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WEDU gets $1M donation, a record

Money from the Joy McCann Foundation will fund a new health show, a reading program and a new high-tech TV production van for the Tampa PBS affiliate.

By ERIC DEGGANS
Published August 29, 2006

It is a gift that would brighten any nonprofit group's year: a $1-million donation given to Tampa PBS affiliate WEDU-Ch. 3 by the Joy McCann Foundation - the largest contribution from a single donor in the TV station's 48-year history.

But the donation, announced Monday by WEDU, also represents a milestone for the area's highest-rated public TV outlet - an example of how far it has come since the dark days five years ago when fiscal shortfalls forced officials to lay off nearly one-third of the station's staff.

WEDU has agreed to use the McCann Foundation gift in specific ways: $25,000 to create a pilot episode of a local health information show, Smart Health, to be hosted by former WFTS-Ch. 28 anchor Angie Moreschi; $70,000 to fund reading programs for children and its Ready to Learn literacy outreach effort; $208,000 for a mobile TV production truck with high definition TV capabilities and $500,000 to establish the Joy McCann Foundation Local Programming Endowment for the station.

The station received its second-largest gift from a single donor earlier this year: $635,000 contributed in June by the estate of Betty Price Chellman, a Sarasota woman who willed her fortune to WEDU and the Selby Public Library upon her death last year.

"We are fortunate that people are recognizing what we bring to the community," said WEDU general manager Richard Lobo, a retired commercial TV executive who has worked at stations in Cleveland, Chicago and Miami. He came to the Tampa station in June 2002 after the sudden retirement of Stephen L. Rogers.

When Lobo first took over, WEDU had just laid off 18 people from a 62-member staff and was struggling with $2-million in budget cuts and a slump in memberships. Now, the general manager cites four straight years of budget surpluses and staffing levels that have risen again to 53 full-time employees.

The donation is also notable because the McCann Foundation - led by Joy McCann Daugherty, the wealthy widow of former Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team owner Hugh Culverhouse - has been involved in a court battle over the way in which its donations have been distributed in recent years.

Culverhouse, as outlined in a Times story last year, wrote a deathbed letter in 1994 directing trustees to donate much of his foundation's money to 38 charities, including WEDU. But the state Attorney General's Office eventually joined a legal struggle over changes in the foundation's lineup of beneficiaries, which saw funds flow instead to recipients with connections to the former Mrs. Culverhouse's then-husband, Dr. Robert Daugherty.

In March, Joy McCann Daugherty filed papers seeking to dissolve her five-year marriage to Dr. Daugherty. A representative from the McCann Foundation did not return a call Monday and a representative from Attorney General Charlie Crist's office could not say how the donation might relate to the current legal struggle, because WEDU was among the 38 charities originally listed by Mr. Culverhouse.

But Lobo remained encouraged by the donation - which WEDU has received and begun to use - as confirmation of the station's achievements, including raising $12.5-million to fund the transition to digital TV technologies.

"The staff and I have has been working very hard," he said. "We have to get into the new game (of digital TV) without losing the people who rely on us for our core programming, who may not even have e-mail. It's a tough balance."

[Last modified August 29, 2006, 05:35:44]