R.I.P.: Joel Chaseman, Radio-TV Broadcast Executive

Joel Chaseman, a broadcasting executive who became chairman and chief executive of The Washington Post Co.’s broadcasting subsidiary, Post-Newsweek Stations Inc., died Jan. 11 at his home in North Bethesda, Md.

Joel Chaseman

He was 93, reports the Washington Post.

Chaseman, who had risen through the broadcasting ranks from news to program syndication, had been president of the Westinghouse Television Station Group when he left New York in 1973 to take the same title at Post-Newsweek Stations. He also became a board member of The Washington Post Co.

During his 17-year tenure leading the company’s broadcasting arm, including four television stations, he had a leading role guiding policy and development. The stations’ operating margins, former Post publisher Katharine Graham wrote in her memoir, “Personal History,” “grew competitive with the best in the business.”

“Joel was the man who built Post-Newsweek Stations (now Graham Media Group) over more than a decade,” Graham’s son and successor as publisher, Donald E. Graham, wrote in an email. “He started the company on its path to news leadership. He was a trusted adviser to Katharine Graham and a key director of her company.”

Joel Alan Chaseman was born in Trenton, N.J., on Feb. 18, 1926, and grew up in Albany, N.Y. After service as a Navy radar technician in World War II, he graduated from Cornell University in 1948 and became an announcer at radio stations in Elmira, NY, and at a TV station in Baltimore.

Later, he was general manager of the company that produced “The Steve Allen Show,” among other programs, and served as general manager of 1010WINS, when the New York station owned by Westinghouse went to an all-news format in 1965.