Michael Pack

On June 1, 2018, President Trump nominated Michael Pack to be the Chief Executive Officer of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) for a term of three years. Since in the last two years the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee had not voted on submitting his nomination to a vote by the full Senate, President Trump re-nominated Pack on February 25, 2020. In June 2020, the U.S. Senate voted to confirm him to serve as the CEO of what is now known as the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), a $800 million agency in charge of the Voice of America (VOA) and other taxpayer-funded U.S. government’s international media outreach entities.

Michael Pack is President of Manifold Productions, Inc., an independent film and television production company, which he founded in 1977. Through Manifold Productions, Mr. Pack has written, directed, and produced numerous award-winning nationally broadcast documentaries as well as corporate and educational films. His latest documentary, Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, opened in U.S. theaters on January 31, 2020.

From 2015 to 2017, Mr. Pack served as President and CEO of the Claremont Institute in Upland, CA, and Publisher of its Claremont Review of Books. During his tenure, Mr. Pack revamped its management and organizational structure, created a new communications department which vastly increased its national prominence, and opened offices in DC to launch new programs and increase its profile in the policy world.

From 2003-2006, Mr. Pack served as Senior Vice President for Television Programming at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, where he restructured the programming department and launched several new initiatives. These included: America at a Crossroads, a series of 20 documentary films addressing issues facing America in the wake of the attacks of 9/11, and the American History and Civics Initiative, a program comprised of innovative, new media designed to address the crisis of historical amnesia in middle and high schoolstudents.

In 2002, President Bush nominated and the Senate confirmed Mr. Pack to serve on the National Council on the Humanities, which oversees the National Endowment for the Humanities. He served from July 2002 to February 2005.

In 1993, Mr. Pack served as Co-Chair of the International TV Council at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In this capacity, he oversaw the Council’s efforts to determine the feasibility of launching a cooperative program between American public television producers and stations and their counterparts in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Previously, Mr. Pack received a political appointment as Director of WORLDNET, the U.S. Information Agency’s global satellite network. WORLDNET produced, acquired, and distributed programs to over 127 countries and over 200 cities on all continents twenty-four hours a day. WORLDNET, now called VOA-TV, has merged with the Voice of America.

Mr. Pack attended Yale College, the University of California at Berkeley, and studied film at New York University.

READ HIS MANIFOLD PRODUCTIONS BIO

Please note that BBG Watch and USAGM Watch neither represent nor endorse any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.

70 Years of Radio Free Europe

  • July 8, 2020
  • 4 minute read
USAGM Watch History U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) CEO Michael Pack said in a message to Radio…