A new footprint

Back in the early 1980s at Columbia University, an undergraduate named Jonathan Abbott took on a job no one else really wanted: broadcasting live radio, every Friday night, from a new jazz club called the Blue Note. The task had a lot to do with schlepping equipment all the way to Greenwich Village. But it was also a matter of handling the paper-pushing technicalities of broadcasting. Once, Abbott used a personal connection - and the station's reputation - to cajole legendary drummer Max Roach into signing a legal release form for the live broadcast of his performance.

It was that mix of fandom and discipline that led a fledgling DJ to find his professional calling. "I quickly realized that while I might have some talent as an on-air host, I wasn't so sure that I was going to make a living at it," Abbott says. "But I did love being around musicians and creative people. It's a total gas being around creative people. The thing that could sustain me is if I had skills beyond being on the air."

Thus began a career in public broadcasting that led Abbott to his latest job: He begins Wednesday as the new president of WGBH, overseeing TV and radio productions and replacing longtime station leader Henry Becton Jr. Abbott's ascendancy comes at a time of change for the station, which has just moved into an expensive new building and is adjusting to an era of digital TV. And within PBS, Abbott is taking on a critical role. The station produces about a third of PBS's primetime and much of its children's programming, and also serves as a major political player in a system that faces increasing competition from broadcast and cable TV.

But from his perch in Brighton, Abbott's admirers say, the 45-year-old from Manhattan has a chance to help turn PBS's fortunes.

"I think what you're seeing right now is a changing of the guard at public television that's making us a little bit more responsive and a little bit more savvy," says documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who says Abbott's programming ideas have drawn more viewers to his films. Abbott, Burns says, "represents the creative wave of the future."

Friends and relatives say Abbott also represents a shift from PBS's sometimes-stodgy reputation: This is a man who got visibly starstruck one recent afternoon, when he met Jim Conroy, who voices the animated dog in the WGBH-produced children's series "Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman." ("I can tell my daughters now that I've meet the real guy!" Abbott told the actor.) Abbott's wife, artist Shari Malyn, said he's also a repository of "Brady Bunch" trivia, and is responsible for getting his kids into "Scooby-Doo."

"You've probably never met a person who is so much an example of high and low in taste," Malyn says.

As a boy, Abbott was steeped in the rarefied culture of a much older generation: His father was 55 when he was born. The son of tenant farmers in the Missouri Ozarks, Forrest Abbott did a stint in the Cincinnati Reds farm system, then moved to New York to work as a teacher. Jon, a child of his father's second wife, grew up listening to Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Lester Young. He worked his way through parochial school by singing in the choir of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.

Malyn thinks a childhood steeped in frugality and high culture - and an ability to relate to an older generation - probably helped Abbott succeed in his chosen career. His father's musical taste also helped Abbott get his early start in broadcasting. As a freshman hoping to join the Columbia radio station, WKCR, he aced a quiz about jazz that was meant to be nearly impossible. The skeptical upperclassmen gave him a follow-up test to see if he had cheated. Abbott fared so well, he says, that "they had no choice but to actually let me apprentice."

Eventually, Abbott headed the station's jazz programming. He also ran the station's first fund-raiser, raising $82,000. After graduation, he worked for two years at a Manhattan accounting firm, then headed to business school at Stanford, drawn to its program geared toward nonprofits.

Business school had its temptations; Abbott was lead singer in a campus rock band and failed spectacularly in a pie-eating contest, recalls Mike Golub, a close grad school friend who is now chief operating officer of the Portland Trail Blazers basketball team. There was also the matter of dangling dollar signs. But Abbott was always clear about his goals, Golub says.

"It's hard to stick to something that you know is not going to be necessarily as lucrative as some other options you might have," Golub says. "He never wavered. He's so resolute about what he wanted to do."

Indeed, when the president of KQED, San Francisco's public broadcasting station, came for a campus presentation, Abbott asked if he could take on a project. He got one: studying how to convert KQED's radio station to an all-news-and-information format.

