- A storied broadcast career, including an interview with Fidel Castro, and a broadcast management history and national TV networks.

Dick Lobo's influence in the broadcast arena has spanned nearly 70 years, including an important time here at WEDU.

I remember his first day on the job.

Dick is a Tampa native, raised in Ybor City.

Our own Geoff Simon sat down with Dick Lobo to review his life and the world he influenced along the way.

We're able to present this remarkable story thanks to the generous support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

- This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St.

Petersburg, Sarasota.

[music] - Have you heard about the Fourth Estate?

It refers to the press or news media and the important role it plays in speaking truth to power and holding government, business, and members of society accountable to the public.

Over the years, that's become increasingly challenging.

As society, politics, and communications have changed.

You're about to meet a Tampa native who's played a pivotal role in local, national and international media for nearly 70 years.

Next on the Suncoast Business Forum.

- Suncoast Business Forum, brought to you by the financial services firm of Raymond James, offering personalized wealth management advice and banking and capital markets expertise, all with a commitment to putting clients' financial well-being first.

More information is available at raymondjames.com.

[music] - Talk about transforming society.

In 1950, only 10% of U.S.

households had a television set.

By 1960, that number had grown to nearly 90%.

All of a sudden, people weren't getting their news and entertainment from newspapers and radio.

It was coming into their living rooms from local and national broadcasts.

That's when Dick Lobo, who grew up in Tampa's Ybor City, got his start as a local TV news reporter in Miami.

Over the next 60 years, he'd have a major impact on news media throughout the U.S.

and around the world.

Dick, welcome to the Suncoast Business Forum.

- Thank you Geoff, so happy to be here.

- One of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, said, "Information is the currency of democracy."

Nearly 200 years later, President John Kennedy said, "A free press is not only important, it is essential to a functioning democracy."

What are your thoughts about the role of the news media in democracy and society?

- Geoff.

It's a critical role that the media, the news media play.

It is the fourth pillar of democracy.

And it's ironic that one of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, who was a slaveholder, believed strongly, strongly in freedom of the press and was a great supporter of the First Amendment.

Thomas Jefferson actually said at one point, "I'd rather have newspapers without government than a government without newspapers."

And I think I might agree with him at this point.

But it plays a very vital role.

We are the news, media are the watchdogs for the general public.

We not only educate, but we keep people informed so they can be better stewards of our democracy.

We encourage good debate among people.

We keep people apprised of what's going on in their community.

And I think it just plays a very vital role.

- In the 1950s, television and television news was just getting off the ground.

Fortunately, you are a young reporter in the late 1950s, got your first job in TV news in Miami.

And then, of course, you were involved in broadcasting during the arc of its transformation over many years.

Share with us some of your impressions of those pioneering days in local TV news and how it evolved.

- It was very primitive at the beginning, in the 50s, when I was studying radio and television at the University of Miami.

But when I was studying the business and when I first got into it, news was delivered via black and white film, very scratchy film that took a long time to shoot, process, edit and then get it on the air.

So news could be very stale.

For example, when it was being filmed in Europe and film had to be shipped.

There were no satellites.

Remember, film had to be shipped by plane or by steamship to America and then processed.

So some stories were 3 or 4 days old before they made the air.

This is television.

And over the years, as I was in the business, it evolved from that type of situation to where we now have maybe any household with cable and over a thousand choices, maybe on your television set and things coming to us via satellite and looking at video and news on your iPhone or your iPad or that type of thing.

So it's been an amazing growth for that business, in that industry.

And I was a witness to almost all of it.

- In the nearly 70 years that you were involved in broadcast news and media.

You had different careers, if you will, or many careers, different chapters in the course of your career.

If you were to divide them into blocks, which how would you describe those chapters?

- It's an interesting question.

Um, I probably would divide it into three separate and distinct categories.

Uh, the first one, the bulk of my career was in commercial broadcasting, starting in news and then ending up in station management.

And then there was a second career that I enjoyed here at WEDU when I was named president and CEO of the station back in the early 2000.

I spent eight years here, so I had a career in public media.

Public television.

Very satisfying.

One of the happiest and proudest moments of my entire career.

And then I also had a career in Washington in international broadcasting.

I served for two years under President Clinton as the director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and I served for three years under President Obama as director of the International Broadcasting Bureau, overseeing entities such as the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, that type of thing.

So, um, my, my 70 years in the business has embraced a lot of different types of media and broadcasting.

- Over your nearly 70 years in media.

You've won numerous awards, you've won Emmy Awards, Peabody Awards, DuPont Awards, and other awards.

You've been recognized for lifetime achievement by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, by the Florida broadcast industry.

But you didn't do it for the awards and the work that you did impacted millions of people's lives.

- It seems that now they're giving me awards for just being alive.

