Sidman resigns as APTS president
Larry Sidman, president of the Association of Public Television Stations for the past year, has resigned, effective April 1. Sidman told Current he is leaving for “personal and professional reasons very important to me, and time-sensitive.”
¶ Sources with knowledge of the situation said the board voted in a conference call this month to ask Sidman for his resignation, exercising an option in his contract.
Twenty-five public radio and TV programs, including the teenage doc series Boyfriends from KERA in Dallas (check out the video) were honored with GracieAwards from American Women in Radio and Television. APTS salutedstations inVermont, Roanoke and Norfolk with EDGE Awards;
Judy Woodruff and Deborah Amos are given 
Lifetime Achievement Awards; NPR again takes home prizes from the White House News Photographers Association; and public stations in Southern California win a slew of Golden Mikes.
CPB has come up with another incentive and a new demonstration project in its long and sporadic campaign for the cost savings of shared technical facilities and staff. ¶Under a new rule adopted by the CPB Board, public TV stations won’t be eligible for master control equipment funding unless they share the facility with one or more other stations, according to Mark Erstling, senior v.p. for system development and media strategy. ¶ CPB meanwhile is planning for nine stations, not identified in a January request for proposals, to participate in a trial of “centralcasting” — sharing a central master control.
Remember when policymakers referred to the Internet as the “information superhighway?” The analogy is being adapted to describe an NPR-proposed “public media platform” feeding stations’ websites and other online outlets with web-friendly content from both public TV and public radio, including NPR and three other major pubradio program distributors, stations and other producers.
Executives from NPR and its biggest member stations are exploring whether they can work together to raise money from an elite pool of philanthropists — those capable of donating $1 million or more — backing the field’s aspirations to build a strong multiplatform news service for local and national audiences.
The late filmmaker was ‘a consummate organizer’: Loni Ding, 78, a filmmaker who brought issues of Asian American identity to the surface, and to PBS, and helped win legislation backing independent producers, died Feb. 20 in a hospital in Oakland, Calif. She had recovered well from a stroke in April but friends said she did not regain consciousness after a second stroke in December. Pictured: Loni Ding testifies during 1979 Senate hearing looking back on 20 years of public broadcasting since passage of the Public Broadcasting Act.
Marlowe Froke, 82, Penn State broadcaster
Greg Shanley, 49, Iowa Public Radio journalist
Northern Community Internet: hyperlocal and hyper-rural, too: KAXE-FM in north central Minnesota, the smallest and most rural grantee that has received support from CPB’s Public Media Innovation Fund, is trying to bring services closer to home in its region with hyperlocalized online news and citizen journalism. Mark Fuerst, whose firm Innovation4Media manages the Innovation Fund, looks at what the project turned up in its first year.
Distribution of some copies of Current's Feb. 8 issue have been delayed by Blizzarilla the Snowstorm. Current's office is closed at least through Thursday. Click for a PDF copy. (File size reduced to 2 MB with some improved image quality.)
The ex-manager of Wilmington, N.C., who lost his job in a conflict with his board, replies to Current's December article, which asked: Did WHQR's manager think too big? Is the board thinking too small?
The humanitarian response to disaster relief in Haiti set off a grassroots movement of community-based tech volunteerism. Through a series of barcamp-style events convened in major cities in the U.S., Canada, Britain and Colombia, web-technology volunteers donated time and expertise to create digital tools to help quake-relief and rescue workers in Haiti.
Stations may face choice: Cash soon or opportunities later. If the gods of the spectrum see fit, the mortals of public TV may find their fiscal Holy Grail — a frequency auction that endows a big trust fund and relieves their ongoing need to trudge to Capitol Hill with hats in hand. Or perhaps stations will refuse to appease the spectrum-lust of future iPad users and fight instead to keep their broadcast frequencies for future over-the-air public services, including spiffy mobile DTV innovations.
With help from a newly approved CPB grant, PBS has assembled a Quality Group to get high tech quality and efficiency out of public TV’s recently assembled chain of largely digital production and distribution systems.
That’s what some network cues say between programs. But who’s responsible for the next program or for this channel in general? (Current illustration adapting Currier & Ives.)
A commentary by Andrew Walworth: PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler wrote recently in his online column about what he views as a problem: that public television viewers are confused about where programs on public television come from and assume that everything on public TV originates at PBS...
With proceeds from a sales tax hike approved by Minnesota voters in 2008, public broadcast outlets throughout the state are to receive a total of $11.6 million for arts coverage over the next two years. Pubcasters from Bemidji to Rochester plan to use the funds for new arts and historical programs, performance specials and Minnesota Public Radio’s planned statewide news aggregation website, Minnesota Today. ¶ It’s not a public investment welcomed by the state’s largest newspaper. The Minneapolis Star Tribune is escalating a public spat with MPR, which it views as its biggest competitor in coming years.
Web and TV journalists coalesce into platform-neutral newsroom: At the NewsHour in May, the top managers told all employees their jobs would soon change — but no one yet knew what their new duties would be. The online and broadcast units, then housed in two buildings separated by a flood-prone creek in Arlington, Va., would coalesce into one newsroom. Everyone would cross-train. Work for on-air and online would become one effort. And all this would happen in less than a year...
Signaling its ambitions to dig deeper and break more big stories, NPR News has hired a news manager to lead its first-ever investigative reporting unit. ¶ Susanne Reber, a radio journalist who built an investigative program at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., joined NPR on Jan. 4 as deputy managing editor of investigations... Pictured: Ms. Reber at Canada's Michener Awards ceremony.
Is public radio having one of those Betamax moments when technology slaloms and hurdles right over rights deals and overturns media business models? ¶ Not if the public radio networks can help it. ¶ NPR, Public Radio International and American Public Media jointly wrote to stations Nov. 2, warning them to “exercise caution” and examine contracts offered by tech services vendors to check whether they’d lead to violations of the stations’ rights deals with the networks.
Flying a flag of donors’ rights, the fans of defunct Twin Cities classical music station WCAL decided over the weekend to return to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, which rejected their initial appeal Dec. 29 [2009]. ¶ The three-judge court agreed with a February 2009 state district court decision that Save WCAL waited too long to file suit opposing St. Olaf College’s sale of its station to Minnesota Public Radio five years ago...
