William H. Kobin
William H. Kobin
In the history of public broadcasting in the United States – beginning in the 1950s with a handful of small “educational” stations and continuing today as a robust system of over 350 national outlets – there is a list of names that defines the system’s growth, power and influence. One of those names is William H. Kobin.
Dozens of iconic public television programs and personalities, familiar to viewers over two generations, have been marked with Bill Kobin’s stamp. He has been a hands-on producer. He served in executive positions in stations and organizations that produced multiple award-winning television broadcasts from the local to the international. He added his leadership and seasoned wisdom to many governing boards that have shaped content and direction of the public television system for decades.
THE EARLY DAYS
Born in Indianapolis, Bill was educated at the University of California at Berkeley, studying English and Psychology. His first job in television news was with the Dumont Broadcasting Company.
But he had already established himself as an admired television journalist with both ABC and CBS News credentials when he chose to leave the world of the big networks and align with the fledgling not-for-profit television start-up, NET in New York that was the precursor to the PBS system.
With that beginning, his esteemed public television career would last for over 50 years.
Prior to NET, Bill garnered Emmy nominations and acquired production credits on presidential news conferences and the inauguration of President Kennedy. He worked with many of the preeminent names in network news – Edward R. Murrow, Charles Collingwood, Walter Cronkite, Howard K. Smith, Harry Reasoner, Andy Rooney, and Eric Sevareid. These were the standard-bearers with their commitment to quality television news that generated in Bill Kobin the same commitment.
“I worked with the best,” he says. “I learned never to call a news program a ‘show’ – that was for those entertainment guys over there! The news division did serious programs, and we weren’t allowed to forget it.”
But the lure of National Educational Television (NET), then a center for national production and distribution funded by the Ford Foundation, was too enticing. He joined NET as the head of public affairs programming in 1963 and ultimately was named vice president of programming.
For the six remaining years of NET’s independent existence, Bill Kobin was able to observe and influence the phenomenon that became the public broadcasting service. His tenure coincided with the growing number of public stations around the country, with the evolution of the rudimentary national distribution system for programs, and with the cultural and political upheavals of the 1960s that he felt demanded to be examined on television.
To stretch his limited budget, Bill called on small film units and independent filmmakers to fill the schedule of diverse but important fare that he envisioned. Small but critical documentaries garnered attention both positive and negative, and explored many facets of the fight for civil rights. In 1967 Kobin launched Black Journal, the first regularly scheduled series on network television produced by African Americans, which created a firestorm of protest for its candid discussions of racial disparities and the plight of urban communities. At NET, he was also involved in the creation of An American Family, the groundbreaking documentary chronicling the Loud family of Santa Barbara that would become the forerunner of today’s documentaries.
“That was a series that almost didn’t happen,” he recalls. “We could not find a so-called ‘typical’ American family to participate, until I happened to meet Bill and Pat Loud at a party one night in Santa Barbara. They agreed to be our American Family.”
He also brought the distinctive British series The Forsythe Saga and Civilization to American public television audiences. He helped launch The Adams Chronicles, one of public television’s first genuine hits.
One of his Bill’s proudest accomplishments was convincing a young newspaper publisher named Bill Moyers to try his hand at television. Moyer’s first series, This Week, was the beginning of his long and illustrious PBS career.
Says Bill Kobin, “He was instantly excellent on-air and the series was a considerable success – to everyone but Bill. Shortly after the season ended I received a letter from him apologizing for letting me down and saying he really didn’t think he was right for television and should leave the series. Fortunately, after much discussion, he didn’t.”
While Bill Kobin prided himself on topical and sometimes controversial news programs, their impact was hampered by the “bicycle” distribution system which moved copies of the program around the country station by station. It would be some time before interconnectivity via telephone and later satellite would enable programs to be seen live.
With advancing technologies championed by Bill, NET was eventually able to be the US partner for Our World. Aired on June 25, 1967, it was the first live international satellite television production from nineteen nations, with the largest viewing audience – 400 million -- ever at that time.
As the Ford Foundation was rethinking its support of NET, Bill was drawn to another relatively new up-and-coming public television producer, Children’s Television Workshop (CTW). Now named Sesame Workshop, CTW is the production entity behind the iconic Sesame Street and other seminal children’s programs that were the first ones designed to use television as a teaching tool. He served as Vice President in charge of family and adult programming at Children’s Television Workshop for five years, before another public broadcasting position beckoned him to the Midwest.
Twin Cities Public Television
In 1977, Bill became president of KTCA/KTCI in Minneapolis/St. Paul, known as Twin Cities Public Television. It was there, as the chief executive officer serving a specific community of viewers, that he melded his broad production knowledge with his belief in public television as an indispensable and welcomed community resource.
“I wanted to stop what I saw as public television’s snobbishness,” he remembers. “I knew we wouldn’t be successful if we were to continue to be perceived as ‘high-brow’. We needed to be more popular more often.”