But the awards were very welcome, and I was honored and humbled by receiving them.

Not only the awards I received personally, but the stations that I was honored to have led received many awards and that was great, but I never went into any of my jobs or any of the station roles that I served in.

Looking to get awards, my primary focus was informing the public, trying to educate them, trying to make their lives a little better, and trying to make the organizations that I was picked to lead to make them better organizations.

The airwaves belongs to the general public and television stations.

Over-the-air television stations are licensed by the Federal Communications Commission to operate primarily in the public interest.

And so I believed that to be very, very sacred.

And so I as my focus, whenever I had a position, whether it was in front of the cameras, behind the cameras, running a station, running a news department, I wanted to do everything that I did to serve the public interest and to make sure they had the best television station that they could have that I was running.

- Let's talk about your formative years.

Let's talk about where you grew up and your family.

- I grew up just a few miles from here.

Um, my grandparents, all of them came from Cuba to Tampa at the turn of the 20th century.

My paternal grandfather landed in Tampa in 1906.

He married my grandmother by proxy in Cuba, and she came shortly thereafter.

And then my father was born a year after that.

So I'm second-generation Tampa, um, Ybor City and Tampa at that time was kind of a little backwards, like a little backwater town in many respects.

It's nothing like the dynamic city it is right now.

Um, but frankly, growing up in Ybor City was very exciting.

It was a thriving community, primarily of cigar workers.

My relatives all came because of the cigar factories, and it was a great, great place to grow up.

Although it was a very segregated community, Ybor City and West Tampa were kind of diverse because we came from Cuba, where there were a lot of people of color, and many of them came here and settled here in our communities.

So it was a diverse community.

But the rest of the city, unfortunately, was very, very segregated.

In fact, Geoff, I remember when I was very young on a hot weekend, we went to a public pool here in Tampa, and there was a sign that said no dogs or Cubans allowed, which was quite shocking to us.

And the beaches that we went to were kind of segregated, but I made the best of it.

I took advantage of the great Uh, public education that was afforded me here.

And, uh, um, I think that we were, uh, as happy as we could be living a middle class, comfortable lifestyle.

- You spent your early years in public school in Tampa.

There was a brief detour to New York City.

Is that right?

- Yes.

Um, when I was going into fourth grade, uh, the economy was kind of bad here in Tampa.

And, uh, we had some relatives in New York City.

My mother's parents and her sisters had moved to New York earlier, again, because of economic conditions here.

So my dad decided to move, uh, me to New York along with my mother for better opportunities.

And we landed in New York, and we started looking for an apartment, and my dad found an advertisement in the newspaper in a neighborhood in the Upper East Side A neighborhood called Yorkville.

And we went and looked at this lovely apartment, and it was very nice.

And my father tells the superintendent of the building, who was showing us the place that we liked the apartment and we would like to rent it.

So he said okay.

And he had my father fill out a form, an application, and my dad filled it out.

And the superintendent looks at it and says, Lobo, what kind of a name is that?

And my father said, well, it's a Spanish name.

It's a Spanish surname.

And the superintendent says, well, you can't live here.

You have to live where your people are.

And we naively did not know what he was talking about, but he thought we were Puerto Rican and that there was a great influx of Puerto Ricans at the time in New York City.

And again, New York, in some respect, was very segregated.

And so we ended up having to get an apartment in East Harlem, Spanish Harlem, the corner of Lexington Avenue and 106th Street.

I went to a public school in New York in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades and spent my time there being bullied by street gangs.

There were zip guns during that period, and so it was not unusual for me to have my lunch money or my mittens stolen.

It was not a great, great time to be there for me as a as a youngster after having lived in Tampa.

So we came back to Tampa and I started junior high school, intermediate school at Washington, Washington Junior High which was on the fringe of Ybor City and Tampa Heights, and went to school there with a lot of kids from cigar working families.

And I kind of blossomed when I came back here, I got my first bicycle and rode the streets of Tampa all over on my bike.

I ended up going to local radio stations WDAE A.M.

and WFLA A.M.

were thriving at the time, and I would go there and hang out, and the announcers and the disc jockeys and people saw me and would let me in, and I was observing whatever they did.

And and they let me put away records after they played records.

And they also allowed me to take wire copy, wire service copy.

There were these ticker tape machines, but the wire machines for Associated Press, United Press International wire copy that they didn't need.

I could take it home.

So I would take this home on my bike, and when I'd get home, I would stand in front of the mirror with a hairbrush as a microphone and read news copy into the mirror to kind of train myself to be a news reader, a news commentator.

And I thought I did pretty good, even in the eighth, ninth grade doing that.

And then I got to high school.

I went to Thomas Jefferson High School, which again used to be in Tampa Heights, and now it's out on Cypress Avenue, a very good school.

And I did become a much better student there.