What's the job for the Public Media Corps?Nonsa Christian Ugbode offers a job description in a Current commentary. ... At the gatherings in San Francisco and Atlanta, a shared objective was to inject new voices into traditional public broadcasting by creating new job profiles. ¶ What would those job profiles be? What skills are needed by these “legacy” broadcasting institutions to reach their audiences in the age of public media 2.0, which CNN, NBC and other commercial media could easily dominate, at least in the volume of their output?
PBS devises a less-is-more response to its program budget bind: PBS is raising tent-poles to reinvigorate its primetime lineup. Over the next one to three years, it will shrink down a number of as-yet-unidentified series to high-profile special events, then use the freed-up production money and schedule space to nurture new shows it hopes will mature into icons.
Boston’s public radio landscape shifted Dec. 1 when WGBH moved all of its classical music programming to WCRB 99.5 FM and adopted a news/talk-dominated format for WGBH 89.7. ¶ The change, made possible by WGBH’s $14 million purchase of the commercial classical station from Nassau Broadcasting Partners, marks a strategic redirection for the Boston pubcaster that’s known throughout the world as the top producer of television programming for PBS.
CPB will get $25 million for “fiscal stabilization” grants to aid public TV and radio stations this year, a House-Senate conference committee decided last week. The number was a compromise between the House’s $40 million figure and the Senate’s $10 million.
A commentary by Steve Robinson of WFMT in Chicago: So what will journalism and, for that matter, all content look like in five years and how will it be delivered? ¶ It will all come together on devices resembling the rumored iTablet ... connected full-time to the Internet, which will receive audio, video, movies and every flavor of text, . . . while doing thousands of other handy things that laptops and smartphones do.
Baltimore- area Triple A station WTMD and its licensee are proposing to rehab a 70-year-old historic- landmarked Art Deco movie theater into a film and concert theater and headquarters for the station.
It’s scalable, remixable and rich in UGC! In a commentary, retired WNET chief Bill Baker and Evan Leatherwood write: Those calling for more local news from public media — and those experimenting with new ways to provide it — should examine a business model devised for commercial television more than 30 years ago. PM Magazine was an evening primetime news and entertainment show produced by a central cooperative with members from 100 independent television stations ...
City officials in Wilmington, Del., say they will oppose the FCC license renewal of Philadelphia-based WHYY-TV. On the FCC’s books, the channel is assigned to Wilmington, but WHYY based its tri-state service in up the river in Philadelphia and assuaged Delaware’s grievance for 46 years by airing a daily news program about the neighboring state, which has no TV station based on its soil. The relationship soured in July, when the station stopped producing Delaware Tonight ...
... detailed in reports on the Rocky Mountain and Lone Star competitions.
Now a dot-com called Kachingle is starting to roll out an online service designed to make voluntary support easy for even the most Internet-dazed, pledge-averse, marginally committed and low-budgeted Medici to virtually toss coins, or dollars, to reward the online media they love and appreciate.
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This month the bracket brouhaha emerges once again, but forget all that March Madness b-ball boredom. This year, try a little Muppet Madness. It's brought to you by MuppetCast, the weekly podcast of all things Jim Henson and Muppets. Who will win in Miss Piggy vs. Pepe? Oscar vs. Big Bird? Bert & Ernie vs. The Count? (Hey, that's two against one ...) You may vote in all the matches each 12 hours until April 5.
posted at 4:53 PM EST
In reaction to the new National Broadband Plan, the Open Mobile Video Coalition told a teleconference of reporters today that mobile DTV is superior to broadband to deliver mobile video, reports TVNewsCheck. Brandon Burgess, CEO of Ion Media and coalition chair, said broadcasting can simultaneously deliver video to millions of viewers without overworking Internet and cellphone networks. "No other solution out there can really do that," he said. The coalition is made up of more than 800 private and public television stations in America, as well as PBS, CPB and APTS.
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The Leading Gen!, currently carried by some 120 PBS affiliates, seems to be on a publicity roll. Last month Daily Variety TV critic Brian Lowry described the 13-part series on aging, introducing readers to neurosurgeon James Ausman and wife Carolyn, producers, and adding that for PBS, " ... catering to those over 50 -- the people who are predominantly watching public TV anyway -- isn't just good business; it's a no-brainer." Last week the Desert Sun in Palm Springs, Calif., wrote that producing station KVCR-DT in San Bernardino calls it “the ultimate reality show,” and it's won two Telly Awards. And today, on the wildly popular blog the Daily Beast, gossip columnist Liz Smith talks about it in a piece headlined, "The great untapped 80-something market."
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KOCE in Huntington Beach, Calif., is joining the Orange County Local News Network (OCLNN), owned by the for-profit web journalism chain United States Local News Network. OCLNN reporters will file stories for KOCE’s Real Orange news program, and its digital OC Channel. Some KOCE-produced content will also be at OCLNN.com. The two will also work together on local public affairs projects.
posted at 1:50 PM EST
As the South by Southwest Music festival keeps getting bigger and bigger, the potential for bands to break through to commercial success diminish, observes New York Times ArtsBeat blogger Ben Sisario. He points to last night's opening showcase, sponsored by NPR Music and headlined by Austin's own Spoon, as a case in point: "It was a plum gig, reflecting not only Spoon’s preeminence but also the emergence of NPR as a major force in independent music. . . . [T]he band was received as heroes, symbolizing the best of what South by Southwest is about: artistic credibility, insouciant cool, left-of-the-dial independence. The implicit message was that Spoon are the top of the heap, the highest that a South by Southwest band can aspire to. But by the numbers, Spoon is still a startup: its new album, 'Transference' (Merge), has been out for eight weeks and sold 121,000 copies. And there are lots of Spoons out there, famous to small slivers of an audience but unknown to everybody else, and probably pretty comfortable that way, or at least used to it." Details and links to more SXSW music coverage from NPR and public radio stations are here.
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NPR and the Washington Post are offering an unusual joint fellowship honoring two sons of an NPR journalist. The six-month program, split between the two newsrooms, is seeking applicants by April 30 and will begin in the fall [more information]. The Stone & Holt Weeks Fellowship was created in memory of Stone Weeks, 24, and his brother Holt, 20, sons of Linton Weeks, an NPR reporter who formerly wrote for the Post, and Jan Taylor Weeks, an artist and teacher. The young men were both research assistants at Rice University in Houston. They were returning to their parents’ home in the Washington area July 23 when their car was struck by a truck in Virginia.