At Twin Cities Public Television, he initiated a five-year strategic plan to upgrade the station’s operations, image and visibility nationally. The plan began with an evaluation of the history, status and future potential of the station’s key operating areas, and included an engineering evaluation of the station’s technical equipment, much of which was seriously outdated. Bill brought in a new team of passionate but in some cases untested staff members who made important improvements in the broadcast schedule, local programs, community partnerships and fundraising.
“I think the main job of a general manager is to try to attract the most talented people that one can find and attempt to create an environment that encourages them to maximize risk-taking and use their initiative and creativity. Then you just let it happen,” he says.
KTCA/KTCI achieved an exceptional record of growth and progress during his tenure, in viewership as well as membership and support from donors, foundations and other sources. It became not only a prime resource in the local community but also a major presence in the national public television constellation, ranking in the top three most watched stations in the public television roster. After six years, when Bill made the decision to leave for another public television challenge, he was hailed as a hero in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
In 1982, he was approached about the possibility of joining the flagship station in the country’s second largest media market. It was at KCET in Los Angeles where his leadership was tested and his legacy secured.
Southern California Public Television
Bill Kobin began his presidency at KCET on January 17, 1983. He inherited a station that had been consumed for over a year with cataclysmic upheaval in its leadership, relentless negative media coverage, and financial disequilibrium. The board of directors had put the classic Sunset Boulevard studios and offices on the market in an attempt to balance the budget.
“I read the newspaper articles on an airplane coming west and almost jumped out of the plane,” Bill recalls. “When I saw the financial statements, I thought ‘where are the real statements’?”
From the beginning, Bill’s tenure was characterized by a commitment to strategic long-term planning, rather than piecemeal fixes. He set about immediately to instill an atmosphere of confidence and calm. He reorganized his senior staff and brought in new managers in both programming and fundraising. He restored salary reductions which had been implemented during the crisis. With the community sensing new stability and progress, the March 1983 on-air fundraising drive – the most important activity for attracting viewer financial support – was an unprecedented success. By the end of the year, the Sunset Boulevard lot was off the market.
Bill and his senior team identified four top priorities in their strategic plan: production and broadcasting, education, installing and working with new technologies, and entrepreneurism.
Ninety-eighty four marked KCET’s 20th anniversary, and Bill had turned the tide not just toward stability but toward growth and achievement. The station was ready to celebrate and look to the future. Anniversary activities included two weeks of the “Best of” Programming from the station’s history, including episodes from “Cosmos”, “Hollywood Television Theatre” and “KCET Journal”. The station held a huge public event at the Los Angeles Zoo, and a gala fundraiser for donors and the city’s leadership. The entire community was reinvigorated around its public television station. The March 1984 pledge drive brought in over $1 million, a staggering achievement noted across the national PBS family.
Bill Kobin and his team took the responsibility for quality, alternative programming and production very seriously. Rather than simply be a conduit for the acclaimed PBS national schedule, they built a production effort that included important local programs, regional and national titles and international co-productions. His production decisions were always characterized by quality, innovation, and challenge.
Many productions during Bill’s tenure were unprecedented in the use of television to explore the issues of the day. In November of 1984, KCET broadcast El Salvador: The Road to Peace, a live debate produced with the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, that brought together members of the public and revolutionary leaders to debate the bloody crisis in South America. The multi-award winning Life &Times, the local news program he launched, broadcast a heralded Town Hall event that explored the cause and aftermath of the brutal beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers and the resulting civil unrest.
KCET celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1989, and Bill Kobin’s success as its leader was heralded in a major New York Times story. Characterizing the station’s trajectory as “public television’s comeback story of the ‘80s”, it noted that the number of subscribers had increased by more than half and their contributions had doubled since he arrived. While viewers and subscribers were paying attention, so was the television industry. KCET’s local programs won 34 Emmy awards during Bill’s first five years.
The educational mission that Bill and his team embraced was realized in several activities. Working with RETAC – Regional Education Television Advisory Council – nearly a half million children were provided with class instruction during the early afternoon and morning viewing hours. Additionally, college credit courses were programmed during the day.
His leadership as well as his commitment to journalistic integrity was gravely tested when controversy ensued around the 1991 airing of Stop the Church, a gritty 30-minute documentary that chronicled a protest by AIDS activists at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The idea of airing the film enflamed the Los Angeles Archdiocese, and pitted the station against Archbishop Roger Mahony, who publicly called on Catholics to boycott the station. Even KCET’s board of directors was split. In an agonizing decision supported by many in the community and the national PBS family, Bill chose to air the documentary, but followed it with a live panel discussion which included those from the Catholic Archdiocese and AIDS activists.
He remembers that “it was the worst experience I’ve ever had in broadcasting, being called a bigot and anti-Catholic. That was the hardest moment of my career, but ultimately airing the film was the correct decision journalistically.”
Throughout his tenure, Bill and his team built a roster of exceptional productions that placed it in a league with the East Coast’s powerhouse producers, WGBH in Boston and WNET in New York.
