Tom Meek (born 1956) is an American columnist and author of "Another Day In Cyberville" published weekly in The Gainesville Voice, a New York Times regional newspaper, beginning in October, 2000 in The Gainesville Sun. "Cyberville" deals with issues related to high-tech, computers, New Media and Internet issues. Meek also writes musical and other occasional features on persons such as trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and American composer Joseph Byrd for publication in print and online, and is the author of online blogs dealing with media and music. Meek has also served as a media consultant for interests worldwide including the Fox Broadcasting Network, Swedish Televerket and numerous Fortune 500 companies, and is an expert witness certified by the United States Supreme Court on media and copyright issues related to cable television and broadcast television.
Life and career
Meek originally began involvement in media by doing volunteer music programming at WIOT-FM at age 12. He then extended his involvement in music by serving as a DJ and sound and light engineer at the Catacombs Coffee House in Sylvania, Ohio from 1969 to 1972. Meek began his television career while still in high school as a producer for WSPD-TV in Toledo, Ohio in 1973. He also served as an Ohio county-level student coordinator in the 1972 presidential campaign of Senator George McGovern. He moved to Columbus, Ohio in 1976, where he worked as a music buyer for the Peaches Records chain. After spending a year in Boston, Massachusetts at Grahm Junior College in 1978–79, Meek moved to Gainesville, Florida and graduated from the University of Florida in 1982 with a degree in Communications while working at WUFT-TV and other media positions at the university from 1980 to 1982. In his final semester Meek helped launch a new graduate level communications degree program, serving as director and co-producer of a drama "Ernie Pyle, Here Is My War", winner of the 1982 Alpha Epsilon Rho Grand Prize for Drama.
Although he initially planned to pursue a journalism master's degree in Gainesville, Meek immediately began working as a producer and researcher at WFTV-TV, Orlando when offered a job in May, 1982. After two years producing a morning news and information program, he was hired at WOFL-TV in April, 1984, initially as Community Affairs Director, then as Station Operations Manager beginning in 1986. While at WOFL-TV, Meek wrote, produced and edited a number of documentaries, including a program on Louis Comfort Tiffany and the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park, Florida which was credited with helping keep the Morse collections intact for an eventual larger museum, and a program on the introduction of Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) into Central Florida, which won a medal at the New York International Film & Television Festival in 1984. Meek's television producing experience exceeds 500 programs including documentaries, information, telethons, talk and public service, several thousand program segments, and serving as Executive Producer for thousands more news and public service programs.
In 1987, at the request of several television stations, law firms and the Fox Broadcasting Network, Meek began a consulting practice in issues related to cable-broadcast television issues, which expanded to include a wide range of areas related to copyright, TV and radio station startups, disaster and strategic plans, Nielsen ratings, FAA airspace issues, digital television, tower construction and zoning issues, writing for print and television, multimedia production and other media issues. In 1989 Meek produced and moderated a set of four nationwide seminars for the NATPE Educational Foundation, which were seen as a groundbreaking effort to bring leaders of the broadcasting and cable industries directly together in a day-long event for the first time. In 1998 Meek expanded his consulting practice again to include computers, networks and Web design, with an additional added emphasis on skills training and Intranet/Internet Web-based collaboration.