50 Years of Bringing You the Best

			2000s
			2000 Between the Lions gets kids wild about reading; applause comes from critics (TV Critics Association Award for Best Children's Program) and teachers (National Education Association), too. Culture Shock tells stories of cultural controversy in now-classic works of art. March 15 - WNAN 91.1 signs on as a service of WGBH, giving Nantucket residents their first local NPR station; on September 25, WCAI 90.1 debuts to serve Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard. Television's longest-running prime-time drama series celebrates its 30th year by introducing ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre's American Collection, works by American authors. WGBH launches Eye on Education, a multimedia initiative (and partnership with The Boston Globe and WILD 1090am) that looks at how educational reform is shaping Boston's public schools.
			2001 The WGBH Expanding the Vision Campaign brings in more than $43 million from more than 19,000 donors, strengthening the future by building funds for endowment, program venture, and digital innovation.
			The companion DVD to American's Experience's Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided is the first DVD/video fully accessible to blind and deaf users. The world's most unlikely art critic tours six great US museums on Sister Wendy's American Collection. Evolution takes America on a scientific journey into where we're from and where we're going. Public television's most popular series gains a British cousin when WGBH adds Antiques Roadshow UK to the PBS lineup.
			2002 WGBH announces plans to move to a new location: a seven-story building in Boston's Brighton Landing, with an adjoining broadcast studio to be built. The move is slated for 2005.
			The first American Mystery! airs, with a television adaptation of Tony Hillerman's Skinwalkers, gathering the largest PBS audience for a single program all year. Nearly triple the usual prime-time audience tunes in to watch ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre's Forsyte Saga, a new, updated version of John Galsworthy's epic about love, lust, and money. American Experience profiles the year's Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Jimmy Carter, as part of its presidential series. The WGBH Forum Network debuts, offering live and on-demand Webcasts of free public lectures from a variety of Boston venues. Commanding Heights Online marks the first time WGBH has developed a fully interactive video and information experience in conjunction with a broadcast program. The site receives a prestigious British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award. WGBH Radio's Art of the States launches www.artofthestates.org, the first and only place online that gives international exposure to new American composers. The site offers high-quality audio streams, extensive program notes, and links to related Web sites of composers, performers, publishers, and record labels. WGBH launches Global Connections, a unique family of Web sites created to help teachers, students, and the general public learn more about events around the world through readings, lesson plans, links, timelines, and maps. A major research study, based on the Between the Lions Mississippi Literacy Initiative, finds that children's reading skills significantly improved after regularly watching Between the Lions. WGBH is honored with a special "institutional" Peabody Award for 50 years of service: "An example of the best. This preeminent organization has served its community, the nation, and the world."
			2003 Celebrating 20 years of delivering hard-hitting perspectives, Frontline draws on its extensive archives for a series on terrorism, resulting in the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Gold Baton Award.
			American Experience's Daughter from Danang is recognized with the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival and nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature. Peabody Awards go to American Experience's Monkey Trial, ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre's Othello, Masterpiece Theatre's American Collection's Almost a Woman, and Frontline's Shattered Dreams of Peace: The Road from Oslo. During the war in Iraq, more than two million listeners tune in The World for a non-US-centric voice on international news.
			Brendan Hogan joins 89.7 as the host of Blues on WGBH. WGBH launches a unique educational resource, Teachers' Domain, on the National Science Digital Library site and also at teachersdomain.org. Teachers' Domain uses the vast multimedia resources from WGBH's archives and tailors them for classroom use. Public broadcasting icon and WGBH's biggest booster David Otis Ives dies at the age of 84. Ives served first as director of Development (1960-70), then as president (1970-84), and until his retirement as vice chair of the WGBH Board of Trustees and chair of the Executive Committee (1984-2001). WGBH 89.7 can now be heard on Nantucket, interference free, by tuning in WNCK 89.5. The Blues premieres on PBS. Led by Executive Producer Martin Scorsese, seven directors explore the blues through their own personal styles. The TV series anchors a multimedia celebration of the blues, including a 13-part national radio series presented by WGBH Radio.
