PBMA leaving NETA, will focus on pubcasting leadership training

The Public Broadcasting Management Association is departing its 30-year home at the National Educational Telecommunications Association.

It’s time, said PBMA Vice Chairman Tom Livingston, president of Livingston Associates in Baltimore. “We’re grown now.” Coulter Nonprofit Management in McLean, Va., will work with PBMA.

Livingston told Current that the group’s aspiration “is to become more significant in the leadership development area.”

The system is facing “unbelievable challenges,” he said. If pubcasting is to have a viable future, “it’s going to take some great leadership. Basically there’s been no coordinated leadership development work in public media for 15 or 16 years. And I believe we can see the results of that in the state of our leadership today.”

Livingston added that the group is grateful for NETA’s longtime support. “There are times when PBMA would have expired if not for NETA,” he said.

More in the next issue of Current.