WGBH's Alison Godburn Expands Role to Managing Director of Media Access Group and PMM Technical Sales

Media Access Group will join WGBH technology group under Chief Technology Officer Stacey Decker

BOSTON March 20, 2019 – Boston public media producer WGBH announced today that Senior Director of Media Access Group (MAG), Alison Godburn has expanded her role to Managing Director for Media Access Group and Public Media Management (PMM) Technical Sales. MAG will join WGBH’s technology and production group led by WGBH Chief Technology Officer Stacey Decker.

Godburn will continue to lead MAG as she takes on a client-facing role with PMM, a WGBH partnership with Sony Electronics and a first-of-its kind centralized media management and content distribution service that gives public TV stations new tools to engage with their communities. Godburn will serve as a part of the PMM team as she connects with public media leadership from across the country to better understand stations’ technology and accessibility needs.

The PMM service uses cloud computing and network services, and a range of proven Sony technologies to orchestrate the entire content management and distribution processes for a public broadcaster's programs. The station retains control over daily operations like scheduling, branding and local programming decisions. The PMM service is made possible with the Network Operations Center (NOC) located at the WGBH facility in Boston. The NOC captures national PBS content, conducts automated quality control, adds necessary metadata and uploads the content to the cloud. The facility is equipped with high levels of redundancy to ensure no single point of failure. In addition, Sony's SystemWatch^sm network monitoring technology continuously monitors the health of a station's PMM hardware and software, as well as the environmental conditions affecting system performance.

“PMM is fundamentally changing the public media landscape through its streamlined content distribution system and focus on new technologies. We believe that relationship-building and PMM’s exclusive services are an important part of making public media stations stronger,” said Decker. “Alison’s years of executive management, marketing experience and accessibility expertise will be great assets as we look toward building a public media system that remains at the forefront of technological innovations.”

Over the past seven years, Godburn has led MAG’s Boston and Los Angeles offices, continuing WGBH’s longstanding mission to provide accessible media services, like captioning and descriptive video, to the 36 million Americans who are deaf, blind, hard of hearing, or visually impaired. MAG provides access to thousands of hours of live and taped broadcast and cable television programs, streaming content, theatrical movie releases, documentaries, music videos, web videos, museums and attractions.

“I’m delighted to bring my executive management and marketing experiences to this new role with PMM. I know that working together with public media leaders, we can use PMM’s powerful tools to create more vibrant stations.” said Godburn. “I look forward to building relationships with public media stations and helping them use PMM technology to streamline and strengthen their operations.”

Prior to joining WGBH, Godburn held executive-level roles in marketing and management for Coldwell Banker, Fidelity, The Boston Group, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Volunteer Lawyers for the Art and the Arts and Business Council for Greater Boston.

About WGBH
WGBH Boston is America’s preeminent public broadcaster and the largest producer of PBS content for TV and the Web, including Masterpiece, Antiques Roadshow, Frontline, Nova, American Experience, Arthur and more than a dozen other primetime, lifestyle and children’s series. WGBH’s television channels include WGBH 2, WGBX 44, and the digital channels World and Create. WGBH TV productions focusing on the region’s diverse community include Greater Boston, Basic Black and High School Quiz Show and Stories from the Stage. WGBH Radio serves listeners across New England with 89.7 WGBH, Boston’s Local NPR®; 99.5 WCRB Classical Radio Boston; and WCAI, the Cape and Islands NPR® Station. WGBH also is a major source of programs for public radio (among them, PRI’s The World®), a leader in educational multimedia (including PBS LearningMedia™, providing the nation’s educators with free, curriculum-based digital content), and a pioneer in technologies and services that make media accessible to deaf, hard of hearing, blind and visually impaired audiences. WGBH has been recognized with hundreds of honors: Emmys, Peabodys, duPont-Columbia Awards and Oscars. Find more information at wgbh.org.
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