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2000s

Science finds a home in NOVA Science Now. Fetch with Ruff Ruffman features real kids facing real challenges. Radio news coverage gets expanded with the debut of the WGBH 89.7 newsroom and WCAI on the Cape and Islands. We also acquire 99.5 WCRB classical radio.

January 2000

Morning music

Cathy Fuller brings her talents as a pianist and educator to 89.7 WGBH — along with her passion for music, radio, and New England —as Classics in the Morning joins the lineup, introducing listeners to timeless classical music and up-and-coming musicians.

March 2000

Cape and Islands NPR

WGBH gives Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket residents their first local NPR station: WCAI, heard on 90.1, 91.1, 94.3 and streaming on wgbh.org (later capeandislands.org) Founded by local residents, the station celebrates the unique flavor and voices of the communities it serves.

Between The Lions

Wild about reading, April 2000

WGBH gets kids wild about reading with Between the Lions. The TV series, website, and extensive classroom and community outreach lead to remarkable leaps in literacy, as measured by independent research. Kindergarteners who watched the series outperformed students who didn't by 4 to 1 on a range of skills emphasized in the programs.

September 2000

Education reform

WGBH launches Eye on Education, a multimedia journalistic focus on the impact of education reform in Massachusetts that uses TV, radio, print, and the web to inform the ongoing dialogue about an issue of critical importance to our community.

September 2001

Beyond Darwin

WGBH takes America on an eight-hour scientific journey into where we're from and where we're going with Evolution. A robust website and outreach to biology teachers nationwide continues the conversation, and the learning.

February 2002

Teaching tool

Teachers' Domain launches, offering digital media for the classroom and professional development. The free online library provides educators with media resources from the best in public television-easy to use and correlated to state and national standards.

Watch Forum Network's talk with Garrett Graff at the Shorenstein Center

June 2002

Lectures online

Continuing in the Lowell Institute’s tradition, the WGBH Forum Network debuts, offering free lectures by the world's leading scientists, educators, policymakers, artists, and authors. The service will go national in 2009.

Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy

May 2003

Online Heights

Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy marks the first time WGBH develops a fully interactive video and information experience online. The Washington Post says of the six-part PBS series (based on the same-titled book by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw), "No more important program for making sense of our times has been seen in at least a decade." Long after the broadcasts, colleges across the country use the website to bring to life the upheavals of economic reform and the emergence of a new era of globalization.

September 2003

Innovation Engine

The WGBH Lab launches, a creative incubator for user-generated content and social media. The Lab invites the next generation to shape the future of public media: to dig in the Lab's Sandbox and make their own video mash-ups, pitch their projects to the Lab's Open Calls, or get training and support as a WGBH Filmmaker in Residence.

September 2003

Scorsese's Blues

Under the guiding vision of Martin Scorsese, seven directors (from Clint Eastwood to Wim Wenders) explore The Blues through their own personal styles and perspectives. Grammy winner Keb' Mo' hosts a companion 13-part series for public radio.

September 2003

City kids

WGBH joins with the City of Boston to a launch Boston Kids & Family TV, a dedicated channel with high-quality, non-commercial children's programs during the day and an adult life-learning menu at night.

Simply Ming Season 13 Sizzle Reel

October 2003

East meets west

Simply Ming joins the PBS lineup, a new WGBH-produced cooking series starring celebrity chef Ming Tsai preparing East-West recipes for flavorful, simple, and delicious meals.

March 2004

More choice, convenience

WGBH introduces a suite of new TV channels, made possible by the digital revolution: WGBH WORLD, WGBH Create, WGBH Kids, WGBH HD, and WGBH On Demand. The specialized channels complement the variety of WGBH 2 and 44, letting viewers zero in on what they want, when they want it, 24/7.

peep  logo for kids page

April 2004

Early science

WGBH's Peep and the Big Wide World debuts on TLC and Discovery Kids (and later on PBS). The animated series and related educational resources give wings to the innovative idea of teaching science to preschoolers.
Buster in Egypt

October 2004

Bunny hop

Postcards from Buster spins off from WGBH's popular Arthur series, blending animation with live-action video of the travels of the peripatetic Buster Bunny.

