Tamara Robinson

Vice President and Director of Programming
Thirteen/WNET, New York
2003 Catalyst Award, Broadcast

Tamara Robinson’s behind the scenes role in public television has transformed the face of its on-air programming. Now vice president and director of programming at WNET in New York, Robinson has shepherded an impressive list of programs and series, many of them award winners, during her 30-year career, including Nature, Great Performances, American Masters, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and Cyberchase. But what makes Robinson’s impact particularly noteworthy is her role in developing and producing programming that reflects and respects a diverse nation.

“Tammy Robinson is a luminary programmer,” says William Baker, President & CEO of Thirteen/WNET. “She is viewed without question as a leader in public television and has influenced some of the most important national programming in the history of public television.”

Robinson started her public television career as a producer at WHYY in Philadelphia, her hometown. Programming positions followed at the Public Broadcasting Service and the Corporation for Public Broadcast, as well as at WNET. After a brief spell at CBS Cable’s special projects unit, Robinson joined WETA-TV, Washington, in 1983 as senior vice president of cultural affairs programming.

She returned to Thirteen/WNET in 1995, where she is responsible for the development and production of all the station’s national and local programming. It’s a significant position at a significant station. WGBH-TV in Boston and WNET are the two largest sources of programming for public television stations nationwide.

Gerry Slater, a retired broadcast executive who hired Robinson at WETA, recalls that Robinson helped to get more minority performers for In Performance at the White House. “Tammy took the lead for us to encourage the White House to include more minority performers for the White House programs,” says Slater. “This was … outside of the norm.”

Robinson’s impact was felt in other ways, too. “She made us sensitive to some of the issues we were addressing at the station,” Slater says. “When we did the Wolf Trap series, we had interns work on the show. We didn’t pay them at that time, but Tammy made us realize that we couldn’t get minorities to work on these programs because they wouldn’t have the resources to work without money.”

Sharon Rockefeller, the current President and CEO of WETA, says that when she first met Robinson, “I was amazed by her command of the subject matter and her devotion to what she does. What comes to my mind is the range of what she’s done.”

Robinson also raised money for many of the programs that she wanted to air. Slater recalls her working on 50, 60, 70-page proposals for programs not normally shown on public broadcasting, like the biography of Marian Anderson , the first African American singer to perform with the Metropolitan Opera.

Ward Chamberlain, a founding father of public television, has known Robinson since her days as a young programmer. He says that that when Robinson began her career in public television, it was much different than it is today. “It was primitive in those days. We only had two stars, Fred Rogers, God bless his soul, and Julia Childs. Diversifying programming was one of her objectives, but not her only one. It certainly was something she had in mind and when there was an opportunity, she concentrated on it.”

When Chamberlain was asked to help revamp programming at WNET, he immediately thought of Robinson. “When I got there and saw what the situation was, I said, ‘Boy, I better bring Tammy up here right away.’ So I persuaded her to move from Washington, DC to New York and we began to pick up speed. She has made a tremendous difference to Channel 13 in the last eight years.”

While the programs Robinson oversees are noteworthy for their breadth of subjects and quality, without her public television’s programming would not be as reflective as it is of diverse groups and points. Indeed, her legacy includes the recent acclaimed four-part series, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, which tells the story of the African-American struggle for equality from the end of the civil war to the modern day civil rights movement. And her next project will be another series, this one on slavery.

Robinson’s influence is evident in more subtle ways, too. Frontier House, a WNET series in which three family groups recreated the lives of settlers in the west during the 1880s, included a biracial family. Eggs the Arts Show features artists from diverse cultures and backgrounds and is played by over 200 stations nationwide. Wide Angle, another recent offering, examines contemporary international issues.

Robinson also plays an active role in the education and outreach of many of these programs. Teachers’ guides and other educational materials are widely distributed to schools all over the country. An exhibit is traveling all over the country for Freedom: A History of Us, a sixteen-part series that Robinson recently produced.

Thanks to Robinson, public television programs continue to teach and inspire several generations of viewers and in classrooms throughout the country.