National Honor Society.

And I did everything I could at that time to prepare myself for a role in the media and in leadership.

So I became a member of the student council.

I joined the drama club, I became the editor of the school newspaper and wrote for the newspaper, sold advertisements for the Jeffersonian, and also got into ROTC.

And I had a very good, good time and a good run at Jefferson High School.

Um, and that, I think, gave me a good start for what would follow.

- After high school, you attended the University of Tampa for one year, and then you transferred to the University of Miami.

And this was an important turning point for you.

- It was when I got out of high school, I knew that I wanted to study radio and television and journalism.

And my parents did not have a lot of money.

I was living here in Tampa and they said, why don't you just go to the University of Tampa and Tampa, a growing community.

Would you like it?

You have everything you need here.

You can live at home.

And frankly, they didn't have the money to send me anywhere else.

Uh, and so reluctantly, I did enroll at the University of Tampa, which was a wonderful school, but it didn't have the courses and the studies that I needed.

So I moved down there, enrolled in the University of Miami, got a job at the Miami Herald as a copy boy.

My cousin worked there as a sports reporter, and he got me in there and enrolled there and just had a wonderful education.

I had great teachers, um, a lot of hands on learning.

Uh, and I think that's where I really cut my teeth.

And that school made it possible for me to be where I am today.

- One of your professors at the University of Miami was a prominent local news anchorman in Miami.

Yeah.

This was an important turning point for you.

- Yeah, it turns out this guy was iconic in the early days of local television news.

His name is Ralph Renick.

He is an institution.

He's passed away now, but he was my television news professor at the University of Miami.

He saw something in me.

I was in my junior year, and he, uh, offered me a position.

He said, would you like to come and work for me?

He said, I know that you're studying, but I could use a weekend reporter, television news reporter, and I think you have what it takes to do the job.

So luckily, while I was still in college, I had my very first big break in television with a man who was highly respected.

He was the first anchorman, the first television news director at the first licensed TV station in the state of Florida, which is WTVJ, a big CBS affiliate at the time.

And that's where I got my start, thanks to Ralph.

- After college, you spent some time in the military, and then you returned to Miami and got your first job as a TV news reporter, not at the CBS station where you had worked with Ralph Renick.

This was at the NBC affiliate, and at this time this was about 1959.

- That's correct.

- The Cuban revolution had happened, and there you were at the right place at the right time.

- I came back to Miami.

By this time I was married and had a child.

And as you said, the Cuban Revolution had just taken place.

This was early on in 1959.

And because Geoff at the time, if you can believe this, I was the only television news reporter in the Miami TV market that could speak Spanish.

Um, and so by default, even at the age of 21, 22, I was assigned to go cover the pre the post-revolution Castro, Cuba, actually on one of my trips to Cuba.

I found out that Castro was having a meeting.

A quiet meeting in a little suburb of Havana.

And I went there with my camera.

And sure enough, Castro emerged from this building, and I kind of ambushed him.

And I poked my microphone in his face, and I told him I'd like to interview him, that I was from a Miami TV station, and he pretended he could not speak English.

Now, I knew full well that he could speak English.

He had lived in the United States for a little while.

He wanted to be a professional baseball player here anyway, and he was a law student, and he spoke English pretty well.

Anyway, when he told me he couldn't speak English, I started speaking to him in Spanish and he couldn't get away.

So I asked him some pretty tough questions about, uh, turning to Marxism and communism.

I asked him about the firing squads.

I asked him about political prisoners and taking American companies over.

He was not very happy with the interview.

However, the interview was good enough that when I brought it back to Miami, they not only used it on local Miami television, but they sent it to New York and it made the Today Show in New York.

And also the Huntley-Brinkley report, which was the network evening newscast for NBC.

And subsequently I covered many more stories in Latin America.

- Your coverage of the Cuban Revolution and Latin America in the late '50s, early 1960s, won national acclaim and won numerous awards, and it attracted the attention of the CBS TV station in New York City, the number one market in the U.S., and they gave you a call.

- A situation was opening up in New York.

WCBS TV, which is the flagship station of the CBS network, was starting a local news department.

Local news was still in its infancy around the country.

It was a very heavy period in news.

There was a urban riots going on.

There was school integration going on.

Uh, there was a war in Vietnam that was getting going.

A lot of urban problems.

The city was having financial issues.

And I was in the middle of all of that.

And I was well prepared.

My education and the work I had done in Miami prepared me well for that.

But I was in the midst of all of that and got to interview some incredible people while I was in the job, including, uh, Reverend Martin Luther King.

I interviewed Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X, Nelson Rockefeller, um, Barbra Streisand, the Beatles, all of these in New York.

While I was a local news reporter, I was striving as a reporter there until one day in 1967, uh, several years after I'd gotten there, um, my news director at the time calls me into his office and sits me down and says, Dick, "You stink on the air," he said.