October 2004

Podcast first

WGBH is the first public broadcaster to launch a podcast: "Morning Stories" with Tony Kahn. By the following July, a dedicated audience from all around the world — China, Israel, Brazil — is contributing to the more than 300,000 downloads a month. Dedicated fans volunteer to transcribe episodes, which become a popular learning tool for adults learning English.

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January 2005

Appetite for science

Fast-paced and timely science and technology stories find a new home on WGBH's NOVA ScienceNow, a NOVA offshoot covering everything from stem cells to hydrogen fuel cells, from T. rex to the ivory-billed woodpecker, from surgery on pet fish to frogs that freeze solid in winter. Astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson (named by Time "the Carl Sagan of the 21st century") takes over for Robert Krulwich in Season Two, offering a playful inquisitiveness along with serious science chops. Science cafés held in pubs and coffee houses around the country bring scientists and fans together for casual chats.

July 2005

Across space and time

Time Warp Trio, a WGBH action/adventure series based on the popular book series by Jon Scieszka, helps ignite 6- to 11-year-old viewers' interest in history following its debut on NBC and Discovery Kids.

November 2005

Public health

WGBH launches Rx For Survival: A Global Health Challenge, an ambitious multimedia project filmed in 20 countries with a child-survival impact campaign and global health summit in collaboration with Time.

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Fetching science, May 2006

WGBH unleashes Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman, a reality/game show that blends live-action and animation, as real kids complete science-related challenges under the direction of an animated dog. Fetch! labs at museums around the country extend the interactive experience for kids.

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September 2006

Monkey business

The world's most inquisitive monkey makes his TV and web debut, as WGBH brings H.A. and Margret Rey's beloved Curious George to PBS. George's antics teach preschoolers key concepts in math, science, and engineering.

October 2006

Internationally inspired

WGBH and Gourmet mix up a delicious new public television series that looks at world food. Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie transports viewers on culinary adventures around the globe — and into the magazine's New York test kitchens to learn from editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl how to bring internationally inspired dishes into their own homes.

October 2006

Managing asthma

WGBH joins with Children's Hospital Boston, the Boston Public Health Commission, and other organizations to launch "Kids with Asthma Can..." an ambitious outreach campaign that uses Arthur and Postcards from Buster characters to help local families — including those in five Boston neighborhoods with some of the highest rates of childhood asthma in the U.S.. "Kids with asthma deserve to have a good quality of life," said Boston Mayor Tom Menino. "I commend the partners who worked on this endeavor —especially Arthur and Buster."

Design Squad Latinx

February 2007

Engineering interest

Design Squad debuts. WGBH's fast-paced reality/competition TV series and interactive website for older kids uses a science- and math-based curriculum to present engineering as a fun challenge and a career path.

April 2007

Practice, practice

From the Top: Live from Carnegie Hall makes its PBS debut. Based on the popular public radio program, the WGBH series showcases the musical talents, offbeat humor, and stories of America's rising young classical musicians.

May 2007

Face to face

WGBH launches María Hinojosa: One-On-One, interviews with America's foremost Latino thinkers, artists, writers, and opinion leaders. A Spanish version runs on V-me, PBS's new Spanish-language digital TV service.

October 2007

Brighton Brightens

A dozen opening events mark WGBH's relocation to new environmentally friendly, all-digital studios in Boston's Brighton neighborhood at One Guest Street where, in its first year, WGBH will welcome in nearly 20,000 people for screenings, performances, and tours.

January 2008

Online U

WGBH begins offering high-quality video clips and other educational resources on iTunes U, a dedicated area of the iTunes Store featuring educational content. As the 2008 election heats up, closed-captioned biographies of six U.S. presidents are available for free on the site, bringing new audiences to the acclaimed AMERICAN EXPERIENCE portraits.

