Former KYW-TV GM Pat Polillo Passes Away
Posted: September 3rd, 2008
Pat Pollilo, vice president and general manager of KYW-TV from 1980-84, passed away September 2 at the age of 75 from brain cancer.Polillo enjoyed a diverse and distinguished career spanning the fields of broadcasting, government, journalism, education and community service.
Polillo was a pioneer in local television for almost 40 years, from 1961 to 1998. He served as news director in Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco and Atlanta, and as Vice President and General Manager of two television stations, KPIX-TV in San Francisco and KYW-TV in Philadelphia.
A common sense manager, Polillo earned a reputation as a "troubleshooter" who turned operations around and transformed news operations.
His career in broadcasting was marked by innovation and two Emmy Awards. He is credited with numerous breakthroughs which revolutionized local television coverage, including the widespread use of minicams in covering live news events, the development of serious investigative reporting teams (I-Teams) at local television stations and the transformation of station editorials to on-site reports that got results. Philadelphia viewers knew him as the General Manager who took to the airwaves to lobby for consumer issues. He ended each editorial with his trademark, "I'm Pat Polillo and here's the address," generating hundreds of pieces of viewer mail on issues.
Polillo's lively career also included stints as a management consultant; a newspaper editor; a teacher of biology, music, German and math; a special agent for the Army's Counter Intelligence Corps in Germany, and, for more than 20 years, a leader of Great Books discussion groups at both the adult and children's levels.
At native of Mount Vernon, New York, Polillo, who was raised in Baltimore, made his home on Cape Cod with his wife, Dr. Kristine Soly, for the past 10 years.
Much of his groundbreaking work in broadcasting is part of the Pat Polillo Archive at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication Library.