Walter Podrazik

Walter J. Podrazik is a respected television historian, analyst, and media planner. A graduate of the School of Communication at Northwestern University, he is an adjunct lecturer at the Department of Communication at UIC, where he has taught courses on television history, communication and music, and the intersection of mass media and politics. He currently is a member of the board of directors of the Library of American Broadcasting Foundation and serves as a curator at Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications. He is co-author of ten books including the television history Watching TV (2024 fourth edition). Podrazik has contributed chapters to The Archivability of Television (Peabody Series in Media History) and to the Great Books volume Tube Talk (about the continued relevance of Newton Minow’s Vast Wasteland speech). He has experienced firsthand history-in-the-making handling media logistics at such events as the quadrennial presidential nominating conventions. Walter Podrazik was among the on-camera expert voices in the CNN Decades miniseries The Nineties and The 2000s.