Franz Joachim is the General Manager and CEO of New Mexico PBS, serving Albuquerque, Santa Fe, central and northern New Mexico and the Navajo Nation. He has been involved in television production for over 50 years, starting in high school as an AV nerd.

Under Franz’s leadership NMPBS has become the alpha station in the PBS system for implementation of their fiber /cloud-based distribution system.  NMPBS has used this innovation to grow into the one of the largest distributor of programing to public television stations in the country, second only to PBS.  New Mexico PBS was the first Public Television station to fully implement ATSC3.0 broadcasting, simulcasting all five ATSC1.0 program streams in ATSC3.0 throughout their primary coverage area.  NMPBS has been granted a license to launch what we believe to be the first low-power ATSC3.0 service in the nation, serving Taos and surrounding communities in northern New Mexico.  NMPBS is one of a handful of a stations to offer Datacasting services for both Education and Public Safety, and the only one to incorporate ATSC3.0 distribution as part of the service.

Franz has served as Chair of the University Licensee Association of Public Television Stations, Chair of the Public Television Affinity Group Coalition, Chair of the Board of Trustees for America’s Public Television Stations (APTS), Board Secretary for Vision Maker Media, member of the 2019 and 2023 Corporation for Public Broadcasting Community Service Grant Review Committees, and is currently Chair for the PBS Interconnection Committee and a PBS Board member.

Franz has been married to Dr. Lorna Joachim for thirty years and they have one son.  Lorna’s career as a field primatologist makes Franz’s career seem tame.  Ask her about the alligator sometime.  Gabriel is a Field Ecologist and Entomology Tech for Wageningen University in the Netherlands.  Of Franz’s many accomplishments raising Gabe to help save the planet is his most significant.