Owens, Tim, 1948-

Tim Owens spent 55 years in broadcasting as a producer, reporter, program director, and station manager. As executive producer for NPR Jazz, Tim oversaw production of all five of NPR's syndicated jazz programs: Jazz Profiles with Nancy Wilson, Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz, JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater, Jazz from Lincoln Center and Billy Taylor's Jazz at the Kennedy Center. He served as the producer of Taylor’s Kennedy Center series and as the creator and series producer for Jazz Profiles, a documentary series that included shows on Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan, Modern Jazz Quartet, and dozens of other programs on jazz artists. Other Owens productions have included NPR’s Jazz Alive! hosted by Billy Taylor (1977-1983); the 1985 Jazz Summit shows with singer Joe Williams; Jazz Smithsonian with host Lena Horne (1991-1994); the Jazz Legacies birthday tributes (1985-1991); the Blue Guitars mini-series with John Pizzarelli; the nationally distributed radio companion programs for Ken Burns' PBS miniseries Baseball. Owens also oversaw the jazz recordings at the Kennedy Center. Tim co-produced the PBS Jazz In America mini-series (1982), and has produced news and cultural programs for NPR, the CBC, and the BBC, as well as jazz concerts at Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, UCLA's Royce Hall, Joseph Papp's Public Theater in New York, and numerous clubs throughout the country. Owens, who was also director of programming at WETA-FM in Washington, D.C. for more than eight years, left the station in 1993 to form his own production company, then eventually returning to NPR in 1997. When he left NPR in 2002, Owens served as the co-creator and senior producer for American Public Media’s Weekend America. Most recently, he was the General Manager of KDB, a classical music radio station in Santa Barbara, where he resides. During his career, Owens received two Peabody Awards: in 1980, for Jazz Alive!, and another in 2002, for Jazz Profiles, honored as "an innovative presentation of the world of jazz, honoring the works and the great artists of this unique American musical form. Owens’ productions received several New York Festival Radio Awards and Gabriel Awards. Additionally, Owens and the Cultural Programming Department at NPR received the distinguished Presidential Medal of the Arts from President Bill Clinton.