Ralph Schuetz Ralph is Director of Administration and Program Management within the PBS Technology and Operations department. He is a 32 year public television veteran of public television, including 28 years at PBS and 4 years before that at WGBH Boston. At WGBH he worked on the studio crew, principally as a technical director, before becoming the tape librarian. He had the distinction of dismantling Julia Child's original kitchen after the show went from black and white to color. He switched a number of national productions including NET Playhouse, and worked extensively on remotes including WGBH's live tennis productions when Bud Collins worked for WGBH, long before the days of ESPN Ralph joined PBS as the Supervisor of Distribution for the Public Television Library, a tape-by-mail service based in Bloomington, Indiana, before it was moved to PBS headquarters. Tape "bicycles" predated telephone line interconnection, which predated satellite interconnection. You have to check out the beginning of the Great Interconnection Debate audio file, to appreciate what this meant to him!) Ralph has been involved in all of the transitions from tape by mail to phone lines and microwave to nine different satellites and digital compression. He's been heavily involved in recovering from some of the "unplanned" transitions after PBS's L'Enfant Plaza fire in 1984 and the Telstar 401 disaster in 1997. Working for the department's Senior Vice President Ed Caleca, Ralph now oversees the Technology and Operations Department budgets and other departmental administrative matters. He has primary responsibility for planning PBS's two yearly engineering meetings including the annual Technology Conference in Las Vegas.
Director of Administration and Program Management,
PBS Technology and Operations Department
Alexandria, Virginia
2001 PBS Technology Conference CD-ROM