Jonathan was picture book editor for Look Magazine in New York from 1947-48, where he also edited two books, Look at America: the South, and Official Picture Story of the FBI. He served as news and special events editor for KTLA-TV in Los Angeles before his move to San Francisco in 1953.

He co-founded KQED with Jim Day in 1954. For the first six months, Jon's station wagon served as KQED's only office. Resourceful, imaginative and short on finances, the pair nonetheless found ways to create a quality program service that was the envy of other educational stations throughout the country.

Jim Day recalled the founding of KQED in a critical history of public television in the United States, "The Vanishing Vision" (University of California, 1995). "My first priority was to find a program executive with the idealism of a reformer, the energy of a backfield runner and the power to turn ground round into chateaubriand," he wrote. "Our search began and ended with one man, Jonathan C. Rice."

Under Jonathan's leadership as its first program manager, KQED quickly became the most honored noncommercial station in the nation, receiving the prestigious Peabody, Sylvania and Ohio State awards for outstanding local public television in its first years of service. The programming broke new ground for television in terms of scope and variety, with subjects ranging from poetry, cooking, music, art and architecture to hardhitting current affairs, news and politics.

Jonathan Rice was instrumental in developing creative on air fundraising for KQED, including the annual auction, which was held for years at various venues throughout Northern California, and which became a national model for public broadcasting. He also developed a nightly news program during the newspaper strike of 1968, Newspaper of the Air, which later became Newsroom.

He was most proud of several distinguished awards in his extensive career. In 1972, he became the second recipient of prestigious Ralph Lowell Medal from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for outstanding contributions to public broadcasting, and, in 1973, he received the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Governor's Award. In 1986, the KQED Board of Directors dedicated and named the station's Studio B "the Jonathan Rice Studio" in recognition of his achievement, loyalty and devotion to KQED.

He continued to be actively involved with KQED in recent years as a valued advisor and off-board member, participating tirelessly on numerous committees, and attending board meetings and special events.

Bill Moyers said of Jonathan Rice, "One of the reasons I love to come to San Francisco is that I get to see Jonathan Rice who, if you don't know, is to public broadcasting and KQED what Abraham is to the Book of Genesis."

KQED's president & CEO Mary Bitterman presented Rice with a new distinction, the Jonathan C. Rice Legacy Society at KQED, named in his honor as one of its founding members and greatest champions. The Society recognizes those who have made a planned gift to KQED. "He was a giant of a man - a person of incredible warmth and sensitivity, a taskmaster for excellence in programming and responsiveness to community concerns, and the veritable 'glue' which held KQED together through thick and thin. We shall not soon see his like again," said Bitterman.