He said, but you're a really good newsman, a good journalist, and I think I could use you in the newsroom as an editor.

So he took me off the air and assigned me to the assignment desk in New York as the assignment manager, the equivalent of a city editor in a Metropolitan Daily newspaper.

And so I was responsible for gathering the news for WCBS TV.

And I had about 20 reporters on the staff at the time.

About 12 camera crews, a number of couriers, messengers, writers and producers.

That all depended on me bringing in news on any given day and filling up the broadcast.

And it turned out that the news director was right, even though I had been in the business almost ten years at that time, I was not very good on the air, but I was a much better manager and was able to handle the logistics of a major newsroom pretty easily, and that was a very rewarding position.

And he was absolutely right.

- So you went from a reporter to an assignment manager at WCBS.

You built a news organization from scratch?

Yes.

Then you move to WWOR another major market TV station in New York.

And following that, you had a number of moves.

But let's talk about the move to WWOR and then the succession of moves that followed.

- Well, the move was not voluntary, Geoff.

After I was named assignment manager and I was there a couple of years and enjoying it, a colleague of mine, the executive producer of WCBS TV news, was called to Washington by the Nixon administration and offered a job there.

He went to work for Herb Klein, who was the press secretary for Nixon.

But I was given the job of executive producer, which is right under the news director.

After I'd been the assignment manager for a couple of years and a nice salary increase.

But shortly after that happened, the news director that had given me these breaks was fired, and the new news director comes in and tells everybody, don't worry, I'm happy with what's going on here.

All of you are safe.

Four months later, he fires everybody from the previous administration, and I found myself out of work.

And this was now in 1970 in New York.

Luckily, I found out that WWOR TV, which is a major independent station in New York, channel nine, was starting a local news department.

And I thought to myself, this would be a perfect opportunity to help them and to land a job.

So I got an interview with the general manager of this television station, a lovely man who, um, was impressed with my credentials and what I told him I could do for him.

But he said, I really like you.

And unfortunately, I just hired a news director, so that job is gone.

However, I need a program director and I'd like to offer that to you.

And I said, honestly, I've never done programming and I don't know that I could.

I'm not trained in that.

He said, look, I know programing.

I came from it.

I'll teach it to you if you help me put together this local news operation that I'm putting together.

And I said, that sounds like a good deal.

So I went to work at WWOR TV and it was all new to me because a big part of that station's programing had to do with movies, putting on great movies, and I had to learn how to buy movies for television, station, do contracts with the studios that were selling them WWOR TV.

Also was the home of the New York Knicks, the New York Rangers and the New York Mets.

So I had to deal with the people from those organizations and sign contracts with them to cover their games in New York.

So that was an interesting, uh, an interesting job.

And it opened my eyes to things other than news in the television business.

That was short lived.

One year later, after I was hired, the general manager that hired me was fired, and the new management fired all the other people that he brought in.

So I found myself out of work once again for, uh, for, uh, a second time in one year in New York.

- So you'd been at WCBS and really established your credentials in news, both reporting and management.

WWOR you learned programing.

Another completely different skill.

And then you went to W NBC, the NBC owned affiliate in New York.

Yeah.

- Well, it was an NBC owned station.

Yes.

Uh, and luckily I was able to land a job there as an assignment manager, which is a position I'd held at channel two.

And they knew me from competing against me.

And they offered me a position there, and I was happy to go back to work and happy to be back in the news business for a while.

And then another opportunity came up and, uh, a fellow that had worked with me at CBS, the fellow that told me that I didn't do well in the air.

He was now at NBC also, and a job opened up at NBC in Cleveland.

NBC owned a station in Cleveland, Ohio.

They were having problems there with their news operation, and this was now in 1973, I moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and became the news director and bureau manager.

They had an NBC news bureau there.

Uh, And I totally revamped the local news in Cleveland, Ohio, using some of the experience I'd gained in New York.

And we went from 30 minutes of local news of an evening.

I made a 90 minute broadcast that was groundbreaking at the time.

I hired a whole new staff of people and kind of modernized the business, but I never went into the thing they call happy talk.

Um, that was starting to, to take place in the country right now, things like Eyewitness News and that type of thing.

I still went for the more serious, down to earth news.

I was in Cleveland three years, and the winters in Cleveland were getting to me.

And while I was there, I learned to ski a little kid from Ybor City on skis.

And I enjoyed it.

And, uh, uh, a headhunter, uh, came to me in, in Cleveland and said that there was a job opportunity they wanted to discuss with you.

It was in Denver, Colorado, and it was a news director's job, and the thought of maybe skiing in the Rocky Mountains and getting away from Cleveland, winters appealed to me.

I took the position.

