WGBH Educational Foundation


The WGBH Educational Foundation is an American nonprofit organization that oversees all of the PBS member stations licensed to the state of Massachusetts: the WGBH stations in Boston and WGBY-TV in Springfield. The foundation also oversees a group of NPR member stations, including WGBH in Boston, and other productions. Other significant activities include production of prime-time and children’s content for PBS and accessible media services for people with disabilities. The foundation won a Peabody Award in 2007 for and Design Squad. WGBH Educational Foundation was established in 1951 in Boston, Massachusetts.

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 on a subchannel. and added by April 2006, Washington’s WETA. Then, WGBH and WNET team 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 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.

Financing

WGBH reported a total revenue of $190,500,789 for the tax year ending June 30, 2015, in their last IRS Form 990 Income Tax Statement filing.

Board of Trustees

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, Jackie Jenkins-Scott of Wheelock College, Frederick M. Lawrence of Brandeis University, and L. Rafael Reif of MIT.
The remaining board members are:
Public Media Management is a joint venture of WGBH and Sony Electronics 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 launched the system next. In August 2015, Maryland Public Television switched to using their system.