April 2008

Pure poetry

Poetry, a part of everyday life? That's the goal of Poetry Everywhere, produced by David Grubin Productions and WGBH in association with the Poetry Foundation, to bring a spectrum of voices — Emily Dickenson to Yusef Komunyakaa — to the web and to PBS stations, who sprinkle the poems through the broadcast day.

April 2008

Morning news

The Takeaway joins the public radio lineup to offer local, national, and world affairs coverage to the Boston market. The live, conversational, personality-driven morning news program, hosted by John Hockenberry, is a joint production of PRI and WNYC, in partnership with WGBH, the BBC, and The New York Times.

April 2008

To your health

Caring for Your Parents offers strategies, free materials, and workshops to millions of Americans facing critical health-care decisions. It's followed by two other health-related WGBH specials for PBS: The Truth About Cancer and Depression: Out of the Shadows.

May 2008

Virtual first

WGBH Radio holds its first concert on Second Life, the online, 3-D virtual world imagined and created by its residents. Avatars represent piano virtuoso Jeremy Denk and classical host Cathy Fuller, who also beam the live performance out to listeners on the air and on WGBH's website.

June 2008

Getting Social

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE is the first to join social media by launching its Twitter account in June 2008. GBH followed with the launch of its first social account in October 2008, joining the conversation on Twitter.

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September 2008

W-o-o-f!

WGBH's latest book-based children's series debuts: Martha Speaks animates author Susan Meddaugh's talking dog, who gains the gift of gab after eating alphabet soup. The vocabulary-building TV show, website, and educational outreach resources and activities help children become successful readers and learners.

February 2009

Stemming the tide

WGBH joins forces with WBUR on Project Dropout. The ambitious multimedia collaboration —TV, radio, web —results in what Boston's Private Industry Council deems "the most inventive and insightful treatment of the high school dropout crisis in Massachusetts to date."

April 2009

Native history

We Shall Remain, the most extensive project on Native American history ever produced, takes viewers on an innovative, multimedia exploration of Native history as seen through Native eyes. Five films air on AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, anchoring the unprecedented WGBH initiative, which includes the Reel Native project for aspiring Native filmmakers. Indian Voices says, "This series has to be one of the great turning points of American history."

June 2009

Games to go

WGBH introduces its first iPhone apps. The initial app is a “Light It Right” game for WGBH’s broadband children’s program "The Greens," encouraging kids to turn off unused lights at home. More games follow, including the WGBH News app and classical and Celtic music apps.

June 2009

Digital switch

WGBH joins TV stations across the country in making the federally mandated switch to digital broadcasting from the nation’s former analog standard.

September 2009

Class act

WGBH teams up with Harvard University to bring Professor Michael Sandel’s popular political philosophy course to TV and online. Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? engages viewers in a discussion of affirmative action, income distribution, same-sex marriage, and more, showing that even the most hotly contested issues can be the subject of reasoned moral argument.

October 2009

Roots and rhythms

WGBH reaches across five decades and diverse musical genres for Latin Music USA, a TV series and bilingual website portraying the rich mix of sounds created by Latinos and embraced by all. The fresh take on music history is seen on PBS and on the Spanish-language digital broadcast service V-me.

October 2009

Globe-trotting gourmets

WGBH and Gourmet magazine cook up Gourmet’s Adventures with Ruth, culinary travels to exotic locales and cooking schools around the globe featuring Ruth Reichl and celebrity guests.

December 2009

Living with diabetes

Young people living with diabetes have a new online resource and forum: MyType2, a WGBH web collaboration with PBS and CPB addressing a skyrocketing problem that puts Latinos, African Americans, and Native Americans at special risk.
99.5 WCRB Radio logo

December 2009

Doubling our radio service

After acquiring longtime Boston classical station WCRB, WGBH launches 99.5 WCRB, Classical Radio Boston, as a 24/7 classical music service, and 89.7 WGBH becomes Boston’s NPR station for news and culture. A double win for WGBH listeners, as Laura Carlo, Ray Brown, and others join the 99.5 lineup and 89.7 introduces The Emily Rooney Show, The Callie Crossley Show (now Under the Radar with Callie Crossley) and more.