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NPR Music's live coverage of the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin begins with tonight's showcase headlined by Spoon, a hometown favorite kicking off their U.S. tour with this SXSW performance. Tune in at 9 p.m. ET to catch the full line-up including Visqueen, the Walkmen, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, and Broken Bells. Tomorrow at 1:30 pm ET, NPR Music presents a daytime showcase of six acts headlined by the Sleigh Bells. Five public radio stations--The Current, KEXP, KUT, WFUV, and WXPN--are presenting SXSW coverage in partnership with NPR; most plan to broadcast and webcast their own live shows. In fact, this afternoon at 4 Austin's KUT offers a showcase featuring Nashville rocker Bobby Bare Jr., Jason Collett of Broken Social Scene and Nigerian soul songstress Nneka. The biggest pubradio-sponsored showcase of all appears to be WFMU's "massive, 14 band, two-stage" event on Friday from 8 pm-3 am. KCRW will bring SXSW to its listeners on Morning Becomes Eclectic and during a Saturday showcase featuring Rogue Wave. And this year, for the very first time, Radio Milwaukee sent a team to produce on-air and online SXSW coverage. Many pubradio personalities are tweeting from SXSW; for the refreshing perspectives of two bonafied rock chicks, follow Rita Houston of WFUV and Carrie Brownstein of NPR Music's Monitor Mix.
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No kicking back with a green beer for PBS NewsHour Producer Linda Scott this St. Patrick's Day. She's in charge of organizing tonight's huge Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner in D.C. Some 2,000 guests are expected at the Washington Convention Center for one of the District's largest soirees. "We're going to pull out the stops and have a good time," Scott told the Washington Times. At the head table: Vice President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Republican Sens. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. They'll nosh on a menu including ravioli garnished with lobster and crayfish.
posted at 10:12 AM EST
Reactions are in from the G4-- CPB, PBS, APTS and NPR -- regarding today's historic National Broadband Plan release. Excerpts:
CPB: "In particular, we appreciate the Taskforce’s recognition of public media’s important role in serving our democracy, as well as our role in America’s broadband future. We also appreciate the Taskforce’s recognition that, if public media is to continue to fulfill our statutory responsibility to provide every American with free educational and cultural programming in the digital age, more funding will be necessary. The report presents many interesting opportunities as well as challenges, both for our country and for public media."
PBS: The plan "will make a significant contribution to ensuring a diverse, digital media landscape in which the needs of local communities and, in particular, children are well served. PBS and its stations have substantially expanded the distribution of educational, noncommercial content by transitioning to digital platforms, including free and universal digital television, streaming video on pbs.org and pbskids.org, interactive educational video games, and mobile services." It adds that the "continued development of a robust digital public media ecosystem would be enhanced by the creation of sustainable funding sources dedicated to this important work."
APTS: “APTS is grateful to FCC Chairman [Julius] Genachowski and Blair Levin, executive director of the Omnibus Broadband Initiative at the FCC, for their dedication to the National Broadband Plan, and their recognition of the importance that public television plays in the national landscape of public media,” APTS President and CEO Larry Sidman said in its statement. “As America’s public television stations evolve from broadcast-centric organizations to anchor community institutions that create and distribute digital content across all platforms, they can play a key role in driving broadband adoption and utilization.”
NPR: "Public radio is off and running in pursuit of the 'robust digital media ecosystem' the Commission references. Our launch of the API, ARGO and applications for mobile devices that ease access to public radio content are reflective of our intentions and ambitions. NPR and its partner stations are eager to work with the Commission, the Congress and others in achieving the expanded public service vision of the National Broadband Plan."
posted at 3:34 PM EST
Congrats to station reps Kelly McCarthy of Vegas PBS and Michelle Dillard of KTXT in Lubbock, Texas, who won goodies for the PBS Annual Meeting May 17-20 in Austin, Texas. McCarthy now has an American Airlines voucher for her flights, and Dillard scored three complimentary nights at the Hilton Austin where the meeting will take place.
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The FCC's National Broadband Plan has arrived (background: Current, Sept. 21, 2009) with its advice to Congress for expanding broadband reach across America. The FCC has posted it in searchable form. It advises that 500 megahertz of spectrum be made available for broadband within 10 years, of which 300 megahertz should be made available for mobile use within five years. The much anticipated pubcasting trust fund is indeed included. Public broadcasters could give up spectrum (Current, Feb. 8) and those proceeds would endow a trust "for the production, distribution and archiving of digital public media." It continues: "There would be multiple benefits to public television stations who participate in this auction. First, it could provide significant savings in operational expenses to stations that share transmission facilities. Second, 100% of proceeds from the public television spectrum auction would be used to fund digital multimedia content. The proceeds should be distributed so that a significant portion of revenues generated by the sale of spectrum go to public media in the communities from which spectrum was contributed." Examples of successful pubmedia projects cited include WGBH for its Teachers' Domain, a free service offering digital resources for students and instructors; and WHYY radio in Philadelphia's partnership with the Philadelphia Daily News on the City Howl, a multi-media civic engagement blog.
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In a report released Monday (PDF), the Maryland Office of Legislative Audits contends that the state's Public Broadcasting Commission spent more than $2 million dollars on services without a competitive bidding process or working through the Board of Public Works, both violations of state procurement requirements, the Associated Press reports. The commission operates the six Maryland Public Television stations. MPT executive v.p. Larry Unger declined to identify the firm in question to the AP. A response from the commissioners said they consulted with Maryland's Department of Budget and Management officials about the payments and that the vendor is one of several companies that have worked for the pubcasters. "Under the circumstances, MPBC believes it acted properly," they wrote. The Baltimore City Paper ran several of the auditor's comments and commission responses from the 33-page report, quipping, "Who says there's no drama in public broadcasting?"
