Taking a local leap at WEDU

A new leader gave a struggling TV station a new focus, and turned its fortunes around. Now, what's next for Dick Lobo and WEDU?

By Eric Deggans, Times TV/Media Critic
Published February 11, 2008

Dick Lobo, president and CEO of WEDU-Ch. 3, hurries from one meeting to the next at the public television station's headquarters in Tampa.
	[Ken Helle | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Ken Helle | Times] Dick Lobo, center, listens to a presentation during an afternoon board meeting. Members Barry Alpert, left, and Alan Bomstein look over reports as the presentation is made. Lobo's ideas helped reverse the station's sagging outlook. [John Pendygraft | Times] Tim Russert gets his makeup touched up at WEDU, which earns income renting studios to national programs for satellite uplinks. [John Pendygraft | Times] Tim Russert, right, with Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, taped an episode of Meet the Press at WEDU in Tampa last month.

TAMPA - As victory laps go, this one looked pretty grand.

Dick Lobo stood before a sprawling collection of tables packed into the A la Carte Pavilion, facing a gauzy forest of sweeping white cloth and black ribbons.

The bustling room provided a glamorous backdrop for a celebration of area charities dubbed the Be More Awards, organized by Tampa's WEDU-Ch. 3, the larger of the city's two public television stations.

Lobo, WEDU's president and CEO, beamed like a proud parent. Nodding to Mayor Pam Iorio and local radio star Mason Dixon, he announced that PBS would soon turn the Be More Awards, developed by the station's communications director, Laura Turner, into a national template for public TV stations.

"I'm humbled to be a small part of such an incredible achievement," he told the crowd of 400-plus, basking in a wave of enthusiastic applause for his team's work.

Hard to believe all this sprang from a station that seemed on the verge of collapse just six years ago.

In late 2001, longtime president Stephen Rogers resigned after $2-million in budget cuts and 18 layoffs - nearly a third of the staff.

Some suggested WEDU might merge with the area's other PBS station, WUSF-Ch. 16. But Lobo, a retired, Sarasota-based TV executive who had worked at NBC stations in Miami and Chicago, had a powerful idea for revitalizing one of Florida's most-watched public television outlets.

"You look at the commercial TV stations - Channel 13 owned by Fox, Channel 8 owned by Media General and so forth - all their profits go back to corporate owners and shareholders outside the area," said Lobo, 71.

"Where in the 500-channel universe are people going to see a local opera or visit (Sarasota's) Ringling Art Museum? That's the role we need to play, now and in the digital future."

These days, the station offers five locally produced series and four digital TV channels. High-profile donations include $1-million from the Joy McCann Foundation in 2006 and $1.5-million from Monroe and Suzette Berkman last year.

The station recently established a $5-million endowment. And Charity Navigator, one of the nation's largest evaluators of nonprofits, has given WEDU its highest, four-star rating three years running.

As WEDU celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, the area's first community-owned TV station has largely rebounded, thanks to help from a guy with four decades' experience on the commercial side of broadcasting.

"I think Dick Lobo arrived at the perfect time," said Geoff Simon, host of the station's monthly Suncoast Business Forum and newly elected board chairman. "(WEDU) needed an infusion of new ideas, new energy, new vision, and Dick turned out to be the perfect guy."

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In five decades, WEDU has had just four presidents - none with a background outside academia, government or public broadcasting before Lobo.

So his arrival in June 2002 brought instant change, starting with his belief that WEDU's success would follow from expansion to more corners of its 16-county coverage area.

It didn't hurt that the new president was a jaunty, energetic figure with endless ideas and a knack for wooing deep-pocketed donors.

Friends on his e-mail list get a stream of messages daily, from notes about President Bush's effort to cut back more than $400-million in public television funding to funny quotes from Groucho Marx.

This unapologetic liberal - whose wife, Caren, serves on presidential candidate Barack Obama's national fundraising committee - has also marshaled the support of longstanding area culture boosters hoping to see strong leadership.

"We were kind of asleep at the wheel," said Leah Brainard, vice president of human resources at WEDU and a 45-year employee. "We never had a lot of capital . . . and it's easy to get kind of insular."

