O.C. Resident Elected Chairman of the CPB

Award-winning broadcaster and longtime Orange County resident Frank Cruz on Tuesday was elected chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that is a major source of funding for public radio and television stations and programming.

The election of Cruz reflects the organization’s emphasis on diversity, one of the CPB’s top three budget and policy priorities in the coming year. The CPB has earmarked $7 million of its $300-million budget for diversity programming.

“Public broadcasting must lead in defining and delivering excellent programming and public services in this new media era,” Cruz said in a statement. He was traveling Tuesday and couldn’t be reached for comment.

Public broadcasting executives lauded the choice of Cruz.

“Frank gets it. This is a person who really understands the system of public broadcasting,” said Mel Rogers, president and general manager of KOCE-TV, the public TV station in Orange County. “He understands how it works, its mission, where it needs to go in the future, and how to get there.”

Cruz, 59, of Laguna Niguel, was appointed to the CPB board in 1994 by President Bill Clinton. He served as vice chairman of the CPB in 1997 and 1998. His term expires next year.

Cruz has deep roots in business and the media. The USC graduate was an Emmy Award-winning news reporter and weekend anchor at KNBC-TV and a reporter at KABC-TV in Los Angeles. He went on to help found Telemundo, the nation’s second Spanish-language network, and KVEA-TV in Los Angeles, where he served as vice president and later general manager.

More recently, he founded and was chairman of Gulf Atlantic Life Insurance Co. in California, one of the nation’s first Latino-owned life insurance companies, from 1991-95. He is now president of Cruz and Associates, a financial consulting firm that he started in 1995 and runs from his home.

Until recently, Cruz also served on the board of directors of Health Net, a Los Angeles-based health maintenance organization.

“I’m very proud of him,” said Bonnie Cruz, his wife. “Everything he’s ever tried to do he’s done well at, from being a TV reporter to co-founding Telemundo.”

Also on Tuesday, the CPB announced that the Latino Public Broadcasting Project, headed by actor Edward James Olmos, will represent the Latino community on public broadcasting’s National Minority Consortia--a coalition of five groups that support diverse cultural programming with funds from CPB. Olmos’ group was one of five organizations competing for more than $940,000 to manage the development, production and distribution of public television programs produced by, and about, Latinos.

“We have always been deeply committed to increasing the presence of diverse voices, faces and perspectives in public television,” said CPB Chief Executive and President Robert T. Coonrod, in a statement.

Among the others vying for the funding were the Los Angeles-based National Hispanic Media Coalition and the Washington-based National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, co-founded by actor Jimmy Smits. Olmos’ group replaces the Los Angeles-based National Latino Communications Centers, which lost its funding amid charges of mismanagement.

Another Californian, Christy Carpenter of Sausalito, was elected vice chairman of the CPB. Carpenter, a public affairs consultant, helped market the first interactive cable TV system for Warner Communications and helped develop the Prodigy online service.