			Simply Ming joins the PBS lineup, a new WGBH-produced series starring celebrity chef Ming Tsai. WGBH joins with the City of Boston to a launch Boston Kids & Family TV, offering high-quality children's programs during the day and an adult life-learning menu at night. WGBH teams with Sun Microsystems to open the world's first Sun iForce Solution Center for Digital Asset Management. The Center provides testing facilities to help media, entertainment, and broadcast companies more quickly and efficiently acquire, organize, distribute, and reuse their valuable digital assets.
			2004 The number of WGBH television channels available to New England-area viewers increases dramatically. In addition to WGBH 2, 44 and Boston Kids & Family TV, WGBH now offers WGBH World, WGBH Create and 'GBH Kids. WGBH On Demand is available on Comcast Digital Cable. And WGBH High-Definition is available to the small but growing population with TVs capable of receiving HD.
			WGBH's Peep and The Big Wide World, an animated series that teaches science to preschoolers, debuts in April during the Ready Set Learn! block on TLC and the Discovery Kids channel. The US Justice Department cites American Experience's The Murder of Emmett Till as a key influence in its decision to reopen an inquiry into the 1955 murder of Till, an event that helped spark the civil rights movement. Boston is the center of the political universe in July, when the Democratic National Convention comes to the Fleet Center. WGBH's Greater Boston and NECN's NewsNight co-produce two hours of live coverage nightly from the convention, providing coverage of events on the convention floor, including interviews with lawmakers, Democratic officials and convention delegates. WGBH is the first station in the country to offer the 2004 presidential debates as videos on demand via our WGBH On Demand service on Comcast. The debates are available for viewing at anytime for 48 hours after their original broadcast. In October, WGBH's Postcards from Buster, a half-hour Arthur spin-off, premieres on PBS. The series blends animation with live-action footage of Buster's travel adventures throughout the United States, with forays into Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. WGBH is the first public radio broadcaster to jump into podcasting, a new method of online audio distribution. In October Morning Stories with Tony Kahn becomes available once a week for download as a podcast, allowing it to be played at the listener's convenience on an MP3 player like an iPod.
			2005 An episode of Postcards from Buster receives national press attention when the US secretary of education Margaret Spellings denounces PBS for spending public funds to tape a Buster episode that features children with two mothers. PBS chooses not to broadcast the episode, while nearly 50 local stations (including WGBH) air it. The WGBH Forum Network goes national. Four other public stations join WGBH to collect public lectures in their communities and stream them online. The lectures are part of a national archive available on all the participating stations' Web sites. WGBH holds the ceremonial groundbreaking for our future headquarters in Brighton. Governor Mitt Romney and Mayor Tom Menino are among the state and local officials on hand to celebrate the milestone and dig the symbolic first shovel of dirt. WGBH Radio expands its regional service on the Cape and Islands with a new frequency, 94.3. Reaching the lower and mid-Cape, WZAI 94.3, based in Brewster, will serve the portion of the Cape that sometimes does not have any access to a public radio news format. WGBH's Media Access Group makes music history with the first audio description of a music video. Stevie Wonder's "So What the Fuss" features audio description recorded by hip-hop star Busta Rhymes, making the video accessible to people who are blind or have low vision. WGBH receives its largest-ever gift: a $7 million grant to our Breaking New Ground Campaign from the Yawkey Foundation, in support of our new studios in Brighton. Time Warp Trio, a WGBH book-based action/adventure series, helps ignite 6- to 11-year-old viewers' interest in history following its debut on NBC's Discovery Kids. WGBH Create goes national, as a syndicated version of this digital lifestyle channel is made available to public TV stations across the country. WGBH launches Rx For Survival—A Global Health Challenge, an ambitious multimedia project that includes a six-hour documentary filmed in 20 countries; an interactive Web site; and an extensive outreach campaign, including the Rx For Child Survival impact campaign and a global health summit organized in collaboration with Time magazine.
			2006 WGBH is one of the founding media partners to make content available through the newly launched Google Video Store. Video segments from select WGBH series are made available for free download alongside content from CBS, NBC and other networks.
