Chloe Aaron, a Top PBS Executive and former KQED-TV PD dead at 81

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/arts/television/chloe-aaron-dead.html

Chloe Wellingham Aaron, who, when she became senior vice president for programming at PBS in 1976, was “believed to be the highest-ranking woman executive at the network level in the history of television,” as the announcement of her hiring put it, died on Feb. 29 at her home in Washington. She was 81.

Emily Eliza Wall, her goddaughter, said the cause was cancer and related complications.

During her four and a half years in the PBS post, Ms. Aaron sought ways for the service to compete against the big three commercial networks that existed at the time, all the while fighting its perpetual budgetary woes. She made a particular mark with arts programming, starting, among other programs, “Live From the Metropolitan Opera” (also known as “The Metropolitan Opera Presents”).

In the 1970's Chloe was part of PBS Management over Uniforming its primetime schedule in the 1970's. and by the 1980's Ms. Aaron managed KQED-TV and WNYC-TV

Ms. Aaron found herself on the opposite side of that argument in 1989. After leaving the national PBS post in 1980, she was director of cultural and children’s programming at KQED in San Francisco, and in 1989 she became vice president for television at WNYC in New York. In that capacity she refused to broadcast a documentary called “Days of Rage: The Young Palestinians,” saying it was too one-sided in favor of the Palestinian viewpoint. Critics contended that she was trying to appease the station’s many Jewish donors