I became news director of the Koa stations in Denver, Colorado.

These were TV, AM and FM stations.

They were all big boomers and they really owned the audience in the Rocky Mountain region.

So it was an interesting job.

And while there, I was able to refresh their news both on radio and television, brought in a lot more investigative reporting, diversified the staff as much as I could, and went skiing in the Rocky Mountains as much as I could.

And interestingly enough, after the first year when the snow melted and there was no more skiing, Denver at that time, to me, was not such an interesting place.

And so I made a call back to my colleagues at NBC and turned out that there was an opening at Wmaq-tv, which is the NBC owned station in Chicago.

And a colleague of mine hired me there to become the program director.

So I used my experience that I'd gotten at Wor-tv and took it to Wmaq-tv.

And while I was there, Geoff, we did some wonderful public affairs programing, documentaries of all kinds, including a couple of award winning children's documentaries with Kukla, Fran, and Ollie that were an institution many years ago.

I brought him back and did a couple of programs with them.

We did a lot of political documentaries, and Chicago was a wonderful, wonderful media town.

I was enjoying my stint in Chicago.

And one of my colleagues had been promoted to run WNBC TV as a general manager, and he had worked with me in Chicago.

So he saw what I was able to do, knew about my news background and he picked me to be his assistant at the job, was called Station Manager.

It was the number two person at the television station.

So yes, in 1980, went back to New York.

This time there's a number two person at one of the biggest television stations in the country with a huge budget, hundreds of people, and we were doing some very exciting things at the time.

There was a broadcast that helped nurture called Live at Five.

It went from 5 to 6 p.m., five days a week and was very successful.

New York Magazine called it the best program on television in New York.

News directors from around the country would come and try to see what the magic was, and tried to emulate it.

Around the country.

- In the early 1980s, in New York City, you met your wife to be Karen.

Tell us about Karen.

- So when I got to New York in 1980, I was going through a divorce and working very hard and didn't think that I was marriage material until I met this young woman.

One evening.

By chance, I'd gone out to a to a theater in New York with some friends.

And after the show we went to dinner and the people from this theater company came and joined us.

And sitting next to me with this woman named Karen.

And we got to know one another.

And there was a spark there.

And we started dating and, and we fell in love.

And then we were inseparable.

And so we got married a few years later and we're still married.

We just celebrated our 44th wedding anniversary in 1983.

- You returned to Cleveland once again.

Yeah.

- Interesting.

Um, the general manager at the Cleveland Station was released.

Fired.

And They felt the powers that be at the company felt that I. I was the right person to go back to Cleveland because I'd had a success running their news operation there.

So they wanted to send me to Cleveland.

And this was shortly after I met.

I met Karen.

Karen had just moved to New York recently from Pittsburgh, where she'd gone to college and was not anxious to go back to the Rust Belt, if you will.

And so she said, do we really have to?

And I said, well, I have to.

It's my career.

You don't really have to.

And she said, fortunately, she said, well, you're not going anywhere without me.

So we moved to Cleveland together and bought a house in Cleveland Heights and got married in Cleveland in my backyard.

And I stayed there a couple of years as the vice president, general manager and again.

Invented the news there for that era that we're in the 1980s, not in the 1970s and again met with some success.

And shortly thereafter, after two years, the general manager in Chicago, where I had worked previously, was fired.

And again the company felt that it was time for me to be moved.

So I went to Chicago.

It was a wonderful year to be there, because the Chicago Bears in 1985 went to the Super Bowl.

So that was a fortuitous time for me to get to Chicago.

- In the early 1980s, you were in Cleveland, general manager running the TV station, Chicago running major market, running the TV station.

But at this time, NBC got bought.

AM I right by General Electric, a major one of the largest corporations in America?

How did that change things?

- It it changed the corporate culture of the company.

Remember, I had worked at CBS for a while, and CBS had been owned by Bill Paley, A lifelong broadcaster, made his fortune in radio and then went into television.

And they were very serious about their public service obligation.

And they're the ones that put Walter Cronkite on the air and started 60 minutes and the CBS Sunday Morning.

Uh, so that I was steeped in that.

And then I went to work for NBC in the early 70s, and it was owned by RCA at the time.

And that was a company that was owned by doctor or by David Sarnoff and his son, Robert Sarnoff.

And they were again, were pioneers in radio and television.

And, um, and so they were, they were used to running networks the way people expected.

Corporations saw that these networks were making money.

And, and, uh, so General Electric bought us, as you said, and bought RCA.

And it, uh, it changed things for us because they wanted to run the company the way they ran their other companies, which had to do with jet engines and medical devices, things of that kind.

And they expected the managers of NBC to learn the ways of General Electric.

And we actually were asked to attend GE management training schools in Westchester County.

And, um, frankly, we learned a lot of business savvy from them prior to them owning us.

