Jim Fellows, key diplomat within public TV, dies at 77

James A. Fellows, 77, an advocate of high ideals and strategic planning for public television, died in his sleep Friday, Jan. 6, at a nursing home in Millville (NJ).

Fellows represented stations on the national scene for 40 years, serving as the last president of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, founding Current as a service of NAEB, remaining its publisher for more than 20 years, and working to establish a strategic planning unit for the famously fractured and decentralized public TV field. In 1979, CPB honored him with its highest award for achievement in public television, the Ralph Lowell Medal. From 1983 to 2003 he led Central Educational Network, a regional association of stations, and for years he chaired the Maryland Public Television Foundation. A longtime participant in the Prix Jeunesse biennial children’s TV festival, he chaired its international advisory board and founded what is now the American Center for Children and Media, based in Chicago.