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South Florida PBS (WPBT, WXEL & Health Channel) is thrilled to announce that Penelope Douglas, South Florida PBS Health Channel’s Director of Content and Acquisitions, has been awarded the Janyth Righter Innovation Award.
The Janyth Righter Innovation Award was established in 2017 by Florida Public Media in recognition of the groundbreaking work former Executive Director Janyth Righter had done to build the underwriting program and increase station collaboration at Florida Public Broadcasting. This award is intended to honor those whose work is moving public media in Florida forward in new and innovative ways.
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the South Florida community like many other communities across the nation underwent a transformation and Penelope Douglas was instrumental in the innovation that ensued.
“We nominated Penelope Douglas for her innovative work with the Health Channel and transformative approach in delivering information about the pandemic. We couldn’t be happier to have her efforts recognized by Florida Public Media,” stated Dolores Sukhdeo, President and CEO of South Florida PBS.
“When the pandemic hit everyone on the South Florida PBS team mobilized to help the Health Channel get important, accurate and potentially life-saving information to the community. It was an all-out team effort and this award belongs to everyone on the SFPBS team,” stated Penelope.
Penelope’s efforts included transforming all the Health Channel productions to virtual productions which have included Smart Life FB Live events via Zoom right after our communities shuttered in March and in May as the state began to re-open. Both were very successful and delivered very important information from medical experts, mental health specialists and survivors to the audience about COVID-19. The success of these events inspired South Florida PBS Health Channel to use this format to create another series of FB live Town Hall Meetings, which have been extremely popular and have helped us reach an audience that has increased exponentially.
Lastly, in late February as the pandemic arose, Penelope and her team in an urgency to help our audience better understand the Coronavirus, lined up interviews with experts about the Coronavirus and created short segments of information that we titled “COPING WITH COVID” which have been airing on our stations and have resulted in national distribution to other PBS stations. These sixty second promos contain credible information about the Coronavirus from respected medical and scientific authorities. At one point more than 50 stations around the country were downloading these 60-second interstitials and playing them on their air or using them in social media.