			Critics hail Masterpiece Theatre's new production of Bleak House as "superb," "spectacular" and "perhaps the most glorious Masterpiece Theatre of all time." Simply Ming launches public TV's first tip-related vodcasts, as specially produced video segments illustrating how to filet a fish, make the perfect rice and more are made available for free download. WGBH Radio launches its new high-definition digital radio service. Owners of HD radios (and online listeners) are able to hear 89.7's existing news, jazz and classical programming, as well as WGBH's new, 24-hour all-classical HD radio channel.
			WGBH unleashes Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman, a reality/game show that blends live-action and animation, as six kids complete a series of science-related challenges under the direction of an animated dog. The world's most inquisitive little monkey makes his television debut, as WGBH brings Curious George to PBS Kids viewers nationwide. The half-hour animated series uses George's antics to teach preschoolers key concepts in math, science and engineering. WGBH joins with Children's Hospital Boston, the Boston Public Health Commission and other Boston organizations to launch "Kids with Asthma Can..." an ambitious citywide outreach campaign that uses characters from WGBH's award-winning Arthur and Postcards from Buster to educate local families about managing their children's asthma. Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie premieres, transporting viewers around the world for the latest tips, trends and techniques from cutting-edge culinary tastemakers.
			2007 Design Squad debuts — WGBH's fast-paced reality/competition TV series and interactive Web site for older kids, using a science- and math-based curriculum to present engineering as a fun challenge and a career path. WGBH launches Maria Hinojosa: One-On-One, featuring the award-winning journalist interviewing America's foremost Latino thinkers, artists, writers, and opinion leaders. A version in which interviews are conducted in Spanish runs on V-me, PBS's new Spanish-language digital TV service. A new interactive Web site from WGBH, Meet the Greens, promotes environmental literacy among 9- to 12-year-olds, through the adventures of a family named the Greens.
			From the Top: Live from Carnegie Hall makes its PBS debut. Based on the popular public radio program, the series showcases the musical talents, offbeat humor, and stories of America's rising young classical musicians. World goes national. The digital TV channel WGBH created with WNET/NY (one of a suite of WGBH digital channels) gives programs on science, history, nature, and news another stage.
			WGBH moves into new, all-digital studios in Brighton, Massachusetts. A dozen opening events kick off a more welcoming, more transparent, greener WGBH that will be able to invite the public in for screenings, performances, and tours. WGBH celebrates the completion of its most ambitious, and successful, capital campaign ever: Breaking New Ground: The Campaign for WGBH, which raised more than $64 million from 25,000 supporters across New England, whose generosity helped build WGBH's new studios and fuel the programs and services that will be created there. After 37 years at WGBH, 24 of them as president, Henry Becton, Jr. hands the reins to Executive Vice President and COO Jonathan Abbott.
			2008 The longest-running prime-time drama series on American television showcases all six of Jane Austen's novels. The Masterpiece season is divided into Masterpiece Classic (winter/spring, hosted by Gillian Anderson), Masterpiece Mystery! (summer, hosted by Alan Cumming), and Masterpiece Contemporary (fall). WGBH's new Brighton studios are officially "green," with LEED certification granted by the US Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. Green features include construction from 95% recycled steel, motion-sensitive office lighting, UV-filtering glass and motorized sunshades, water-conserving features, solar panels generating 100 kilowatts of power, and a "green roof." The American Institute of Architects, the Boston Society of Architects, and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino designate the new studios one of Boston's "12 Greenest Buildings." WGBH begins offering high-quality video clips and other educational resources on iTunes U, a dedicated area of the iTunes Store featuring educational content. WGBH Radio launches its third HD channel: 89.7 HD3, a 24-hour news and public affairs service for Boston-area listeners with HD radios. The service is produced by WCAI, our Cape and Islands NPR© station. WGBH launches a new digital high-definition television service, WGBH HD, mirroring the schedule for WGBH 2; the new service replaces the HD channel's former content, a loop of HD programs supplied by PBS.
			The Takeaway-a live, conversational, personality-driven news program with hosts John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji-debuts on 89.7. The new morning series is a joint production of WGBH, the BBC, and PRI along with WNYC New York and The New York Times. WGBH Radio becomes part of Second Life®, the online, 3-D virtual world imagined and created by its residents.
			WGBH's latest book-based children's series debuts: Martha Speaks features a dog that gains the gift of gab after eating vegetable soup. The vocabulary-building TV show and website are designed to help children become successful readers and learners.

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