Joseph Baudino

Inducted 1997

Deceased  

Joseph Baudino joined the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1927.  For more than fifty years, he served in engineering and administrative positions in Westinghouse stations and offices in Pittsburgh, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.  He retired as senior vice president of Westinghouse Broadcasting in 1969, but continued as consultant to that company into the 1980s.   

Baudino was speech equipment engineer for KDKA from 1928-1931.  He moved to Boston in 1931 as chief engineer of WBZ, then back to Pittsburgh in 1936 as chief engineer and plant manager of KDKA. 

In 1941 he became technical manager and assistant to the general manager of Westinghouse Radio Stations. He was general manager of KDKA from 1943-1951, when he moved to Washington, D.C., as vice president, then executive vice president, then senior vice president of Westinghouse Broadcasting Inc.  

During his tenure as manager of KDKA, Baudino was active in civic, charitable, and educational enterprises in the Pittsburgh area, including the Committee of Ninety, which was responsible for the rebirth of the downtown Pittsburgh area. He was radio chairman of Pennsylvania Week activities. 

During World War II, he was a member of the U.S. Board of War Communications and was awarded the Treasury Department's Silver Medal for war bond sales.  He was awarded the Cross of the Commander of the Order of the Phoenix by Greece in 1948 for broadcasting programs to the people of Greece during the war. 

Baudino was a director of Broadcast Music Inc. from 1952-1960.  He served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Radio Advertising Bureau in the 1950s.  He was elected to the Television Board of the National Association of Broadcasters in 1955, and served six terms in the following fifteen years.  

In 1958, Baudino was appointed a member of the Federal Communications Commission unit of the National Defense Executive Reserve.  He was appointed to the Broadcasting Industry Committee of the Advisory Council on Federal Reports of the U.S. Bureau of the Budget in 1952, and he later served as chairman of that committee for ten years.   

Baudino was a founder of the Broadcast Pioneers Educational Fund Inc., the organization that established the Broadcast Pioneers Library, now the Broadcast Pioneers Library of American Broadcasting at the University of Maryland. He was president of the library from 1972-1978. He was president of the Broadcast Pioneers National Organization in 1965 and 1966.