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NPR's web team is racing to adapt NPR.org for the technical requirements of Apple's new iPad, which launches on April 3. Kinsey Wilson, senior v.p. of digital media, reassures Apple enthusiasts that NPR.org will be "optimized" for the iPad experience: "Features like the NPR audio player have been given greater visibility and adapted for the unique technical requirements of this new platform; we've modified the navigation and made the site more 'touch' friendly; and we've improved the sponsorship experience." NPR is simultaneously developing a companion iPad app. "Until we see how everyone uses it, it's anybody's guess as to what the best experience is," Wilson tells Poynter.org. "We think the app will be more about browsing and listening...a little more relaxed, a little more serendipitous." Peter Kafka of the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital reports that the re-engineering of NPR.org is much more comprehensive than that undertaken by other big publishers.
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Larry Sidman, president of the Association of Public Television Stations for the past year, will resign as of April 1, he told Current today.
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PBS will score a broadcast first when American Experience posts its "Earth Days" doc on Facebook before its broadcast premiere, reports the New York Times. Mark Samuels, American Experience e.p., said the showing -- which will include PBS underwriting credits -- is an experiment. “It’s an opportunity, we think, to engage with a new audience, an audience that we may not be bringing to PBS Monday nights at 9 o’clock,” he told the paper. It'll hit the social networking site April 11, and TV on April 18. Fans on Facebook will also be able to interact there with Samuels as well as the film's producer, Robert Stone.
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"State of the News Media 2010," this year's annual report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, warns that the "the losses suffered in traditional news gathering in the last year were so severe that by any accounting they overwhelm the innovations in the world of news and journalism." The massive report includes an analysis of the revamped PBS NewsHour, which recently melded its online and on-air coverage (Current, Jan. 11). The show had a 0.8 for the 2008-09 season, flat from 'o7-08. David Sit, v.p. of NewsHour and MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, told researchers that excluding a $5.2 million grant for coverage of the 2008 presidential election, the program budget for the fiscal year ending June 30 increased 15 percent, about $3.5 million, to $27.7 million. The budget increase was primarily due to more corporate underwriting in the 2009-10 fiscal year, which went from $5.7 million in '08-09 to $10 million in '09-10. Sit also said that in February 2010, website traffic had increased about 30 percent in year-over-year comparisons. Video downloads also doubled.
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WGBH has filed a federal lawsuit in Illinois, alleging that the Treasure Hunters Roadshow violates the Antiques Roadshow trademark and participates in unfair competition and unfair business practices. “We believe there are many people who have been confused and the things such as the prominent use of 'roadshow' and the 'treasure chest' are leading to that confusion,” Eric Brass, corporate counsel for the WGBH Educational Foundation, told the Mount Vernon Register-News. WGBH had filed a similar suit in 1999 against the International Toy Collectors Association, the precursor to Treasure Hunters Roadshow; that was settled out of court. Matt Enright, v.p. of media relations for THR & Associates, told the paper: "You can’t trademark the name roadshow. ... They don’t know anything about our business. I think they’re scared because we have a new show coming out in the fall. We have a better show and exciting event that people enjoy.”
posted at 10:21 AM EST
Virginia's General Assembly adjourned yesterday after approving a two-year budget that slashes millions from various services in the commonwealth, including pubcasting, reports the Washington Post. Community Idea Stations, in Richmond and Charlottesville, get a 15 percent drop in funds over the next two years. States nationwide are targeting pubcasting as budgets dwindle (Current, Jan. 25).
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Broadcast technicians will mount a protest outside NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., at noon today. The National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-Communications Workers of America is negotiating on behalf of 65 employees whose union contract expires this month. Members of the unit agreed to deep wage and benefit cuts to help alleviate NPR's budget crisis last year. The union is objecting to NPR's demands for the next contract, which include a wage freeze, benefit reductions and proposals to remove bargaining rights over benefits and eliminate more than half of the bargaining unit's jobs, according to the NABET website.
posted at 9:49 AM EST
Broadcasters who decline to turn over spectrum for an upcoming auction may face fees for their decision, according to Broadcasting & Cable. Citing an unnamed source who has seen the National Broadband Plan that will be presented to Congress this week, the fees would be another tactic used by the feds to encourage give back of spectrum for auction. The FCC is looking to shift 500 MHz from traditional broadcast to wireless use (Current, Feb. 8, 2010).
posted at 10:33 AM EST
In a speech that he described as "confession or admission," former FCC Chair Reed Hundt yesterday told a Columbia University audience that his decision to favor broadband over broadcast goes back to 1994, and that the March 17 National Broadband Plan "will reflect ... the end of the era of trying to maintain over-the-air broadcast as the common medium and the beginning of a very detailed, quite substantive, commitment to having broadband, the son of narrowband, be the common medium,"according to TV News Check. He also said the plan "will have in it a specific pathway to shrinking the amount of spectrum that broadcast will be able to use. In all previous eras, the government has expanded the spectrum for broadcast so as to give it a chance to thrive as it moved from analog to digital. Now, it's going to be moving in reverse." He added that he found it "simply astonishing" that the feds assisted broadcasters through the digital transition last year by subsidizing converter boxes for viewers. "Those people would have been much better off getting a voucher for broadband Internet subscriptions." Watch his entire hourlong speech here.
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Sesame Workshop has received a grade of C and PBS a C+ from the Center for Science in the Public Interest on their marketing of food to children. While that sounds "average," of 128 firms surveyed more than 95 received a failing grade. The nonprofit group's Report Card on Food Marketing Policies (PDF) examines whether companies that market food to children have adopted a policy on marketing, and the adequacy of that policy. During research last year the center evaluated several elements of each company's approach to children, including the strength of its nutrition standards, the scope of media covered by its policies, and definitions for “child-directed” media. The report said that PBS and Sesame Workshop had "good policies for restricting food product placement through its programs or other media outlets."
posted at 11:22 AM EST
Here's an interesting video interview from the collegiate News Net Nebraska with longtime pubcaster Ron Hull, a passionate advocate for cultural and historical programming who helped start American Experience. In the interview, Hull recalls his first foray into television. It was in the Army, just after the Korean War armistice was signed in 1953. While stationed in Oklahoma, Hull was approached by a general looking for someone to produce a half-hour show. "He said, 'What do you know about TV?'" Hull recalled. "I didn't even have a set." Hull went to the local library and researched scriptwriting, then called the local TV station. "I don't know what cameras can do," he told an engineer. "It's easy," was the reply. His show -- "I made it up out of whole cloth" -- featured the 87th Army band and interviews with soldiers just back from the conflict. His career went on to include 47 years at the University of Nebraska’s public TV network, as well as a stint as director of the CPB Television Program Fund. Since his retirement in 2002, adventures have kept him busy: He just returned from a tour through the Himalayas in a Toyota Landcruiser. Hull turns 80 years old in May.
