ALEXANDRIA, Va., September 12, 2000 PBS Online (PBS.org), the popular and award-winning Web site of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), has recently named two new senior team members. Carolyn Gibson Smith is now the director of station services and strategy and Donna Altman de Soto has been appointed senior manager of parenting and childcare. Both Ms. De Soto and Ms. Smith report directly to Cindy Johanson, senior vice president of Internet and broadband services.
"Carolyn and Donna bring to PBS a superb track record in interactive content development," explained Ms. Johanson. "Their creativity, energy and expertise will be invaluable to PBS and its member stations as we expand our digital strategy."
Building on the PBS commitment to local/national partnering, Ms. Smith will head the effort to further integrate local station content with PBS.org and to assure its current position as a leading, innovative platform for local/national educational content and services in the United States.
Ms. Smith comes to PBS from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, New Media, where she was the director of English new media regions. In that role, she planned, implemented and managed a nationally distributed new media production system, with local-market public broadcasting Web sites at its core. She also has wide-ranging experience as a writer, editor, broadcaster and associate producer.
In her new position, Ms. de Soto will take charge of developing and producing the launch of a super-site for parents and childcare providers on PBS.org. Through new content, along with links to such family- and educator-friendly areas as PBS KIDS® (pbskids.org) and TeacherSource (PBS.org/teachersource), the new super-site will be designed to meet the diverse needs of caregivers in a wide range of home, school and childcare settings. The new site will be designed in close coordination with PBS's Ready to Learn service, the nation's only initiative that combines educational television and online content for children with complementary local outreach services for adults to help prepare children for success in school.
Ms. de Soto joins PBS.org after serving as the managing director of Museum Learning for MuseumNetwork.com, an online destination for teachers, students, families and lifelong learners to find the best in museum education. Her duties included such diverse tasks as planning and budgeting to creative development and Web site production. Her professional background also includes teaching, new media development, producing and writing.
PBS.org, PBS' award-winning site on the World Wide Web, produces high-quality Web programming as it pioneers the convergence of television and the Internet. PBS Online features more than 85,000 pages of content, as well as companion Web sites for more than 400 PBS programs and specials. In January 2000, Yahoo! put PBS.org at the top of its list of the best Web sites of all time.
PBS, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, is a private, nonprofit media enterprise owned and operated by the nation's 347 public television stations. A trusted community resource, PBS uses the power of noncommercial television, the Internet and other media to enrich the lives of all Americans through quality programs and education services that inform, inspire and delight. Available to 99 percent of American homes with televisions and to an increasing number of digital multimedia households, PBS serves nearly 100 million people each week. More information about PBS is available at pbs.org.
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