Raised in Ybor City as a grandson of Cuban immigrants, Lobo knew what it felt like to buy a membership to his hometown PBS station, only to feel left out by its Tampa-centric focus as a retiree in Sarasota.

"We have wonderful viewers in Manatee and Sarasota, Polk and Pasco," Lobo said. "We need to pay attention to them and their needs."

Brainard, 66, was hired in 1962 as a receptionist, making about $55 a week doing everything from helping the president's secretary to appearing on camera as a maid. As the station's longest-serving employee, she can't remember a time when the company has been on better financial footing.

"The layoffs were . . . it was just heartbreaking," said Brainard, who blamed a required $12-million conversion to digital broadcasting for 2001's financial upheaval (WEDU became the first local station to broadcast in digital in 2003). "(But) it's been five-plus years of incredible progress since then."

Coming to a station that depended heavily on membership subscriptions and government funding, Lobo had to find new capital. Already, the board had implemented some tough cuts, allowing him to hire key staffers to spearhead important initiatives.

Instead of one large solution, it turns out there were several small ones: increased corporate underwriting of shows; donations from Sweetbay grocery stores and the Kresge Foundation for the digital broadcasting transition; use of freelance producers and talent to limit staff costs.

Revenue also came from new places: WEDU earned more than $900,000 last year renting studios to national programs for satellite uplinks, allowing broadcasters to quiz guests sitting in WEDU's studios and host shows such as Meet the Press and Gerald Rivera's Geraldo at Large from the Tampa facility.

"The other day, when Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, (Fox News Channel host) Greta Van Susteren was here and she couldn't get back to New York," said Lobo. "On any given day you might come through here and see Greta doing her show because she has a boat (nearby)."

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An $11-million budget and appearances by Geraldo Rivera seem a long way from WEDU's beginnings as a humble broadcast home for "tele-lessons" shown at area public schools.

WEDU's debut came Oct. 27, 1958, airing from a renovated military Quonset hut with a lesson from a nervous third-grade reading teacher.

Now filling a building along North Boulevard with more than 50,000 square feet, WEDU faces different challenges as a magnet mostly for the very old and very young - appealing to senior citizens and pre-schoolers.

Lobo admits the often-repeated Suze Orman specials and doo-wop concerts aired during membership drives are disruptive to the regular audience. But membership donations still produce 30 percent of their budget, their largest single funding source.

Former WEDU public affairs host Syl Farrell, laid off in 2001, compliments Lobo's success while lamenting the station's lack of local content created by people of color.

"My concern has always been - why don't you have more blacks doing programming, and not necessarily aimed at blacks?" he said. (Officials at WEDU point to documentary specials such as Central Avenue Remembered, about the main street in Tampa's black community, as evidence of diversity.)

Forgoing on-air celebrations, WEDU will commemorate its golden anniversary at other events, including last month's Be More Awards and Sojourn, a gala for 416 people held Feb. 2. On Friday, WEDU will welcome Washington Week host Gwen Ifill, who will tape her PBS show at the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg.

With so much activity, it's easy to overlook an important coincidence: The same month WEDU turns 50, Lobo turns 72.

How long can he keep doing this?

"Once the digital TV transition is over (in February 2009) and once our 50th anniversary is over, I will think seriously about what to do," said Lobo, noting that he is by far the oldest general manager working in Tampa TV. "But I have no retirement date yet.

"I'm like Brett Favre . . . I just keep going."

Eric Deggans can be reached at deggans@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8521. See his blog at blogs.tampabay.com/media.

Fast facts

On WEDU

- WEDU's original local series include: Florida This Week; A Gulfcoast Journal With Jack Perkins; Suncoast Business Journal; Up Close with Cathy Unruh; and Smart Health, featuring former WFTS-Ch. 28 anchor Angie Moreschi.

- Washington Week host Gwen Ifill brings her PBS show on Friday to the Mahaffey Theater, 400 First St. S, St. Petersburg, for two tapings beginning at 3 p.m. Visit www.WEDU.org or call (813) 254-9338, ext. 2234, for free tickets.

[Last modified February 8, 2008, 16:54:48]