the “understanding business”

The chance invitation to work here at WGBH placed me in an environment that was a perfect fit for my temperament and aspirations as a professional and as just a plain person. Once here, I recognized, gradually, why it felt so right as a place to work and associate.

Read More

Advocating for The Advocates … and more

From Susan Kubany I came to WGBH in 1972 to save Roger Fischer’s The Advocates series.  I was in love: Alan Dershowitz was the liberal advocate, William Rusher the conservative, and Michael Dukakis, the moderator. The debated topics were important, engaging and the drama, unique. (No liberal bias here. This was television at its finest.) I fought tenaciously…

Read More

Portraits from the ’60s

From Don Hallock Here’s a collection of images rediscovered by Steve Gilford in May, 2002. The captions are largely in his own words. Photos credited, where available. From Steve Gilford As for the Conference Room, when we moved into 125 Western, I was so struck by the size of the conference room table, I took…

Read More

40 years with ‘GBH

This entry is part 1 of 12 in the series The Michael Ambrosino Collection

From Michael Ambrosino — 2000 My first visit to WGBH was in the fall of 1955, just after TV had gone on the air at 84 Mass Ave. in Cambridge. I was at work developing a TV master plan for the University of Connecticut at the time, and wanted a tour of one of the…

Read More