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More than 60 national leaders in education, research, technology, policy and children’s media will meet March 22 and 23 at the Fred Rogers Center in LaTrobe, Pa., to explore using new technologies and media in education. Representing pubcasting at the Fred Forward Conference on Creative Curiosity, New Media and Learning (PDF) will be CPB, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, PBS and Family Communications Inc., Rogers' production company that carries on the educational legacy of Mister Rogers.
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The Senate yesterday passed the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act. The Association of Public Television Stations had backed passage of the bill, which was known as the Satellite Home Viewer Update and Reauthorization Act when it passed the House on Dec. 3. The bills allow satellite operators to carry out-of-market network TV station signals for viewers who don't receive an adequate signal from their nearby stations. In a statement, APTS President Larry Sidman praised Congressional leadership. “Working together on a bipartisan basis with each other and with their counterparts in the House, they have crafted legislation that serves consumers interests.” Next up: A joint conference committee to hammer out any differences in the bills. The statement added that APTS hopes the bill will be signed into law before the Easter recess.
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WQUB in Quincy, Ill., plans to dismiss its professional on-air staff as of June 1 and turn most of its operations over to WGEM, a commercial radio/TV outlet affilated with NBC. Quincy University, WQUB's licensee, is reducing its $250k subsidy for the NPR News and music station but doesn't want to sell it, says Bob Weirather, g.m. "That is not in their mind at all. What we're trying to do is get more community support for the station." The station doesn't qualify for state funding because Quincy is a private university. Last year, it fell out of CPB funding criteria and lost half of its $90,000 Community Service Grant, according to Weirather. It also was disqualified from funding by the Illinois Arts Council. The relationship with WGEM, reported March 9 by the Quincy-Herald Whig, is under negotiation, but Wierather expects that WGEM's talent will announce programming and student interns will continue to host air-shifts. "Our programming will be unchanged, but the voices may be different," Weirather said. "We will still determine the programming and content." WQUB's 28,000-watt signal broadcasts to rural western Illinois and northeastern Missouri, reaching a potential audience of 119,000.
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A Google group for pubmedia collaboration has sprung from the ongoing Pubmedia Chat Tweetfests on Monday evenings. Chris Beer, a web developer with WGBH Interactive, created the group to provide room for communication without a 140 character limit, he tells MediaShift. "I'm not particularly attached to the idea of a Google Group or a listserv, I just see a need for more collaboration outside of Monday at 8," Beer said. "Twitter is a fine medium for getting people talking, but I find it difficult to have a conversation, and I hope something like this can supplement the #pubmedia chat. I haven't found a place within public media to ask very practical questions around public media projects. Because setting something up takes all of five minutes, it seems silly not to experiment."
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Pasadena's KPCC hired Madeleine Brand to host a new daily news magazine launching later this spring. The yet-to-be named show will bring a "distinctive Southern California perspective" to local and regional news and launch with a significant online component, according to a KPCC release. Brand, co-host of NPR's Day to Day until its cancellation last year, "has tremendous intellectual bandwidth, but doesn't take herself too seriously," said Bill Davis, KPCC president. The one-hour show will air at 9 a.m. PT, replacing BBC NewsHour. "Even though I'm part British and love the BBC, I think we need a little more California in that 9 am hour, and I'm excited to bring it," Brand said. On her twitter feed this morning, Brand quipped: Conan writers: Talk to me!
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The FCC and National Telecommunications and Information Administration would have four years instead of two to complete a spectrum inventory under a bill okayed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee today, reports Broadcasting & Cable. Rep. Rick Boucher, House Communications and Internet Subcommittee chairman and bill co-sponsor, has said he expects the FCC to wait until after the inventory to request or reclaim spectrum from broadcasters to meet growing demands for mobile device bandwidth. Any spectrum auction would leave pubcasters with a tough decision: Money soon, or frequency opportunities later (Current, Feb. 8).
posted at 12:37 PM EST
A "war room" with white boards, dollar amounts and donor name targets helped Detroit Public Television/WTVS close out its 2009 $22 million capital campaign, station v.p. of development Kelley Hamilton revealed at a local nonprofit seminar this week. “In addition to the larger foundations, we had to go to the indigenous population of family foundations, largely unknown,” Board Chair Richard Rassel told Crain's Detroit Business. To encourage smaller donations, the station provided naming opportunities for everything from a light switch to the COO’s white board, cameras and editorial suites.
posted at 12:09 PM EST
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee of the Idaho legislature yesterday voted 19-0 to cut only 16 percent of Idaho Public Television's state funding, according to Associated Press. Gov. Butch Otter had previously sought a four-year total phaseout of funding. More good news: A House proposal would increase tax credits to IPTV and other agencies. “This would give more opportunity for donations, especially at the higher giving level, to see some positive tax credit,” IPTV G.M. Peter Morrill told the Idaho Reporter. The current limit for a tax credit is $100, that would increase to $500. The average gift to IPTV is $90.
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CPB has given the PBS NewsHour a $300,000 grant for a Student Reporting Lab project in six schools nationwide, reports Television Broadcast. From last month through January 2011, NewsHour journalists are providing footage, sources and mentors to the students, who will report on three topics. Their work will run on the NewsHour website and YouTube. A statement from NewsHour said the project will "examine how broadband connectivity, open-source platforms, and public media can help to produce an informed and engaged public."
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South Dakota is the latest state threatening cutbacks to pubcasting as part of overall budget tightening. A 2 percent cut to South Dakota Public Broadcasting might mean the loss of matching federal funds next year, according to the Argus Leader. The state budget is expected to run $36 million to $40 million; the Republican-led legislature has proposed $52.6 million in cuts and new revenues. The budget is scheduled to be finished today for consideration by the full Senate and House on Thursday or Friday. Pubcasters nationwide are facing similar cuts in state funding (Current, Jan. 25).
