To the viewers of Buffalo Toronto Public Media, Ron Santora might be best remembered as Channel 17’s face of "Britcoms." His passing, after a lengthy illness, was announced in a social media message shared by his husband late Sunday night.
He wore many hats during his 19 year run at BTPM, starting as Director of Broadcasting in 1997, a promotion to Vice President in 2006, adding station manager and program director along the way. But it was during pledge breaks, especially during the station’s British sitcom block, that Santora’s connection with the audience came, with his shared love for characters like Mollie Sugden’s “Mrs. Slocombe” on “Are you Being Served?” and Dame Patricia Routledge’s “Hyacinth Bucket” on “Keeping Up Appearances."
As a board member of the Public Television Programmers Association, Santora had a voice on topics of national interest, like when, in 2005, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings questioned the appearance of gay characters on the PBS show “Postcards from Buster.”
"I believe," Santora wrote in an opinion piece appearing in Current, "our job is to do just exactly what the producers of 'Buster' set out to do — show viewers the world, not just a narrow segment bounded by prejudice."
Santora went on to ask in the piece:
What about my family? What about gay teenagers growing up — as most do — in families with both male and female parents? What about families headed by two lesbian moms or two gay dads?
What can these families now expect from their public television station? Are they so marginal, or worse, that we should hide them and their acceptance by at least some acquaintances, even if they are only cartoon rabbits? Does the station regard them as debatable people, whose value, legitimacy, visibility and perhaps even existence has been dismissed as a public policy, as if they were a city policy that had been revised or defeated?
They — we — are parents, too. They are taxpayers, too. Yet they and their children face the prejudice that the education secretary seeks to protect, on behalf of parents she claims to speak for.
If public television has a role in education, what responsibility do we have to those lesbian and gay taxpaying parents and their children?
Santora also had a passion for classical music, and briefly oversaw programming at BTPM Classical starting in 2014.
His public broadcasting career started in 1973 at KCTS in Seattle, where he worked in programming, education and fundraising production. He became program manager of KQED in San Francisco in 1990, and spent 19 years at BTPM until his retirement in 2016.
