Neal Shapiro Shakes up Saturday Night at Thirteen-WNET

In February, former NBC News President Neal Shapiro will officially take over as the president of the Educational Broadcasting Corporation, the licensee of public broadcast stations Thirteen-WNET and WLIW New York. In the meantime, Mr. Shapiro is already beginning to leave his mark on the programming of Thirteen-WNET, where he has served as president since roughly the start of the year.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, on Jan. 5 Thirteen-WNET will shake up its traditional Saturday night line up of back-to-back classic movies, by replacing the night's second well-aged film with material aimed at a younger audience.

Beginning in the new year, according to the Times, each week Thirteen-WNET will post clips of three short films on its Web site, where visitors will be invited to vote on their favorite. The most popular film will then air, in full, on Saturday night followed by a full-length independent film of recent vintage.

"The new lineup, titled “Reel 13” and intended to attract a broader and possibly younger audience to the station, will continue to start with a classic film, at 9 p.m., followed by the viewer-chosen short," reports the Times. "The late-night independent feature films will be drawn from works that got good reception on the film festival circuit but did not get wide theatrical distribution, said Neal Shapiro, the president of WNET."