Robert Pondillo

Bob Pondillo is a multi-award-winning short filmmaker, writer/director, and taught beginning and advanced Screenplay Writing, Media History, and related media and culture classes at the College of Media and Entertainment at Middle Tennessee State University, where he was a tenured, full-time faculty member for fourteen years.

Pondillo worked in the media industry—radio/TV and film—before coming to academia. His credits include The Voice of America, Washington, D.C.; WNBC Radio, New York; ABC Radio Networks, New York; Group W Productions, Los Angeles; Paramount Pictures Television, Los Angeles; as well as more than 20 local radio and television stations from Ohio to Florida. He created the Emmy Award-winning Cleveland Comedy Company, co-founded and acted as Creative Director for the syndicated American Comedy Network, and in 2002 was inducted into the Radio/Television Broadcasters Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.

Dr. Robert J. Pondillo earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and holds the title of Emeritus Professor of Media/Culture, and Screenwriting. In addition to his numerous scholarly publications on media history and culture, Pondillo has written two academic books: America’s First Network TV Censor: The Work of NBC’s Stockton Helffrich (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), and American Media and Social Institutions (Cognella, 2014.) Radioland is his first novel, adapted from his original full-length motion picture screenplay of the same title.