Brian Meyer To Head Regional News Partnership at WBFO

By Tony Farina

Award-winning veteran journalist Brian Meyer, who has served as news director at WBFO in Buffalo since 2014, has been promoted to the position of senior director of news and public affairs for WNED/WBFO where he will oversee a new regional collaboration that will focus on Great Lakes reporting.

Chief Program Officer John Grant also announced that Kathryn Larsen has been promoted to director of broadcasting for radio and television, assuming responsibility for WBFO-FM 88.7 and the non-music programming for Classical 94.5 WNED.  Her duties will include creating the program schedules for both radio stations, station budgets, and the supervision of the Classical 94.5 WNED staff and non-news WBFO staff.

Meyer has made his mark in local reporting, working at WBEN Radio and the Buffalo News where he covered the City Hall beat for many years.  Grant said Meyer “is doing an excellent job guiding WBFO to a position of leadership in the Western New York news,” adding that “these additional duties strengthen and broaden his role.”  H also praised Larsen in a news release, saying she is doing an excellent job with her TV programming and management skills and her new role will “allow her to bring those skills to radio programming and management.”

According to Grant, WBFO “will be the lead station in a journalistic partnership that will include staffs in Cleveland, Rochester and at other stations in the Great Lakes region.  The two-year grant for the collaboration was funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with a goal of increasing original reporting across multiple platforms of issues pertaining to our freshwater resources.”