Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

Pittsburgh’s revitalization is featured in the first episode of the three-part PBS series “Future of Work” (10-11 p.m. Wednesday, WQED-TV), which explores changes in the workplace and its potential for long-term impact on workers, employers, educators and communities nationwide.

Executive producer and series creator Denise DiIanni said she was interested in including Pittsburgh for several reasons.

“We wanted our show to have all kinds of diversity, including, importantly, geographic diversity,” she said. “We didn’t want this to be a bi-coastal kind of documentary.”

The episode includes a visit to Pittsburgh’s IAM Robotics and interviews with New Century Careers’ Neil Ashbaugh and Paul Anselmo.

DiIanni credits the episode’s writer/director/producer Graham Townsley with finding an interesting juxtaposition story involving Pittsburgh and Youngstown that shows up about 45 minutes into this week’s “Future of Work” premiere episode.

“The Youngstown story, it’s been told, so what the corollary?” DiIanni said. “What’s the story that we couldn’t have told 10 or 15 years ago that we could tell now.”

She called Pittsburgh “a place that really was doing remarkably well in terms of diversification of industry, a place that was really seeming like it was riding the crest of these profound and tumultuous changes in the world of work.”

DiIanni said the danger of being a one-industry town comes if that single industry departs.

“Without the diversification and the ability to be facile and nimble, it can be really, really bad,” she said. “We hope the show sheds a light, but not in a depressing way, that here’s one way (two) different communities have confronted the technology revolution and the changes to work.”

Locally, Pittsburgh’s WQED-TV has been exploring “Future Jobs” through a multi-platform initiative addressing changing workforce needs since 2018. The latest local special, “Future Jobs: Careers to Consider” (8 p.m. Thursday, WQED-TV), surveys careers trending regionally and nationally, highlighting job duties, salary ranges and educational requirements.

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