O'Bryon leaves NBR for California

Linda O’Bryon, who helped start the Nightly Business Report television show back in 1979 that is now shown on more than 250 public TV stations, has been named the new chief content officer for Northern California Public Broadcasting.In 2004, O’Bryon received the Distinguished Achievement Award by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers at the 41st annual conference in Fort Worth, Texas

O’Bryon will report directly to Jeff Clarke, president and CEO of Northern California Public Broadcasting. O’Bryon succeeds John Boland, who recently left to assume the newly created role of chief content officer at PBS.

O’Bryon will lead the content divisions of a multimedia organization that includes more than 150 television and radio producers and programmers, editors, reporters, educators, web content developers, management and technical personnel at KQED, KTEH, and KCAH.

O’Bryon has been the senior vice president and general manager of NBR Enterprises/WPBT2 in Miami, which produces Nightly Business Report, distributed nationally by PBS on more than 250 stations. In that capacity, she has orchestrated worldwide distribution and content partnerships that have helped shape The Nightly Business Report into an international business news force around the world.

She spearheaded the creation of the program in 1979, when she was serving as news director at the South Florida public television station, WPBT. When NBR launched for the first time in January 1979, she both managed the program and served as its co-anchor. The program, celebrating its 25th anniversary of its national syndication this year, was nationally syndicated in 1981 and remains the leading source of daily business news on television. NBR has been credited for spawning the genre of daily news programming broadcast and cable television.

As general manager of NBR Enterprises, the operating division at WPBT that produces business news, O’Bryon oversees Nightly Business Report’s editorial and business operations. In addition to producing 260 daily news programs a year and a daily News Brief, NBR Enterprises also oversees NBR’s international licensing, its web-site on PBS.org, and video production projects.

Read more here. Read a Q&A I did with O’Bryon earlier this year about her business journalism career here.

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