ALLAN PIZZATO

Allan Pizzato is the President and General Manager of WYES-TV, New Orleans, Louisiana having started in this position on January 1, 2013.   WYES-TV provides PBS programming to the greater New Orleans and Louisiana Gulf Coast Region with an emphasis on locally produced documentaries, public affairs and of course wonderful New Orleans style cooking programs.

Prior to moving to New Orleans, Pizzato was the Executive Director of Alabama Public Television (APT) and President of the Alabama Educational Television Foundation Authority (AETFA), a position he has held since August of 2000.  APT is a public educational television facility headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama with nine stations located across the state.  APT has production facilities in Montgomery, Alabama and Washington, D.C. and a public FM radio facility in Huntsville, Alabama.  Pizzato served as liaison to the Alabama Legislature and Executive Branch of State government for the Alabama Educational Television Commission.

Prior to that time, Pizzato was the general manager of WSRE-TV, director of The Kugelman Center for Telecommunications, and the executive director of the WSRE-TV Foundation, Inc. in Pensacola, Florida.  Pizzato’s public broadcasting career of more than 36 years began at Southern Illinois University where he was the station manager of WSIU-TV.   

Pizzato has served as co-chairman of the Organization of State Broadcast Executives (OSBE), the Southern Educational Communications Association, and the Florida Public Broadcasting Service, Inc., and he has been a past member of the boards of Infinite Outsource, Inc. and the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS).  Pizzato has also served on many advisory committees including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Community Service Grant Review Committee and the Digital Distribution Fund Advisory Committee, the Alabama Governor’s Access Distance Learning Advisory Task Force, and the Florida Commissioner of Education’s Advisory Committee on Florida Remote Learning Services.

In 2011, Pizzato received the Birmingham Business Journal’s Non-profit CEO of the Year Award and is a member of the Leadership Alabama Class of XVII.

Pizzato received his B.A. degree in broadcasting and M.A. degree in instructional media design from Indiana State University.  He is married to Sharon Marie (Denu) from DuBois, Indiana, and they have two grown children, Michael and Anne.