A $5 million grant from the William H. Keck Foundation funded the acclaimed national science series The Astronomers. Spy Machines, Secret Intelligence, Human Quest, and the Peabody Award-winning series The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century led the list of nationally heralded public affairs titles.
Bill was committed to bringing quality drama back into KCET’s studios and he succeeded with national productions of literary classics starring award-winning actors. These included A Raisin in the Sun, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Long Shadows. His team created PBS’ first ever homegrown comedy series with the production of Trying Times, an anthology of half-hour comedies by new young playwrights.
He was also successful in securing funding for the production of two nationally lauded children’s series, Storytime and The Puzzle Place, which won multiple national awards.
Bill’s belief in the power and importance of local programming was realized with a number of Emmy-winning programs which dealt with Southern California’s diverse communities. His programming team launched the career of the ubiquitous Southland personality Huell Howser. It created and produced By the Year 2000, hosted by veteran journalists Val Zavala and Joseph Benti and featuring a community outreach program to engage viewers beyond the broadcast with program information and related resource material. Life & Times, KCET Journal and California Stories were also series that garnered local awards and significant viewership.
But Bill Kobin’s commitment to strong and impactful productions was deeply rooted in his belief that nothing could be achieved without fiscal stability. New revenue streams were a hallmark of Bill’s tenure. Under his leadership, the company began a telemarketing effort to build its member base; it was among the first stations to employ “enhanced underwriting”, allowing more leniency in corporate funding credits. The KCET Store of Knowledge was launched as a retail venture selling books and products related to public television; and Videofinders became a resource for viewers looking to purchase over 600,000 of their favorite shows. Bill was also among the first PBS station leaders to implement a planned giving program for donors.
“It was very clear many years before the federal government decided to start cutting public television allocations that we were going to have to develop new sources of revenue,” Bill recalls. “Traditional sources were already beginning to flatten out.”
Public Television Stations Association
PBS stations around the country, as well as its leaders in Washington, were taking careful note of the many new initiatives and successes happening at KCET under president Bill Kobin. His team was asked to produce a “toolbox” which was shared with the system to improve fundraising practices across the country, and Bill’s team of senior executives lent their voices to multiple national advisory committees.
Bill was always one of the system’s leaders who was called on in times of national crisis for PBS. During the political upheaval of the early 1990s, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich threatened to “zero-out” all funding for public television, which he considered “for elitists”. Bill’s team generated an expansive letter-writing campaign to Washington, reiterating PBS’ service to children, its outreach efforts, and other programs and activities unique to public broadcasting. KCET aired numerous on-air messages that featured Bill explaining the many services of the station and urging viewers to contact their elected officials.
A similar challenge appeared when cable deregulation by the FCC would have allowed cable companies to move public broadcasting stations far down the dial or remove them entirely. Over 39% of KCET’s donating members received the station via a cable carrier and being moved to a channel number in the 100s or above would have been catastrophic for the station and challenging for viewers. Again, Bill’s steady leadership and reasoned arguments featured in an on-air campaign of messages was successful in getting many local communities to pass resolutions supporting KCET. As with the station’s many fundraising activities, the national system and its other stations looked to KCET for lessons it could utilize.
Bill Kobin’s reasoned opinions and ideas born of his years of experience were eagerly sought in numerous high level public broadcasting circles. He sat on the PBS board of directors, and on its executive, budget and editorial committees. He served as vice chair of the executive council of the Pacific Mountain Network, one of public television’s regional affinity groups. He was a board member of INPUT, the international public television screening conference. He served as a member of the international council of the National Television Academy, as well as the television committee of the American Film Institute.
He was invited to join a small and prestigious list of contributors to an oral history project about television at the Center for the Study of Popular Television, housed at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
When Bill Kobin retired from KCET in 1996, he was named President Emeritus and retained a seat on the station’s board of directors. He left a station greatly changed from the one he had joined in 1983. A tangible tribute to his vision and the goals of his original Strategic Plan was the station’s new Educational Telecommunications Center, housing an interactive media center that exemplified the changing role of a public television station.
He described it at the time. “We are now in a new era of interactive, multimedia communications. KCET is transitioning into an entity which produces and provides a number of different kinds of programs and services, distributes them to a number of different kinds of audiences and does it using a number of different kinds of technologies.”
But with his retirement from KCET, Bill Kobin was not done with his service to the national institution of public broadcasting which he had loved and nurtured for 40 years. He soon became president of the PBS Major Market group, made up of the 28 largest stations in the system, and one of six PBS station affinity groups. It is a position he held for 14 years.
Upon his retirement from that post, the tributes poured in from leaders across the national public broadcasting service. Bill was nominated for the prestigious CPB Ralph Lowell Award in 2009, which recognizes outstanding contributions and achievements to public television. His legacy will endure with the millions of public television viewers of two generations who are the beneficiaries of his service.
BilL currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Fran. He has four grown children.
References[edit]
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