PAT MITCHELL

摘要

The young genius upstairs." That's how PBS President Pat Mitchell describes Brandon Tartikoff when they both worked at NBC in the late 1980s. "He wasn't in the news division," she says, "but everybody knew who Brandon was." While Tartikoff showed his TV-programming passion early, Mitchell's family didn't even own a set until she was a teenager, although her father ran a GE appliance store. "My dad thought television would ruin your mind," she says. "I think we were the last ones on the block to get one even though he sold them for a living." Mitchell's mind remained intact nonetheless. She even managed to combine studious-ness and TV. She has been a college professor, a documentary producer, a news reporter and anchor, an entrepreneur with her own production company and syndicated show, and a TV executive, commercial and noncommercial, not to mention an advocate for various causes. She has led PBS since 2000, through some stormy times. She is scheduled to leave before June, when her contract expires.