We weren't as especially myself, coming out of the news end of the business weren't as bottom line oriented as we should have been.

So that was the major factor.

And the fact that they weren't as enamored of the public service obligation as our previous owners had been made things quite different.

- After a successful period in Chicago, NBC came to you and said, we want you to move to Miami and we want you to do something that's probably going to disrupt the market and maybe even the industry.

Tell us about that.

- Karen and I were very happy in Chicago, where we were meeting with a great deal of success.

Our newscasts were getting better and better ratings.

It was a wonderful town.

We had a wonderful situation there, and I thought, you know, we'd be left alone because we'd been moved quite a bit.

But General Electric saw an opportunity in Miami, Florida at the time, a very dynamic market growing very quickly.

And they ended up going to the NBC station operator in Miami and said, we would like to buy your station.

Uh, the fellow that owned the station said, "I'm not interested in selling."

And they said, well, in that case, we're going to buy another station and take the affiliation away when the contract is up.

And he called their bluff.

And so General Electric went to the CBS station, which at the time was owned by KKR, and they made them an offer they couldn't refuse.

And so General Electric ends up owning a CBS affiliate in Miami, Florida, the same station where I had started my career back in 1957 as a young reporter and where I had interned at college.

So they buy this television station and they plan to switch from CBS to NBC as soon as the contract was up.

And that would have been January 1st, 1989.

So I was offered the position in Miami of president, general manager.

I didn't want to go, uh, we were very happy in Chicago.

And I said, you transfer this to Cleveland, you transfer this to Chicago.

Why don't you give it to somebody else?

And they said, well, you know what?

You know the market.

You're Cuban-American, you speak Spanish.

This is a very influential market.

And it's going to be, and we think you're the right man for the position.

And they didn't give me much choice.

So in the summer of 1988, transferred to Miami again, where I had gone to college and started my career, and I was now running a CBS station, a CBS affiliate, and preparing for one of the biggest turnovers in the history of broadcasting in the country.

This had not happened before, and that was going to happen a few months after I got there.

So I put together this incredible campaign promotion, advertising, jingles, everything I could think of to get people ready for the switch.

And sure enough, on January 1st, 1989, NBC threw a gigantic party, which I put together at the Freedom Tower in downtown Miami, and we pulled the switch on January 1st, 1989, and WTVJ, which had been a CBS affiliate since its inception, became an NBC owned station and I was running it.

That made a lot of news in the in the television business.

And while I was enjoying running the station in 1992.

Hurricane Andrew happened.

Hurricane Andrew in August of 1992 was the largest natural disaster in the United States at that time, a category five hurricane.

And luckily, Geoff, because I had as a youngster, lived through hurricanes and as a young reporter in Miami, covered a couple of hurricanes, I knew what they were like and knew what it took to cover them.

So along with our meteorologist, Bryan Norcross, who was a brilliant meteorologist and specialized in hurricanes, we prepared for this eventuality.

We had a plan in action that, uh, that made us the hero of the storm when the storm actually hit.

We had arranged to have our content during the hurricane broadcast live on AM and FM radio stations, both in English and in Spanish, because we knew a lot of people would lose power and they had portable radios.

So we did that.

We also knew that our tower, which was not in Miami proper, was up in the line of Broward County, would probably stay up.

So we knew that we would stay on the air pretty much.

And so people with portable television sets battery were able to see what we were broadcasting throughout the night.

Uh, the storm came.

It was a powerful storm.

And during the storm itself, our meteorologists and our anchor people were in a bunker in our television studio in downtown Miami, broadcasting the progress of the storm.

Neighborhood to neighborhood block to block, and we would be telling people when they were going to feel the impact of the storm, when maybe to get into their closet or into their bathtub.

What to do when the eye of the storm came by.

And it was a wonderful public service that we did, and the storm passed.

This was on a Sunday night, Monday morning in Miami.

When the dust settled, we started hearing from people that our news during the storm.

It saved their lives, saved many lives, and it was a devastating storm.

A lot of South Miami was wiped out.

Homestead was wiped out.

My home had six feet of water in it and Coconut Grove.

We were out of our house for quite a while, so it was a major, major story for us and we came through with flying colors and we won almost every major Journalism award for our coverage of Hurricane Andrew.

In fact, NBC network thought so highly of what we did that they actually produced a made for television movie of our coverage of the storm.

It's a terrible movie, just awful movie.

- In 1993, NBC came to you and offered you early retirement, and you took it.

Well, how long?

How long did that retirement last?

- After Hurricane Andrew, I was kind of burned out.

And, uh, they didn't offer it to me.

They offered it a company wide, but I was eligible for it.

And so I talked to Karen about it and they said, well, maybe it's time to, to hang it up.

I was now in my 60s.

