Communication Arts Professor Appointed to WNYC Community Advisory Board

WNYC-AM and FM are flagship stations of National Public Radio and serve the largest broadcast market in the United States—the metropolitan New York City area. As a licensing condition set forth by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), all public radio and television stations in the United States are required to have a Community Advisory Board that gathers public comments to advise stations as to whether their programming and policies meet the specialized educational and cultural needs of the community. 

As a member of WNYC CAB, Dr. Robinson will review the programming goals, service, and policy decisions established by WNYC and assess their effectiveness in the communities served by the station. The CAB deliberates independently of station management and WNYC’s Board of Trustees, determining its own agenda and electing its own leadership. 

Dr. Robinson’s interest in the CAB stems from her dissertation, “Voice of the City?: The Rise and Fall of WNYC-TV,” which is a cultural, regulatory, political and technological history of Channel 31, the television station that, with the WNYC radio stations, comprised part of the Municipal Broadcasting Station during the time when all three of these broadcasting stations were licensed to the City of New York. In 1996, the broadcast license to WNYC-TV was sold to commercial interests, and the radio licenses were sold to the WNYC Foundation, which continues to operate them. Dr. Robinson’s selection for the board was based on her broad-based knowledge of the stations’ programming, her understanding of public broadcasting in the United States and specifically the New York City area, and her interest in enacting initiatives through which the CAB can reach out to new demographics of listeners through social media. 

Dr. Robinson has been a professor at Marymount Manhattan since 2006, and regularly teaches Film History, Survey of Film and Video, and Contemporary World Cinema. Dr. Robinson is also the lead professor of Communication and the Future—the communication arts department’s senior capstone course. This year, she has piloted a course on the political economy of television—Television Industry/ies: History and Practice. 

Marymount Manhattan College is an urban, independent, liberal arts college. The mission of the College is to educate a socially and economically diverse student body by fostering intellectual achievement and personal growth and by providing opportunities for career development.

Published: December 05, 2011