Timeline: 2000-

2000

Jan. 20 FCC establishes new class of noncommercial low-power FM licenses reserved for local groups that don't already own stations [documents on FCC site]. In December, NPR and other broadcasters lead successful campaign to limit interference by restricting LPFM.

Jan. 28 After furor erupts among religious broadcasters, FCC drops its December 1999 guidelines limiting nonsecular use of reserved educational frequencies.

February NPR's first ombudsman begins work: Jeffrey Dvorkin, NPR's former v.p. for news and information. CPB and PBS appoint ombudsmen in 2005.

Feb. 4 PBS hires Pat Mitchell, a CNN documentaries exec, as its president — the first producer to hold the job.

March-April Idaho legislature's majority, incensed by a public TV program that favors discussion of homosexuality in schools, passes law forbidding state public TV network to air programs that "support" law-breaking. Opponents of public TV favored defunding Idaho Public Television, but the "privatization" movement faltered by February 2001.

April 12 Minnesota Public Radio expands into California — buying Marketplace Productions in Los Angeles — soon after taking on management of KPCC-FM in Pasadena. In 2004 MPR will begin making and distributing national programs under the name American Public Media.

September Activists file second and third lawsuits that will help overturn board of Pacifica Radio.

Fall CPB Board begins support for development of Online Education Service to distribute digitized content for classroom use.

Oct. 25 Six years after collapse of American Playhouse, U.S. drama returns to PBS with occasional programs on Masterpiece Theatre, with other new dramatic series planned.

Dec. 31 David Brugger retires as president of APTS after 13 years.

Mitchell asks public TV not to consider itself dysfunctional.

PBS attempts to bring back American drama in several series in
2000 and 2001.

2001

March APTS hires John Lawson as president.

March 15 PBS lays off 60 employees. From fiscal year 2001 to 2007, its staff will shrink by more than a quarter from 623 to 456.

April 20 PBS convenes summit to discuss slippage in stations' number of donor/members.

April 5 Former PBS leaders Newton Minow and Lawrence Grossman propose that Congress endow Digital Opportunity Investment Trust to aid digital media production by libraries, museums, public stations and other nonprofits.

May 3 NPR celebrates the 30th anniversary of All Things Considered. [Timeline on NPR.org]

May 7 Prominent producer of NPR's earlier days, Jay Kernis, returns from CBS to head programming at NPR. Shakeups in host assignments follow.

July 31 New York's WLIW agrees to merger with WNET in largest efficiency-driven combination in public TV. CPB encouraged collaboration in 12 markets.

Sept. 11 Rod Coppola, a WNET engineer, dies in World Trade Center attack, which knocks his station and seven others off the air.

Fall Independent producer Jay Allison proposes the online service that becomes Public Radio Exchange, a market for independent radio productions, which will begin operation in 2003.

October FCC rules that public TV stations can use a minority of their digital transmission capacity for revenue-producing services.

John Lawson returns to APTS as public TV's top lobbyist.

2002

Jan. 7 NPR launches a weekday morning show sought by its stations with large African-American audiences: The Tavis Smiley Show. Smiley quits two years later in a dispute with NPR. He later returns to public radio with a weekly show for PRI.

Jan. 10 Like Ervin Duggan before her, PBS President Pat Mitchell enrages some of her constituents in public TV by criticizing pledge drives. By November she's promising to keep quiet on the subject. Two years earlier Duggan had questioned inconsistent quality standards.

Jan. 18 New weekly PBS news program Now debuts with Bill Moyers hosting.

Jan. 22 NPR news report implies Traditional Values Coalition was under investigation for anthrax mailings. NPR admitted the mistake soon after, but the coalition didn't accept NPR's apologies for more than a year.

Feb. 21 A central figure in public radio's rise, 19-year CPB official Rick Madden, dies at age 56. The public radio system had honored him with CPB's Murrow award in 2001.

March 22 Longtime Wall Street Week host Louis Rukeyser objects on the air to plans to reduce his role in the show. Maryland Public TV fires him, and he begins a competing show on cable TV.

May NPR launches Project ACORN to expand the number of public radio stations. WGBH announces the retirement of Peter McGhee, its national production chief for more than 25 years [McGhee interview], to be succeeded by British production exec John Willis. Less than a year later, Willis moves to the BBC as head of production and WGBH promotes Margaret Drain to succeed them.

Oct. 10 FCC approves in-band technology for digital radio broadcasting.

