At PBS, a Change in the Lineup

Animal Planet's reality series "Meerkat Manor" follows the adventures of the Whiskers family. (By John Brown -- Animal Planet via AP)

Arlington-based PBS shook up its programming operations yesterday, naming a public broadcasting veteran to a new job -- chief content officer -- while cashiering a veteran programming executive and closing its Los Angeles office.

The new guy, John Boland, comes to PBS from KQED, the public TV station in San Francisco, where he was executive vice president and chief content officer. Shown the door is Jacoba "Coby" Atlas, the much-liked co-chief of programming who ran PBS's West Coast programming operation for the past six years.

Boland will oversee TV programming, online operations, education and promotion -- pretty much everything the public sees from the Public Broadcasting Service. He is the first major hire of PBS's new president and chief executive, Paula Kerger, who signed on in March.

PBS will close its two-person L.A. office, which Atlas headed, and move all its functions to Arlington, a PBS spokeswoman told The Post's Paul Farhi.

Atlas joined PBS in 2000 under Kerger's predecessor, Pat Mitchell. A TV industry veteran, Atlas was previously a supervising producer at CNN, with Emmy- and Peabody-winning documentaries to her credit. She also spent a decade at NBC, serving as West Coast producer, supervising producer and senior producer of the "Today" show.

But Atlas, who couldn't be reached yesterday, clearly didn't fit in Kerger's administration. One sign: PBS's other chief of programming, John Wilson, is staying in his current position, reporting to Boland. Wilson joined PBS in 1994 as director of program scheduling. (Yes, he's the guy who moved "Masterpiece Theatre" from Sunday.)

Boland helped usher KQED into the digital era, initiating the station's Internet video operations, podcasts, blogs, original Internet content and content partnerships with other public broadcasters. He also helped launch seven local and regional TV series for the station, as well as such fare as "Jean-Michel Cousteau: Ocean Adventures" and "China From the Inside" for PBS and the BBC, and several programs for "Great Performances."

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Bob Woodruff, who briefly co-anchored the ABC evening news, yesterday made his first visit to the New York newsroom since suffering serious head injuries and broken bones in a roadside bomb explosion in Iraq in late January.

"World News Tonight" Executive Producer Jon Banner said in a blog on ABC's Web site that the visit was a surprise, much like President Bush's trip to Baghdad yesterday.

And, as on that trip, cameras were there to record Woodruff's surprise visit to the office; the footage aired at the end of "World News Tonight."