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Pubcasters can learn more about Google’s Fiber for Communities during a webinar Wednesday sponsored by American Public Media/Minnesota Public Radio and the National Center for Media Engagement. The project aims to test ultra-high speed broadband networks in one or more locations across the country. Intrigued? Log on at 2 p.m. Eastern to learn how to nominate your community with advice from Minnie Ingersoll, product manager of Google's Access team; Joanne Hovis, president of Columbia Telecommunications Corporation; Marnie Webb, co-CEO of TechSoup Global; Bernadine Joselyn, Director of Public Policy and Engagement for rural Minnesota's Blandin Foundation; and Joaquín Alvarado, veep for Digital Innovation for American Public Media. Register here.
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Minnesota Public Radio has canceled production of In the Loop, a show that migrated from the broadcast airwaves to engage its audience of young adults where they lived--in the realm of on-demand media and social networking web platforms. Hosted by the earnest and talented Jeff Horwich, ITL was smart, off-beat and entertaining. "I always appreciated ITL as a Skunk Works for the sub-Boomer set, full of sparky 'story slams,' interactivity and Horwich's funky but not frivolous news sense," writes MinnPost media critic David Brauer. Horwich explains as much as he can on this FAQ. Both Horwich and producer Sanden Totten have been reassigned to work on MPR's Public Insight Network.
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“I don’t want to overstate the case, but this could lead to signals going dark,” Allen Harmon, g.m. of WSDE-TV in Duluth, says in this MinnPost report on Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty's proposal to zero-out funding for public broadcasters in the fiscal year beginning July 1. The governor's spending plan would cut more than $2 million in general appropriations support for public broadcasting in fiscal 2011 and beyond. It hits Minnesota's six public TV stations the hardest, eliminating $1.361 million in general-fund appropriations. Community radio stations would lose $387,000; Minnesota Public Radio, $250,000; and, Twin Cities regional cable, $17,000. Pubcasters tell MinnPost media critic David Brauer that the Legacy Amendment funds they're receiving for arts and cultural programming won't make up the difference in lost general support. Meanwhile, the University of Georgia recently threatened to shut down WUGA-FM, a Georgia Public Broadcasting station located on its Athens campus, in a draconian budget-cutting plan unveiled last week. The station is part of the GPB Radio network but cuts away for local classical music and other programming. "It’s one of the signature stations in our network," said Nancy Zintak, GPB spokeswoman. The proposed WUGA shut-off is part of a controversial plan by the University of Georgia's financial planners to cut $600 million in spending. “This is like a death knell for public education, and we’re not going to stand for it,” a student leader tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "There's a little bit of saber-rattling and posturing and people are saying some dramatic things," Zintak told Current. "We have no idea how the legislature is going to come down on this." Zintak referred questions on WUGA funding to the university's press office, which did not respond to a call seeking comment.
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Today the Knight Foundation and the FCC are sponsoring "America's Digital Inclusion Summit" at the Newseum in Washington, and satellite locations in Akron, Detroit, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Philadelphia. Reps from an array of agencies and organizations advocating for universal broadband access are taking questions from the public at NewMedia(at)fcc.gov, or follow along at #BBPlan on Twitter. The summit is also streaming live and runs to 12:30 p.m. Eastern. Speakers include FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. (Photo: Robertson Adams, Knight Foundation) UPDATE: FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn has announced the agency's effort to create a Digital Literacy Media Corps, a nationwide outreach of computer training for persons in communities including low-income housing, rural towns, tribal lands and areas with many racial and ethnic residents. "Basic literacy must be supplementetd by digital literacy," Clyburn told the crowd. The Knight Foundation also announced a partnership with the FCC on an "Apps for Inclusion" Challenge, an offer of $100,000 from Knight to software developers who can provide easier online access to civic affairs information such as tracking Congressional voting records.
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The dispute over music performance royalties for radio airplay is heating up again, the New York Times reports. The MusicFirst Coalition, which represents record companies and artists, and the National Association of Broadcasters are duking it out via ad campaigns and old-fashioned lobbying. Talks between supporters and opponents, initiated last fall at the request of lawmakers, appear to have stalled. Meanwhile, the Times reports in a separate article, investment bankers are aggressively courting Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora. The Internet radio service reported its first profitable quarter last year, and usage among its 48 million listeners now averages 11.6 hours a month, according to the Times. "That could increase as Pandora strikes deals with the makers of cars, televisions and stereos that could one day, Pandora hopes, make it as ubiquitous as AM/FM radio."
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WNET.org will discontinue Worldfocus [Word doc], its weeknight international news report as of April 2. The producing station was “a few million dollars short” of what it needed to keep Worldfocus on the air, President Neal Shapiro said in a release today. “We demonstrated that there is a demand for international news, but we had the misfortune of launching a brand new program into the teeth of the recession,” Shapiro said, adding, “… we were in the right place at the wrong time.” The station will put resources in its new weekly current affairs series Need to Know, which starts in early May, when Bill Moyers retires from his weekly show and Now on PBS ends its run. The station announced last week that Shelley Lewis, a former CNN and ABC executive producer, has that role for Need To Know. Lewis comes from Howdini.com, a how-to video website for women that she co-created; she also co-created Air America Radio and was its senior v.p. of programming. She was previously e.p. of CNN’s American Morning with Paula Zahn and Greenfield at Large, and before that was e.p. for ABC News Productions.
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Utah Education Network, a sister agency with KUED at the University of Utah, has received a $13.4 million federal Recovery Act grant to bring fast Internet service to 130 schools, libraries and other community institutions in the state, and it has been a partner with PBS in developing the Digital Learning Library. The state is putting in $3.5 million to match. UEN already serves 300 schools (its map). With the Utah grant announced last week, the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration had awarded grants totaling $610 million out of $7.2 billion allotted for NTIA- and Ag Department-funded broadband projects by the Recovery Act (this week's quarterly report to the House Commerce Committee). NTIA is accepting a second round of applications through March 15.