Nov. 2 NPR opens West Coast production facility in Culver City, Calif. It becomes home for new talk show Day to Day in 2003 and co-host of Morning Edition in 2004.

Nov. 8 Bill Moyers' blunt critique of Republican strategies on PBS's Now outrages some conservatives. CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson later says the incident prompted his campaign to adjust PBS's political balance.

Dec. 2 Infinite OutSource, a major CPB-backed public TV efficiency initiative decides to shut down.

Dec. 13 PBS's biggest underwriter, ExxonMobil, announces it will stop funding Masterpiece Theatre in spring 2004.

2001-02 season Channel proliferation shaves viewers from public TV's average weekly cumulative audience. Its full-day cume slips below 50 percent after hovering between 50 and 60 percent for many years.

2003

Jan. 31 In largest station combination fostered by CPB, New York City area's WNET and WLIW merge.

Feb. 1 Relenting under pressure from recession, PBS Board lets biggest underwriters buy 30-second spots.

February CPB hires conservative producer Michael Pack to head TV programming.

February After McKinsey study on public TV's future, CPB says it will focus on projects to improve stations' major-gift solicitation, efficiency and program decision-making.

Feb. 27 Beloved children's program star Fred Rogers dies of cancer.

March 2 Executive Director Lou Pugliese quits public TV's OnCourse initiative to provide video clips for schools, which is running out of money before it can begin services; OnCourse hires a private company, United Learning, to provide the service. In September 2003, a corporate sister of the Discovery Channel buys United Learning, and in August 2004 it buys AIMS Multimedia, the second-largest digital video clip service for schools.

Early 2003 PBS rushes to develop new programs with conservative political content to balance its Now with Bill Moyers. In June, CPB raises the issue of Moyers' partisanship at PBS Annual Meeting.

April 17 Burnie Clark, longtime leader of Seattle's KCTS, resigns after newspaper focuses on the station's financial problems.

May 1 More than half of public TV stations face money and technical problems that keep them from meeting FCC's deadline for putting digital signals on air; the commission promises waivers.

May 1 Major producing stations opt out of cooperative arrangement in PBS Sponsorship Group and will field competing teams of underwriting salespeople.

May 30 Public Radio Exchange begins operations under auspices of Station Resource Group.

Spring APTS floats the idea of creating a political action committee to gain politicians' attention by donating to campaigns. NPR opposes the notion in July, as do PBS leaders, sinking the idea before year's end.

July Station leaders vote to discontinue the National Forum for Public Television Executives, created in 1997 as a means of creating consensus for systemwide strategy.

July 28 NPR debuts its first new ongoing show in 16 years, Day to Day, produced at its new Los Angeles studio.

Aug. 12 Dallas station KERA announces it will sell its second channel to a religious broadcaster.

Sept. 15 California judge approves new bylaws, giving Pacifica Radio a new, highly democratic governance system and formally ending a long, bitter war for control of the left-wing station chain.

October StoryCorps, developed by independent public radio producer David Isay, installs its first recording booth for what becomes a growing, nationwide oral history project.

Nov. 6 An admirer of NPR News, McDonald's heiress Joan Kroc leaves more than $200 million to the network.

2003 Public radio's national average audience peaked at 1.75 million in 2003 after years of growth. (Its share also peaked the same year.) The system began worrying in 2005 when spring ratings had slipped for two straight years.

2004

Jan. 8 PBS says Knight Foundation will support planning for a public affairs cable channel called Public Square.

Jan. 27 With the GAO expected to declare that the spending was unauthorized by Congress, CPB kills its TV Future Fund, its major R&D tool. CPB promotes Kathleen Cox to succeed Bob Coonrod as president.

Feb. 11 Minnesota Public Radio splits with its offspring, PRI, and will distribute its national programming under the name American Public Media starting July 1.

Feb. 24 Public TV station execs endorse APTS strategy: offering to expedite DTV transition in exchange for long-term funding.

March 1 With the FCC rampaging against broadcast indecency, KCRW in Santa Monica fires a program host whose four-letter word was aired by mistake.

Kroc's gift helps
NPR expand its
news operations.

March 23 NPR removes Bob Edwards as Morning Edition anchor, provoking listener outcry. In July Edwards took a job at XM Satellite Radio, and in December NPR gave the job to Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep, temporary co-hosts since April.

May 1 Thwarted in several attempts to sell its second channel, Pittsburgh's WQED leases the channel to the Home Shopping Network.

