Gerald Slater, a public television pioneer, dies at 86 of coronavirus

Before the Senate’s Watergate hearings, public television was still mostly known as a venue for educational programing. Big Bird, not big news.

But Gerald Slater, an executive at the fledgling Public Broadcasting Service and one of its four founding employees, took responsibility for offering up the hearings that started in 1973 in prime time, shifting the system’s image. In two decades as an executive at PBS and then WETA, Slater played a key role in the development of public television, expanding its coverage of public affairs and the arts.