James Day, pioneering pubTV exec and program host, dies at 89

James Day, co-founder of San Francisco's KQED and host of the influential weekly interview program Kaleidoscope, died last Thursday from respiratory failure. He helped establish public television's reputation for in-depth, serious programming and blazed the trail for pubTV on-air pledge drives and auctions. In 1995, he penned a history of public television, The Vanishing Vision: The Inside Story of Public Television. Current contributing editor David Stewart drew from Day's account for this feature on KQED's early years. Variety, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the New York Times have each published obits.