George Miles, WQED Multimedia president and chief executive officer, announced at the company's annual board meeting last night that he plans to retire next year.

Mr. Miles, who joined WQED as its CEO in 1994 at a time when the public broadcaster was coming off a period of debt and financial turmoil, will step down at the end of the 2009-10 fiscal year next September.

Deborah Acklin was promoted from WQED's general manager to the new position of chief operating officer last night and is in line to succeed Mr. Miles, pending board approval.

Mr. Miles' contract runs through 2011, but he said the timing was right for him to step down, particularly following completion of a five-year strategic plan this summer.

"Leadership is about getting an organization so it can fly out on its own," Mr. Miles said. "It's not about me leaving and the organization imploding. I want to be able to come back here five-to-10 years from now and see that this place is bigger and better than it's been before."

Mr. Miles, 67, said his departure is unrelated to financial difficulties WQED faced this year. Nine staffers were let go and both Mr. Miles and Ms. Acklin, among others, took pay cuts. The 30 percent cut he accepted reduced his salary to $214,382.

"No way. This is not about me," Mr. Miles said.

Board Chairman Dick Stover said Mr. Miles identified Ms. Acklin as his potential successor five years ago and said the timing of his retirement was Mr. Miles' decision.

"When you have somebody inside that's clearly qualified, as Deb is, that makes that transition that much easier," Mr. Stover said. "The next problem would be who succeeds Deb, but I don't think that's in the very near future."

Ms. Acklin, 46, has a background in production and TV news, working in the newsroom at KDKA-TV and as part of the team that launched original productions on the National Geographic Channel. That's a different skill set from Mr. Miles' training as a certified public accountant.

"It presents new opportunities," Mr. Stover said of the station's presumptive new leader. "But in fact Deb went through the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School, which filled in what might have been some weaknesses in her background and we have plenty of support to give her if she needs it, but I don't expect she does."

During his tenure, Mr. Miles launched the daily newsmagazine "On Q" (Ms. Acklin was its executive producer when the program premiered) and attempted to sell WQEX and succeeded in changing the Channel 16 license from non-commercial/educational to commercial, which allowed the station to be leased, currently to ShopNBC, to derive a new source of income for the company.

In addition to announcing new leadership, the WQED board passed a $15.9 million operating budget for its new fiscal year, down from 2009's $21.6 million budget due to the sale of Pittsburgh Magazine and the tight economy. WQED projects to end its 2009 fiscal year $50,000 above break-even. It's the 10th straight year the station has ended in the black.

"I would hope that I have left this organization in a heck of a lot better shape financially, programmatically and operationally than when I found it," Mr. Miles said.

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