Alumni Profiles

Can an elephant predict a tsunami? What goes on in babies' brains? How would a 21st-century family have coped in 1628? Beth Hoppe '84 makes her living asking and answering such questions. For 20 years she channeled her curiosity into public television as the Emmy-winning producer of "Nova" and other shows. These days she's asking a different question: Can a true believer in public broadcasting find happiness in commercial TV?

So far the answer is yes. As president and CEO of Optomen USA, the American arm of a British production company, Hoppe still explores big issues, but now the resulting programs are as likely to air on other networks as on PBS. Navigating the increasingly complex producer's path, from curiosity to financing to script to production, she's growing more comfortable in a world where success depends on money and "eyeballs," a.k.a. ratings.

Two years ago, Hoppe was the eyeball queen of public TV. As director of science programs for WNET in New York, she'd reached a level where most people would have sat back to savor victory. She'd won an Emmy in 2003 for "The Secret Life of the Brain." (She won another in 2005 for a show on DNA.) Her series "Secrets of the Dead" was still going strong after five years. She'd branched out from science to become executive producer of "Frontier House" and "Colonial House," two "hands-on history" series that sent real people back to live in the re-created past and won PBS some of its highest ratings ever. She was interviewed and applauded everywhere; everyone wondered what she'd try next. But the thought of another "house" show gave her cabin fever. Moving to commercial TV has made her feel "like the world is wide open again."

Hoppe knows exactly when TV's excitement first grabbed her: Jan. 15, 1984. She was a senior at UNH on her first assignment for New Hampshire Public Television, serving as production assistant for a presidential candidates debate. She'd taken courses in everything from theater to politics to pre-vet and liked them all. At the debate, she was putting a microphone on moderator Ted Koppel when suddenly she knew: "TV is it, and I'll go where it takes me."

First she stayed with Channel 11, doing everything from running the camera at hockey games to editing a newsmagazine show. (Her advice for students seeking TV careers: Start small and learn everything.) She met Bill Howe, then a cameraman at NHPTV and now her husband of 18 years. From Durham she went to WGBH in Boston, first with the news and then with "Nova." Gradually her career pulled together the scattered courses she'd taken in college. "I look back at my UNH years as having laid the groundwork for my career," Hoppe says. "But while I was there, I couldn't see it."

In her new job, pulling things together means trying to incorporate public TV's spirit of inquiry into commercial programs. Recently, for instance, Optomen grappled with a tough question: How do you produce a show on serial killers without tabloid sensationalism? The result, a series called "Most Evil" that aired on the Discovery Channel, illustrates Hoppe's goals. The series never showed a crime scene or a body; instead, it scientifically probed the minds of killers. Now she's contemplating a show about social psychology experiments, and perhaps another on everyone's favorite subject, food. "I have a huge variety of things I can be involved in and learn about," she says, "and that's completely liberating and exciting."