May 21 As expected, GAO advises Congress that CPB did not have congressional authority to spend funds as it did from its TV Future Fund. Anticipating the ruling, CPB had already discontinued the TV fund and later ended a comparable Radio Future Fund.

Aug. 12 Julia Child dies at 91. Her old kitchen is already a shrine in the Smithsonian.

Oct. 15 Head of Boston's WBUR-FM, Jane Christo, resigns as financial woes surface; the licensee cleared her of some charges.

Oct. 20 To tap cable operator revenues, PBS announces pact with Comcast, Sesame Workshop and Hit Entertainment to create a new PBS Kids channel available only to subscribers of digital cable.

Dec. 2-3 Advocates tout conflicting visions of a trust fund at Chicago conference; PBS President Pat Mitchell announces new blue-ribbon panel (later named the Digital Futures Initiative) to write the case for federal endowment of a trust fund.

Dec. 6 Iowa's Board of Regents approves creation of Iowa Public Radio, uniting stations operated by three state universities.

Thousands protest NPR's decision to
replace Edwards.

2005

Jan. 25 New U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings writes to PBS with "very serious concerns" about an episode of the children's show Postcards from Buster in which the animated rabbit meets a family with two mommies. PBS withdrew the episode, but stations covering half the country aired it anyway.

Jan. 30 APTS and cable industry announce that major cable operators have agreed to carry as many as four multicast program streams from each public TV station in a market. Stations ratify the agreement April 14.

Feb. 9 Fundraising firm Nancy Kruse + Partners unexpectedly closes its office in Washington, D.C., leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars unpaid to public radio stations. A nonprofit headed by Kruse had collapsed seven years earlier in San Diego.

Feb. 14 Pat Mitchell announces she will leave PBS presidency by June 2006. PBS Board members say she was already planning to leave before the Buster blowup. She moves to Museum of Television & Radio in March 2006.

April 5 CPB appoints two journalists as ombudsmen — one of a series of decisions led by CPB Chair Kenneth Tomlinson, who had privately embarked on a campaign to bring more conservative voices to PBS public affairs programming.

April 8 CPB announces it will replace Kathleen Cox, who had clashed with Tomlinson in her 10 months as its president.

May 2 The New York Times breaks the story of CPB Chair Ken Tomlinson's campaign.

May Ford Foundation announces $50 million burst of grants for public media, including many in new media in addition to public TV and radio.

June Stephen Salyer, who expanded Public Radio International (and renamed it from American Public Radio), announces resignation after 17 years.

June 23 House of Representatives votes 2 to 1 to restore cuts in CPB aid okayed by its Appropriations Committee.

June 23 Later the same day, the CPB Board elects Patricia Harrison as its president, spurning petitions from major public broadcasting groups opposing the appointment of a partisan political operative. Harrison had been co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

August Major public radio networks and stations join NPR-led trial of joint podcast directory.

October Audience researchers announce slight but unexpected two-year decline in public radio's audience since its peak in 2003.

October NPR begins series of regional and national New Realities meetings with stations, to culminate in May 2006, for future-oriented briefings and discussions.

Oct. 12 WNET announces plans for multicast service in Spanish, one of four packaged services discussed in public TV press conference.

Nov. 15 PBS's first ombudsman begins work: Michael Getler, a former Washington Post writer, editor and ombudsman.

Nov. 15 CPB inspector general reports that CPB Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson violated the Public Broadcasting Act and CPB guidelines, meddling in program decisions and injecting politics into hiring. He had resigned Nov. 3 after the CPB Board heard the inspector general's preliminary report.

Dec. 15 Digital Future Initiative, a bipartisan panel appointed by PBS, recommends specific projects to strengthen public TV's public service. The report gets little attention, but more studies are promised.

2006

Jan. 3 Public Radio International announces promotion of Alisa Miller to president.

Tomlinson works behind scenes to add conservative-hosted series to PBS.

Jan. 22 PBS hires WNET executive Paula Kerger to succeed Pat Mitchell as president.

Jan. 23 Progressive editor and activist Greg Guma joins Pacifica Radio as executive director.

Feb. 8 NPR promotes William Marimow, newspaper editor and investigative reporter, to v.p. of news, succeeding Bruce Drake. Marimow had joined NPR nearly two years earlier as a managing editor.

February Future-oriented public radio executives build support for shared back-end Internet infrastructure for on-demand media. Early exemplar is successful NPR-led podcasting initiative.

A successful fundraiser at WNET, Kerger spoke up for ties to education.