"My strategy was, of course, become indispensable," Abbott says.

He landed a permanent job and worked at the station for five years, eventually running the marketing and development department. In 1992, when Abbott was just 30, PBS hired him to head development and corporate relations nationwide. He moved to Washington, D.C., where he got to know Becton, who served on the PBS board.

Becton first tried to hire Abbott to oversee development at WGBH in the spring of 1998. Abbott turned him down, fearing another fund-raising job would narrow his career. Three months later, WGBH's general manager left, and Becton called Abbott again, giving him a week to answer. Abbott quickly said yes.

At first, it was a hard sell to his wife, who had never wanted to leave San Francisco, and wasn't keen on yet another move. ("Jon's tombstone will say, 'I made my wife move and she still hasn't forgiven me,' " Malyn says.) And it was, Abbott concedes, a big psychological leap for someone who identified as a New Yorker. But Abbott convinced his wife that Boston's cultural scene would be a boon for their growing family.

He, Malyn, and their two daughters, now 11 and 13, moved to a house in Newton Corner and now frequent the local theater scene. Abbott has also been known to troll Filene's Basement for clothes with his older daughter - and took her to the new Nordstrom department store in Natick the day after it opened.

"He's a sucker for good service," Malyn says.

At WGBH and within PBS, Abbott is known for his technological savvy and his sense of how to use stations' growing range of digital channels. He convinced WGBH to use Channel 44 for themed programming blocks, such as the annual "Opera Bash" and "Dance Fest." He talked about on-demand viewership before it became an industry buzzword, says Paula Kerger, the president of PBS.

Abbott also helped to develop World and Create, two nationwide digital channels that feature previously aired public television shows. And he pioneered a marketing idea called the "footprint": promoting a single show or series as a major event, and broadcasting it many times. The idea, he says, was "to try to match HBO at its game."

When he first proposed the idea at WGBH, some PBS stalwarts were skeptical.

"You're going to take other programs out of the schedule or you're going to have to move some things around," Kerger says. "There were probably some that thought, 'Is he crazy?' For the most part, people thought that it was an interesting idea."

The numbers bore out Abbott's theory: Fully 38.6 percent of Boston TV viewers saw some part of one early footprinted show, the Ken Burns documentary "Jazz." Now, all of PBS uses the "footprint." The current beneficiary is Burns's new film "The War."

In January, the "footprint" honors will go to a Jane Austen festival, part of a rebranding of the WGBH-produced series "Masterpiece Theatre."

It's an effort to take a TV landmark and adapt it to the future. And it mirrors Abbott's challenges at WGBH, where some employees are nervous about losing Becton, the longtime WGBH president who rose from the ranks of producers himself. (Becton will be vice-chair of the WGBH board and will remain a station adviser.)

Within the building, one WGBH producer said last week, Abbott is admired for adding organization to the station's business side. But some wonder whether he will be as steadfast as Becton in defending shows from outside critics: "There's some trepidation," the producer says.

Abbott has tried to allay concerns, holding well-received meetings with producers. He also has a close relationship with Becton, who recommended Abbott as his successor. The WGBH board voted for Abbott unanimously, without conducting a search.

And some public broadcasting critics say that Abbott, with his digital savvy, could lead WGBH through uncertain times - if he's willing to ruffle some traditionalist feathers.

Abbott "has to bear the failure of public broadcasting to be on the cutting edge," says Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the advocacy group Center for Digital Democracy. But Chester said Abbott also has a chance to use digital media to attract a new generation of viewers.

Abbott says he's been thinking about that digital future, and concentrating on related technicalities, such as securing legal rights to use material online. And he hopes the mystique of community broadcasting itself - the same reputation that once incurred trust in Max Roach - will keep audiences tuned in.

"The thing that gives me confidence in the future," he says, "is that we stand for something in the public's eye."

Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com. For more on TV, go to www.viewerdiscretion.net.