New President/CEO at WQED shaking things up?
May 8, 2024Could the future of WQED be in peril? Is the recently hired CEO ready to make a clean sweep of the place before moving it out of its long-time home? These are questions some may have after reading Rob Owen’s column in the Tribune-Review published Tuesday.
CEO Jason Jedlinski has a rather impressive resume spanning the last 25 years or so – including WGN in Chicago, USA Today, and most recently The Hill in Washington, D.C. But the 5 most recent job cuts (4 if you don’t include the IT position who has been invited to stay until June as they convert to an outsourced IT company) seems to indicate Mr. Jedlinski has other ideas than maintaining the ‘QED we know and love.
Mind you these positions weren’t cut due to financial misgivings. If anything, WQED appears to be financially sound these days – or at least more so than they were at the turn of the 21st Century. In fact, they have several open positions. It’s more about the direction the stati… no make that “the entity”… is apparently about to be pointing.
According to the article, “Multiple sources told TribLive that Jedlinski says linear TV is dead, PBS is irrelevant and Fred Rogers is old news. Jedlinski denied he used those exact words but acknowledged the sentiment.”
Opinions expressed on social media have been critical… and I can understand that. After all, you don’t mess with Fred!
If you haven’t seen the article yet, click the link above. I’ll be looking forward to your assessment!
Allow me to repeat a comment I made on Facebook, quoting Rob Owen’s article: “Jedlinski said he would not be satisfied if WQED became solely a distributor of PBS programming without local content but acknowledged he is looking beyond traditional TV formats.” Why doesn’t that ring true, Rob? The station’s signal has been diminished to where you need aerials as long as a city block to pull it in And not having a regular studio? How does a station operate without a regular studio? Unless, of course, WQED is doing a flashback to when one could truck in a mobile studio as WDTV did for its first telecast from Syria Mosque. But what do I know?