WGBH Annual Report 1999



With only 200 days to go before the 35th annual WGBH/Channel 2 Auction, volunteer chair Debbie Katsiroubas has little time to pause as she works the phone, assembling the volunteer teams that will take calls, run with the bids, and package more than 6,000 items. The nine-day televised auction is the single largest community-based annual volunteer event in Massachusetts.	Producer/director Michael Kirk and editor Steve Audette incorporate police video into Frontline's The Killer at Thurston High, the story of Oregon high school shooter Kip Kinkel. WGBH's Frontline gained exclusive access to police investigators and was the only news program to obtain an audiotape of Kinkel's harrowing confession. Winner of two 1999 George Foster Peabody Awards, Frontline is television's premier investigative journalism series, presenting hard-hitting documentaries on critical issues facing the nation and the world.	Executive producer Margaret Drain and senior producer Mark Samels review the script for The American Experience's Eleanor Roosevelt, a provocative portrait of the woman whom historian Geoffrey Ward calls "one of the best politicians of the 20th century." The film and companion Web site launch the 12th season of The American Experience, which earned the 1999 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Non-Fiction Series for its powerful biography, MacArthur--the second year in a row the series has won this top honor.