Current.org - For People in Public Media / Published at American University School of Communication

With PBS under increasing budgetary pressure, President Paula Kerger recently turned to Smithsonian Institution fundraiser Brian Reddington for the important new post of senior v.p. of development and executive director of the PBS Foundation. In January, when she told the PBS Board of Reddington’s selection, she said he was a friend of hers. Kerger did not mention that she, her husband and Reddington owned a condominium together in New York City from September 2003 to September 2006. Continue reading →

It’s not the best way to collect big annual gifts from station members, pubcasting fundraisers agree. But This American Life’s producers confirmed that giving-by-texting among their many devoted listeners holds considerable potential. Beginning last November, appeals for $5 donations included … Continue reading →

CPB and PBS are completing an agreement that may lead to the agency’s first annual grants for the PBS National Program Service based on measures of diversity and innovation in programming and related projects. Sources tell Current that this funding … Continue reading →

After starting the process to hire a new chief content officer, PBS has reduced the purview of the job. The CCO will oversee TV programming but will no longer supervise PBS Interactive and web content. The position also lost oversight … Continue reading →

The PBS Board tweaked its rules governing one of public TV’s touchiest ongoing internal disputes March 31, stepping in as a referee between major-market stations that are full members of PBS and the smaller Program Differentiation Plan (PDP) stations in the same markets that buy part of the PBS schedule — usually with restrictions on broadcast dates. Continue reading →

Norman S. Craley, a broadcast engineer who worked 35 years at Washington’s WETA, died of cancer March 24 at the Capital Hospice in Arlington, Va. He was 65. He had been diagnosed with metastatic esophageal cancer six months earlier and … Continue reading →

  Producers for public broadcasting — and developers for its websites — received 14 Peabody Awards, announced March 31, 2010 Regarding websites, the judges honored two in public media: Sesame Street’s (“prodigious adaptability . . . delightfully educational, interactive,” the … Continue reading →