Firings raise questions at Alabama Public Television

In May 2011, the Birmingham Business Journal named Allan Pizzato, the executive director of the recession-tested Alabama Public Television, “nonprofit CEO of the year.” Since 2008, APT had seen its state funding cut in half, and the Business Journal commended Pizatto, especially, for his stewardship of the network through these hard times. Just over a year later, he was fired.

Pizzato, APT’s executive director for 12 years, and his deputy, Pauline Howland, learned they were losing their jobs mid-afternoon on June 12, partway through their quarterly meeting with APT’s governing body, the Alabama Educational Television Commission. They were given minutes to collect their belongings and leave the building. Ferris Stephens, an assistant attorney general who serves as AETC’s chairman told me that the commission “wanted to go with a new direction in leadership.” APT declined to be more specific about what the new direction will entail, but said APTV “might do more social media.” Whatever the precise reasons for the firings—accounts on both sides differ, and Pizzato declined to comment for this story—they have been interpreted by the public and the press as a power struggle between APT and the more politically conservative, governor-appointed AETC, which allegedly tried to push conservative programming and scrub APT’s mission statement of its pledge for diversity, particularly in terms of “sexual orientation.”