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“I’m not a command-and-control person,” Vivian Schiller tells the Columbia Journalism Review in a feature on her first year as NPR president. "I lead by building consensus." Schiller is addicted to her Blackberry, conducts lots of business via email and "has succeeded somewhat in piercing NPR's infamous bureaucracy," at least in the case of creating new business and reporting arrangements for Planet Money, the radio/online economics reporting collaboration with This American Life. CJR reporter Jill Drew also finds points of tension. Kevin Beesley, president of NPR's AFTRA unit, questions a "larding of the management ranks" with recent hires Keith Woods, v.p. of diversity, and Susanne Reber, deputy managing editor for investigations. "Beesley’s concern is that too much money is being spent on managers, leaving little to improve the lot of the people who create NPR’s content," CJR reports. And, among station leaders, not everyone has bought into Schiller's push for local-national collaboration in online news and fundraising. American Public Media President Bill Kling, for one, questions the campaign for mega-gifts that Ron Schiller, NPR senior v.p. of development, is planning. “If I found a $10-million donor and Ron Schiller came to town and said, ‘Let’s split that,’ I’d say no,” Kling tells CJR. “Here the most important thing to do next is to get Minnesota Public Radio up to its full potential in professional news collection and dissemination.”
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Of all the public TV stations facing steep cuts in state funding this year, Idaho Public Television is among those in "greatest immediate danger," CPB Senior V.P. Mark Erstling tells Stateline.org. Idaho Gov. Butch Otter has proposed to zero-out the state network's funding over four years. For a station broadcasting to sparsely populated areas, there's no way to make up the difference with corporate underwriting or member donations. “You can really see a potential loss of service,” Erstling says. "We don't have enough funding to bail out all the stations that are coming to us asking for help and saying they're in financial distress." To adjust to the loss of $1.6 million annually, Idaho Public TV will have to cancel most of its local programming, close three studios and shut off its network of rural translators, among other service changes.
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PBS talk host and activist Tavis Smiley may have recently ended his annual State of the Black Union events, but this month he's once again bringing together African Americans to press the case for a "black agenda," reports the Associated Press. Smiley told the AP he felt compelled to organize the discussion after statements from some black leaders downplaying the need for President Barack Obama to specifically help the African-Americans community. Scheduled to speak during the March 20 panel discussion at Chicago State University are advertising pioneer Tom Burrell, professors Michael Eric Dyson and Cornel West, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Bennett College President Julianne Malveaux. The gathering may be broadcast.
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Columbus Neighborhoods, an engagement-focused website just launched by WOSU Public Media and the Columbus Metropolitan Library, invites visitors to explore and share stories, photos and videos of life in central Ohio. Inspired by WOSU-TV's documentary series on local history, the site mainly features archival photographs of thirty different neighborhoods and suburbs. Next week, WOSU debuts "Short North," the next installment of its TV documentary series, previewed here.
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Kachingle, an online service designed to make it easy for online media consumers to leave thank-you gifts, officially began operation with 75 sites participating, including the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and Cyberjournalist.net, the company says. Others are “queued up” to go live, including the Center for Public Integrity. Newspapers in Boulder, Colo., and Sioux City, Iowa, also have signed up so far. Their slogan has evolved from “Sprinkle change on the content you love” to “Crowdfunding sites you love” and now “Social cents for digital stuff.” See Current’s article and the Kachingle website.
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Public Radio Player Version 2.1, an upgrade of the iPhone app developed by Public Radio Exchange last year, is now available for downloads in the iTunes App Store. PRX rewrote the code to improve the app's performance and added features such as a sleep timer, alarm clock and the ability to bookmark your favorite listening selections. There's something else very different about the latest player: PRX is introducing national banner ads on top-level pages. "CPB has encouraged us to find ways to sustain the project beyond grant support so this is our first foray into mobile advertising," explains Executive Director Jake Shapiro on PRX.org. "We are working to make it possible for stations to sell local ads on their own Player pages." A broader roll-out of local station ads is planned for version 3.0, which PRX will release in June. CPB recently renewed its funding of the Public Radio Player, a pubradio collaborative project that PRX has managed since 2008. The first version offered live streams of 150 public radio stations. Now 500 are accessible through the app.
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PBS today announced a new senior vice president of development, who will also head up the PBS Foundation. Brian Reddington will help expand fundraising efforts to generate new revenue for stations and content, PBS said in a statement. He will help PBS raise money from individual donors, foundations, corporations and other sources, and oversee creation of individual-giving programs and online fundraising initiatives. Reddington comes to PBS after four years as director of institutional advancement at the Smithsonian Institution, where he directed all external functions in the Central Office of Development.
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Vocalo.org has hired Silvia Rivera as executive director. Rivera, former g.m. of Chicago's Radio Arte, is chair of the Latino Public Radio Consortium board. She played a key role in the drafting of LPRC's 2007 "brown paper." At Vocalo, she succeeds Wendy Turner, who was promoted to v.p. at Chicago Public Radio, Vocalo.org's parent station. Rivera began her public media career in 1998 at Radio Arte, a Chicago public radio station and media training program serving Latino youth. She rose through the ranks to become g.m. in 2006. “I look forward to helping realize the potential of Vocalo.org," Rivera said in a news release. "First-person storytelling, music, and the art of media-making are passions of mine, so I am thrilled to be joining a team of creative visionaries that recognize that these elements can help redefine public media and engage a new generation.”
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Los Angeles now has a full-time Triple A music station. KCSN, the 370-watt noncommercial station operated by California State University at Northridge, dumped its daytime classical music schedule today and reintroduced itself as the only L.A. radio station broadcasting contemporary music 24/7. “We’ve researched what is the best public radio format to reach the broadest audience and we’re convinced this is it. This format serves the musical interests of listeners in our region,” said Karen Kearns, interim g.m. and associate dean of the university's college of arts, media and communication, in a news release. The station has struggled for viability in the crowded L.A. market amidst all-classical KUSC, news/eclectic music KCRW, jazz-format KKJZ, and news/talk KPCC. KCSN's signal, the weakest among pubradio outlets in the region, reaches across the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys into L.A. and has a potential audience of nearly 3 million. "That's a lot of people, but in L.A. there is so much competition," said Kearns in an interview last fall. This is the second time in five months that KCSN has changed its format. Last Sept. 30, KCSN dismissed all paid on-air staff and switched to an automated service of daytime classical and Triple A/Americana music on evenings and weekends. KCSN went to automation after losing its CPB funding, Kearns said. "There is no money to pay the hosts."
