Adam Powell Resigns as GM at Howard U. Television
Adam Clayton Powell III has resigned as general manager of Howard University television, WHUT-TV in Washington, D.C., after only eight months.
University President Patrick Swygert told a staff meeting Monday that Powell would remain as a consultant and head the search for his own successor. The resignation is effective Jan. 11. Meantime, Powell told Journal-isms, he was heading for a “long, long-delayed vacation overseas” for two weeks.
“After revamping programming, outreach, development for the 2002-2003 season and getting channel 33 financed, it was either a question of staying for another academic year (to do 2003-2004) or not. One important factor: As President Swygert noted in the staff meeting, the changes at WHUT have made the GM job much more attractive, so this is a good time to recruit someone who can take HUT to the *next* level,” Powell said.
“Adam will keep his access card and his parking space here,” Swygert said in a statement. “That should tell you how much we appreciate the work that he has done during his tenure as general manager. The many great programs and initiatives that he started at WHUT continue to require his active input. And I am counting on him to help us find a successor.”
Powell, 56, said he was stepping down to write articles about the future of the electronic media, to conduct research and to consult. He told Journal-isms he had nothing but praise for Swygert, who “has an unusual understanding of what television can do for the University. But he never interfered with programming or operational issues, repeatedly giving the same advice: ‘Just make it better.'”
In a news release, Powell said he was able to achieve more than he expected in relatively short time, including expanding local news, public affairs and educational program production, creating partnerships and joint production agreements with other public and commercial broadcasters in the Washington area, restarting WHUT’s fund-raising and development department, and successfully acquiring grants that will enable the construction and inauguration of a second, digital public television station, on broadcast channel 33, in the spring of 2003.
“WHUT has far more strengths, people and facility than I expected. I was able to leverage those in a very short period of time,” he said. “The first black-owned public television station in the United States has now become a leading program producer among PBS stations and a leading producer of local prime time programs in Washington D.C.”
Among the highlights of Powell’s tenure was the securing of U.S. broadcast rights for numerous African television programs and movies, which are broadcast on Thursday nights on WHUT-TV. The series of exclusive broadcasts began last month with the 2002 Kora All-Africa Music Awards, broadcast via satellite from South Africa, and the 2002 Africa Internet Awards. One of the movies to be broadcast in the series, “The Price of Forgiveness,” which will be seen exclusively on WHUT early in 2003, was the winner of the grand prize last month at the Carthage Film Festival and is a finalist at the Ougadougou film festival in February.
Before joining WHUT in April, Powell was vice president of technology and programs at the Freedom Forum, and director of technology studies and programs at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University from 1994 to 1996. Additionally, he was executive producer at Quincy Jones Entertainment; vice president of news and information programming at National Public Radio; manager of network radio and television news for CBS News; and news director of all-news WINS radio in New York. A son of the legendary Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Powell co-produced a Showtime film about his dad, “Keep the Faith, Baby,” which aired last February.
Greg Freeman Services Saturday
A memorial service for Gregory B. Freeman, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist who died Tuesday, is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday in Graham Chapel on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, followed by a reception in the Holmes Lounge on campus, the newspaper reports.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to any one of three charities: Mid-America Transplant Association, the Muscular Dystrophy Association or Paraquad.