Jeff Bieber – 2017
Vice President, Content Development and Production, WETA
Jeff Bieber is responsible for content development, marketing, and project management of national primetime programs and public media initiatives for PBS. This includes developing and managing broadcast series’ and specials along with comprehensive on-line and community engagement initiatives, communications campaigns, ancillary products, and educational curricula.
For the last sixteen years, Bieber has executive produced documentary series’ and specials including Avoiding Armageddon (2003), an 8-hour series on weapons of mass destruction; America at a Crossroads (2007), a 12-hour series on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; The six-hour Jewish Americans (2008), six-hour Latino Americans (2013), the four-hour Italian Americans (2015), and The Pilgrims (2015), slated for broadcast in November 2015.
He is now developing the history of Asian American and The 38th Parallel, a new history about the Korean War.
Prior to this position, Bieber produced, directed and wrote many documentaries, news, public affairs and performance programs. He has been honored with numerous awards including two national EMMYs, two Peabody’s, and a DuPont-Columbia Award.
Before his television career, Jeff Bieber was a professional clarinetist, performing with the Kennedy Center Orchestra, The American Ballet Theater, the New York City Opera and many other groups.
Events
7:00 p.m. - Warner Bros. Theater
A screening of the latest film by Ric Burns, one of America’s preeminent documentary filmmakers. THE PILGRIMS will premiere on November 24, 2015, on PBS’ renowned series AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, the longest running history series on television. The film explores the reasons why, despite the risks, a group of men and women crossed the Atlantic to settle in America in 1620 and how this seemingly inconsequential story in American history became the nation’s birth myth. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Ric Burns.
6:00 p.m. - Warner Bros. Theater
Join Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Blackmon and Emmy-Award winning producer Sam Pollard as they are interviewed by Jeff Bieber, Vice President of Content Development and Production from WETA television, about their careers and the challenges inherent in making history films. They will share excerpts from their new film The Harvest (2017)*, a look at the legacy of school integration in Blackmon’s native Leland, Mississippi. Come early to see a screening of Blackmon and Pollard’s previous film Slavery by Another Name (2012)*.
