Former President
NBC News

Mr. Grossman was co-chair of the Digital Promise Project, which originated, researched and for the past decade has championed the proposal to establish a National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies to help transform education, lifelong learning and skills training for the digital age. Mr. Grossman was president of NBC News from 1984 to 1988. He served as president of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) from1976 to 1984. In 1989, he was appointed Visiting Lecturer, occupying the newly endowed Frank Stanton First Amendment Chair at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. In 1990, he moved to Columbia University as Senior Gannett Center Fellow and Visiting Scholar. In 1993 he served as the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Communications Studies at the University of Miami.

From 1962 to 1966, Mr. Grossman was Vice President of Advertising for NBC. In 1966, he formed his own communications consulting firm and advertising agency, Lawrence K. Grossman, Inc., which served media and public affairs clients including PBS, Sesame Street, WNET/13, the United Negro College Fund, NBC, Ladies Home Journal and the National Association of Broadcasters. In 1968 he also founded and served as president of Forum Communications, Inc., which challenged the television license of WPIX, owned by the New York Daily News.   In 1976, Mr. Grossman left his New York firm and Forum Communications to become president of PBS in Washington, DC. 

Mr. Grossman has been active on many pro bono boards of directors including Connecticut Public Broadcasting, the Federation of American Scientists, the International Longevity Center, and the International Council on Global Health Progress in Paris. 

He is the author of “The Electronic Republic, Reshaping Democracy for the Digital Age,” first published in 1995 by Viking and the Century Foundation, and co-author with former FCC Chairman Newton N. Minow, of ”A Digital Gift to the Nation, Fulfilling the Promise of the Digital and Internet Age.” That book was published in 2001 under the sponsorship of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Century Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the John D. MacArthur Foundation, and the Open Society Institute. It proposed the idea of establishing the National Research Center.