Steve Robinson

STEVE ROBINSON

Steve started his professional career in 1967 at WBUR and produced six, two-hour classical music programs per week. He also created a Saturday morning live call-in program about high fidelity called Shop Talk, which became the model for Car Talk.

After WBUR, Steve held positions at WGBH and WCRB/Boston and KPFA/Berkeley. In 1976 he was appointed the first development director of Vermont Public Radio (VPR). In 1980 he became the first development director for the newly created Jazz station, WBGO in Newark. At WBGO, Steve helped establish the station as the pre-eminent Jazz radio station in the U.S.

In August, 2000 Steve became manager of WFMT and the WFMT Radio Network in Chicago. His successful 16 year stewardship of the station and Network was notable for the new programs he created including a pioneering cross cultural relationship with classical music stations in China and the audience and fiscal growth that occurred under his leadership.

Steve has received numerous local and national awards for his work in Chicago including the Champion Award from the Merit School of Music; two awards from the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago (for his leadership in creating unprecedented day-long fundraising campaigns involving every single radio and TV station in Chicago to raise funds for victims of the tsunami in Southeast Asia and the earthquake in Haiti); the Dushkin Award from the Music Institute of Chicago for Exploring Music; the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for creative programming and numerous other awards and citations.

In October 2016, Steve formed his own company, New Media Productions, to create, produce and syndicate radio programs and podcasts. In 2024, he completed a commission for 13, one-hour radio documentaries entitled: No Regrets: The Music and Spirit of Billie Holiday. The series aired on dozens of stations throughout the United States in 2024 and in April 2025, won a New York Festivals Radio Award. In 2024, he also released a series of five, one-hour programs, Valentin Silvestrov: A Composer’s Journey, an overview the music of one of Ukraine’s best known composers. Steve is now developing a radio drama, Billie and Beethoven, about the lives of Billie Holiday and Beethoven, two iconic artists whose lives followed remarkably similar paths.