And so I took this early retirement package, and the announcement of my retirement made the front page of the Miami Herald, the news of my retirement.

And Interestingly enough, the very next day I received a call from the White House in Washington.

The Clinton White House.

They said, we have a job that we'd like to talk to you about.

And I said, that's interesting.

You know, I just announced my retirement yesterday and I said, what is it?

And they said, we'd like you to become our director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting.

And it involved running this country's radio and television service to the island of Cuba.

It's called radio and television, Marti.

And it was an organization that was based in Washington under the USIA, the U.S.

Information Agency, at the time.

And it was kind of controversial.

And I'd heard about it, of course, but I wasn't sure that's what I wanted to do, because I hadn't thought a lot about what I wanted to do yet after retirement.

So I talked to Karen, and then I talked to some of my friends who were in the business, and they all told me that I should stay away from it, that it was a Pandora's box, a den of vipers, that I would regret it.

And so I took the job.

And because I thought the challenge would be interesting and it was something I'd never done, international broadcasting.

And I got vetted by the FBI.

After six months, they cleared me and we moved to Washington, and I became head of this agency, which had a budget of about 25 million, maybe about 100 employees, and they were providing a service to Cuba on shortwave AM and FM and a little bit of television.

It was a very interesting, uh, a couple of years that I spent there.

But while I was there, I did some really good programming and was commended by the U.S.

State Department.

The special interest section in Havana wrote several complementary cables on our behalf about the type of coverage that we were providing them in 1995.

- You retired again, and you and Karen moved to Sarasota and became entrepreneurs.

- I was going each day to buy The New York Times at a newsstand and a bookstore down in Sarasota.

And it was an interesting place, and the owner looked like he was not doing well.

So I approached him and said, you know, I enjoy coming here.

Um, and would you like to have a partner?

Maybe I can work with you on this, uh, shop and make it better.

He said, frankly, I'm burned out.

I've been doing this over 20 something years.

I'd like to call it quits, so if you'd like, I'll sell you this operation.

I'd never done retail, Geoff, as I just outlined to you, I'd done anything but retail.

Um, but I talked to Karen and she said we know nothing about the business.

So we ended up saying, let's do it.

So we told the fellow that we would buy the newsstand and bookstore from him.

And while we were waiting to do the deal, the landlord where this bookstore was located in downtown Sarasota, called me up and said, I understand you're trying to buy the bookstore.

And I said, yes.

And he said, well, you should know that the fellow that owns the bookstore is in arrears.

He's in default and we're evicting him.

His lease is no longer valid.

So you don't have a lease.

And I said, well, be happy to take it over and negotiate a lease.

So we cut a deal at 3000 square foot retail space in the heart of downtown Sarasota.

And Karen and I started a place called Sarasota News and Books in October of 1997, and it turned out to be a success.

It was a wonderful bookstore, newsstand, and cafe, and it was an adult toy store, frankly.

And we kind of knew the community and knew what they needed and wanted, and we were very, very happy.

And it became pretty successful in 2002.

- After running the bookstore and investing in real estate in Sarasota, nice, successful business and retirement, you were recruited to come to WEDU, the PBS station we are currently in, in the Tampa Bay area and recruited to be the CEO.

How did that happen?

- Well, I was totally blindsided.

This came out of left field.

I was running the store with Karen, and we were very involved in civic affairs in Sarasota and the Arts Council and the Downtown Business Association and several other things.

And this executive recruiter that I knew many, many years ago at CBS in New York found me living down there.

He had no idea it was still alive or that I was still working.

But he said, Dick, I have an opportunity I'd like to discuss with you.

And I said, you know, I'm retired and thank you very much, but I've had enough of the business.

I was not happy with the way things were going in radio and television.

Um, he said, well, you might want to hear what this is.

I said, what is it?

He said, the PBS station in Tampa, WEDU is having some financial problems, and they could use someone like you to help them straighten it out.

And it's your hometown.

You're kind of maybe owe it to them.

So he laid this guilt trip on me and I said, well, you know, let me talk to Karen.

And she said, you know, what do you want to do?

I said, well, I'd like to at least listen to them.

And she said, well, go ahead.

They're not going to hire an old man like you.

And I was 65 at the time.

So I came from Sarasota to Tampa, and I met with the board of directors here at WEDU.

We had a lovely meeting, lasted about an hour or so, and they grilled me, and after that I went out of the room and the executive recruiter stayed back.

He came out a few minutes later and said, they loved you.

I said, what?

He she said, he said, yes, they want you to take the job and they think you would be perfect for it.

Uh, and so I signed a one year contract with the powers here at WEDU, and I told them that I'd give them a year and helped straighten things out.

And then I wanted to get back to my retirement in Sarasota.

So fast forward a year happens.

I had put together with the people here a wonderful board.

