Abby Goldstein |
After
a national search, the Public Radio Program Directors, Inc. (PRPD) announced
last week that Abby Goldstein has been chosen to be new President and Executive
Director. She will begin the job on June 17, 2019. She is currently the GM of
AAA WYEP in Pittsburgh.
Goldstein
said in a PRPD press release [link]:
“I am honored that the PRPD Board has placed
their confidence in me. I have deep respect for the mission and goals of PRPD
to nurture, promote and support the public media programming community so we
can serve our audiences with distinction.”
Goldstein
is well known in public radio circles and at PRPD. She served on the PRPD Board of Directors
from 2008 – 2016. PRPD’s national headquarters will move to Pittsburgh after the PRPD conference in late August.
She
told Current’s Tyler Faulk [link],
that PRPD will continue to be “the
central place for the conversations around audience development.”
Goldstein
says she wants to increase PRPD’s year-round activity, including webinars, strategic
gatherings, research projects and partnerships with other organizations.
GOLDSTEIN: “I AM A HARDCORE RADIO PERSON”
Abby
Goldstein wrote those works for her bio on the WYEP website [link]. She has
perhaps the widest radio background of any PRPD President.
Her
passion for radio started early when her family grew up in northern New Jersey
where her mother and father were enthusiastic radio listeners. She wrote in her
bio:
“As a kid my mother had
us listening to Jean Shepherd and Bob & Ray and I eventually found WPLJ
where I soaked up the music in the early days of free form album rock.”
By
the 1970s her family moved to Texas. NPR was beginning to have an impact and
she says “my mother had become helplessly
addicted to NPR and she began volunteering at the local public radio station.”
Abby Goldstein at KLVU |
The
station was KVLU in Beaumont, Texas. Goldstein was a board operator and late night jazz host.
In
2018, Goldstein told the online radio and records ‘zine All Access [link] about
her move to Dallas, a place that was very important for her:
“I moved to Dallas in
1989 and spent six years on the air at KERA when it was a dual format NPR
news/Triple A station, followed by several years in commercial radio at 93.3
The Zone, 99.5 The Wolf and 95.3 The Range, doing fun things like producing
street festivals and booking local bands. In 2000, I went back to KERA and
spent five years as PD.
Her
experience at KERA led her to become VP/Programming at New Hampshire Public
Radio. In 2012, she became GM of 91.3 WYEP in Pittsburgh.
In
the All Access interview, Goldstein described why she loves public radio:
The air staff at WYEP |
This is a mission-focused
enterprise and that's what inspires us to do what we do every day. We like to
say that content generates audience and engagement, audience generates revenue
and revenue drives mission. The end goal here is to do something extraordinary
and meaningful for the community. It's the most rewarding work I've ever done.
Perhaps
most important, Goldstein is a kind and loyal friend of many folks in public
media who enjoys the simple things in life. She told All Access that all she needs
to make a day worthwhile is “a piece of
chocolate and a good, hard laugh.”
KEN SAYS: Congratulations to Abby
and PRPD. The Board made an excellent choice when they chose her to be the
sixth leader of the organization.
Congrats to Abby. She is much missed in Texas where I will be for ever grateful for her work on Kera.
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