Northern California Public Media co-founder Nancy Dobbs plans to step away from company

Nancy Dobbs, president and CEO of a public radio and television company started with her late husband to bring public television to the North Bay, plans to leave Northern California Public Media in December.

Content Manager Darren LaShelle has been tapped by the company to succeed Dobbs and is appointed president- and CEO-elect.

'Darren brings many years of public media production and management experience to NorCal Public Media, as well as a strategic vision of how to best serve the community,' Dobb stated in the Thursday announcement.

Dobbs, along with her late husband John Kramer, founded the organization in 1981. KRCB TV 22, went on the air in 1984 as a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service, a designation the station still holds.

In 1994, Dobbs and staff launched KRCB FM 91.1, a member station of National Public Radio (NPR), serving the greater North Bay and based in Rohnert Park.

In 2017, in an FCC spectrum auction, the company exchanged a valuable UHF license for a VHF license gaining $72 million. The next year, Dobbs and the board of directors of Northern California Public Media acquired and started operating KCSM TV in San Mateo (now KPJK TV, named for Professor Kramer).

In a January interview with the Press Democrat in Sonoma County, Dodds recounted why her husband, then a Sonoma State University political science professor, decided to take on a business serving the public television market in the North Bay.

'There wasn't much cable coverage then,' Dobbs said, 'and very little access to Bay Area PBS programming. Nor did Bay Area media pay much attention to the day-to-day issues that reflect Sonoma County's unique personality. They swooped in only when there was a crisis, or a tragedy like the grisly murders committed in 1989 by winery worker Ramón Salcido.

'With about 250,000 Sonoma County residents unable to get public TV, Paul worried that they were missing out on all the educational (PBS) programming,' Dobbs said. 'He (also) worried that would cause a lack of identity, that residents would forget their local history.'

Driven by those worries, he formed a small focus group, got a planning grant, hired Dobbs to survey the community to gauge its support and applied for a full-service TV station license. The radio license followed. The newspaper reported the company's budget are $4.1 million a year.

LaShelle joined Northern California Public Media in 2014 as content manager and the senior producer of all projects produced by the organization. The announcement stated that before coming to NCPM, he was the director of Content and Creative Services and executive producer at WGTE Public Media in Toledo, Ohio. He previously served in a variety of positions over a 19-year career with the PBS and NPR affiliated WGTE as well as a promotions producer at Fox TV in Toledo, Ohio and as a creative services producer/director at NBC TV in the Wheeling/Steubenville market. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in broadcast media from Marietta College, in Marietta, Ohio.

LaShelle credited Dobbs for overseeing the growth by the public radio and television station company.

'Under Dobbs' leadership, we have grown into a multi-station, broadcast, and digital producer and presenter of educational and relevant content for the Bay Area and audiences across the United States,' LaShelle stated in the Thursday announcement. 'Our goal remains that of Nancy's original vision – to use media for the public good presenting children's educational programs, environmental initiatives, community health programs, bilingual efforts, as well as political and election coverage.'