We re-energized the board.

We had a great staff here that, uh, that bought into the vision that I had for WEDU, which was more local programing, localism, public service in the community, more visibility here because at that time we were passing through a lot of PBS programs that were wonderful Sesame Street, you know, Antiques Roadshow, Nova nature.

Things of that kind, but very little local programing.

And I thought we needed to do more for the community.

And we started doing that and it paid off.

And so after a year when my contract was up, the board came to me and said, what do you want to do?

And I said, I'm really kind of happy here with the way things are going.

And if you're happy with me, I'd like to stay.

We don't need a contract, but as long as I'm happy and you're happy, let's have a handshake.

So that one year deal lasted eight years, Geoff.

And and we just had a wonderful time here.

It was one of my proudest, uh, tenures of my long career in broadcasting.

The eight years that I spent here at WEDU and the station, thanks to the work that we did back in 2002 to 2010, paid off.

And now the station is doing pretty well.

- And in fact, it was in 2005, you asked me to produce this program, Suncoast Business Forum, and that was more than 20 years ago.

- It's amazing.

Amazing.

It is amazing.

And here we are sharing this space and you're still doing it and doing it very well, I might add.

- You left WEDU in 2010 thinking perhaps that you might retire for the third time, but that was not to be.

You got a call from the Obama White House calling you back to Washington.

- Yes.

I was getting older and I thought that was it.

I tried to retire a couple of times before that, and my wife and I had been active in the Obama campaign.

Um, she was on the National Finance Committee for the Obama campaign and was a member of the Electoral College here in Florida in 2008.

And so after the election, um, there was a position open in Washington that was of interest to me, and it was called the director of the International Broadcasting Bureau.

And now there was an agency called the Broadcasting Board of Governors that oversaw this country's international broadcast.

And so I was nominated by Obama in February of 2010 for that position.

And six months later, the Senate confirmed me.

And so I moved back to Washington with Karen to run this organization, which was 5000 employees, a budget of about $750 million, broadcasting in 60 languages to 100 countries around the world.

So pretty, pretty heavy duty job.

And I was very proud to be able to, to work with a wonderful group of journalists and news people providing this great service on behalf of the taxpayers of this country.

- In 2013, you retired once more, this time for good, but not from life.

You've continued to have a robust life, and for more than 40 years, your partner in all of your endeavors has been Karen, your wife, Karen.

Tell us about Karen and your remarkable relationship.

- Um, Karen has been the best thing that's ever happened to me.

Uh, she's a Renaissance woman.

She's very, very bright and can do almost anything she's undertaken.

Uh, she went to Carnegie Mellon University, went to the Boston Conservatory in Boston, and she's done many things.

She's restored historic houses.

Um, she's been involved in many organizations where she's had an impact while we were in Sarasota when we ran the bookstore.

She created a reading festival in downtown Sarasota each winter that attracted thousands of people and brought hundreds of prominent writers and authors to the community.

She created the Palm Literary Society, which brought prominent authors to a wonderful organization with, uh, with the Northern Trust Bank and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

These were sponsored affairs.

Um, she's been active in many, many nonprofits.

And, uh, she's just been a, a rock for me.

- As a young man.

You were fortunate to get involved in the early days of broadcasting and TV news, and you were there for an enormous growth period, decades of growth, and you saw the growth of the industry, the consolidation in the industry, the fragmentation of the industry, and the challenges that broadcasting and broadcast media and TV news are, are facing and the electronic news media are facing.

Talk about being resilient and being willing to adapt over the course of that career.

- Television and broadcasting is going through a very rough patch now.

There are more than 300 reporters around the world in jail and prison for reporting.

Last year, at least almost 200 reporters were killed doing their job.

And authoritarian leaders around the world are threatening press freedom.

So many, many, news organizations are now afraid or being challenged or in danger of going out of business.

And things in this country are very, very dangerous right now with mergers and ownerships by major corporate giants.

And so we have to be very careful and protect our news sources and our news media.

And the public needs to be very vigilant and be supportive of their news organizations.

I think young people.

Will be seeking their news in different ways.

And the news media has to go where they are.

So instead of newscasts that were 15 minutes long when I was in the 1950s, with newscasters sitting behind a desk and sponsored by cigarette companies, we now have people getting their news from podcasts, of course, from their iPhones, from their laptops.

And so good news organizations are going to have to adapt and start finding ways to get the message to younger people using different means.

Um, but nonetheless, the news is going to continue to be a vital, vital thing for, for society.

- Dick, I want to thank you so much for being our guest today.

- Geoff, it was a pleasure being with you.

- If you'd like to see this program again or any of the CEO profiles on our Suncoast Business Forum archive, you can find them on the web at wedu.org/sbf.

Thanks for joining us for the Suncoast Business Forum.