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East Tennessee Public Television co-sponsored an interesting event over the weekend: A Missing Medals Recovery Program. Veterans and their family members turned out for help identifying medals, military patches, ribbons and badges, reports the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
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The third PubMedia Chat will focus on impact measurement. The ongoing Twitterfests give practitioners and supporters of public media a way to interact and brainstorm. Jessica Clark of the American University's Center for Social Media will host beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern. Follow @pubmedia to participate. In case you missed it, here are highlights of last week's Tweets.
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An upcoming BBC strategic proposal signals "an end to the era of expansion" for the British broadcaster, reports the Times of London. The review, scheduled for public release next month, will announce closures of two radio stations, the shuttering of half its website and a 25 percent cut in funding for American program imports. The Times story said that Mark Thompson, the Beeb's director general, will reveal in the report that the moves are due in part to the corporation becoming too large.
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Oscar Garza, senior assignment editor for the Los Angeles Public Media Service, is "one of those people who's been around for a while and his perspective is key to helping understand Los Angeles," writes , in this Q&A about the new CPB-backed start-up. Garza is a 20-year veteran of the Los Angeles Times and former editor in chief of the glossy magazine Tu Ciudad. Los Angeles Public Media's mission is "to create new audiences for public radio," he tells Guzman-Lopez. "Public radio has a couple of problems. One is that their audience is older and getting older, their average audience. And they're not very diverse. It's an overwhelmingly Anglo audience." The new service will target listeners aged 25-40, and the ethnic mix will reflect the multicultural life of the L.A.: "[B]ecause of the diversity of the city . . . generations . . . are accustomed to living in this multicultural, diverse environment . . . , they're not just living in this Latino bubble. We all have Asian friends, African American friends." Los Angeles Public Media, a project of Radio Bilingüe, plans to launch a daily one-hour radio show and online news service later this year.
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Pennsylvania State University journalism professor Marlowe Froke, who founded WPSX-TV (now WPSU-TV) in 1964 at the university, died Feb. 23 in State College, Pa. He was 82. Penn State Live, the university's news site, said he "took the lead in the early days of cable and public TV to establish networks of connections among Pennsylvania stations and cable operations that preceded today's Public Broadcasting System." He joined the Penn State faculty in 1959 as an associate professor of journalism and developed the school's first broadcast journalism curriculum. In 1964 he was named Penn State's director of broadcasting and established WPSX.
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FCC Chair Julius Genachowski has revealed a specific number for the amount of spectrum the agency wants to see freed up: 500 Mhz. Also, he confirmed what many experts have expected, that there will indeed be a spectrum auction for that bandwidth. In a speech today (PDF) to the New America Foundation, a D.C. progressive think tank, Genachowski said the National Broadband Plan to be presented to Congress next month "will work closely" with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration over the next decade to release the spectrum. The plan proposes a “Mobile Future Auction” permitting existing licensees, "such as television broadcasters in spectrum-starved markets," to relinquish spectrum in exchange for a share of auction proceeds. "Now, I’ve mentioned broadcast spectrum – so let me be clear: the recommendation is for a voluntary program," he noted. Public broadcasters are watching the spectrum debate with interest, as stations stand to monetarily gain from an auction but would give up valuable bandwidth to do so (Current, Feb. 8, 2010).
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A Native Tribe in Reliance, S.D., has asked the FCC to examine the location of a commercial broadcasting tower on Medicine Butte — where South Dakota Public Broadcasting also has an tower, reports the Daily Republic in Mitchell. Michael Jandreau, chairman of the Lower Brule Sioux, said he sent a letter to the FCC after a storm brought down the tower last month, requesting an opportunity to discuss the the situation because his tribe regards Medicine Butte as a sacred site. Fritz Miller at SDPB said the station does not anticipate moving its tower. He told Current that laws on tribal boundaries were changed last year, giving tribes the opportunity to buy back land. According to SeVern Ashes, SDPB director of engineering, "The butte is part of the tribe's creation history and is still used today for vision quest and prayers." The station checked its land deed and guy wire easements a few years back and is satisfied it is legally covered if the Lower Brule Sioux decide to buy back the butte.
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The second round of two-day workshops convened by the Federal Trade Commission on the future of journalism are scheduled for March 9 and 10, the agency said in an announcement today. Speakers at "How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?" include FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz; and Bob Garfield, co-host of NPR's On the Media, addressing "The State of Advertising." Agenda is here (PDF).
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In case you missed it yesterday: You can now download or stream the interview with Jennifer Ferro, new g.m. of KCRW-FM in Los Angeles, from the station's own The Politics of Culture program. Ferro's promotion from assistant g.m. to lead the station was announced Saturday.
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Wilmington, N.C., was the first community in America to discontinue analog broadcasting. Now it's the first to test a municipal WiFi network using white spaces between DTV channels, reports Broadcasting & Cable. So far the city has been using white-space wireless cameras for traffic and surveillance in a park and highway; soon cameras will also check water levels. And there'll be public WiFi in a park and school. The city is being assisted by Spectrum Bridge, a real-time online marketplace for radio spectrum. That firm is supplying a spectrum database to prevent interference with local TV stations.
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Writer Conor Friedersdorf of True/Slant compiled a list of the best journalism he encountered in 2009. This American Life, the only public radio program to appear in on it, turns up 10 times. TAL's reportage is cited in several categories--exceptional storytelling, investigative journalism, and media criticism, among others, and more often than any other publication. Friedersdorf acknowledges that there's a lot of great work that he misses every year. "[T]his isn’t an infallible account of journalism’s best, but I aim to make it the best roundup that any one person can offer, one of these years I intend to do better than the committees who pick the Pulitzer Prizes and National Magazine Awards. . . and if nothing else my effort encompasses writing that is well worth your time." Friedersdorf produces a twitter stream of exceptional reporting as JournoCurator.
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Now that baseball spring training is under way, eager fans are counting the hours until opening day. While spectators will be eating hot dogs in the bleachers, some PBSers will take to the field in their National Adult Baseball Association (NABA) league. KCET/Los Angeles President and CEO Al Jerome (at left in photo) formed the California Blue Jays team in 2002 and recruited athletic talent from around the system, including the strong double-play combination of shortstop Lloyd Wright (president and CEO of WFYI/Indianapolis, Ind., right in photo) and second baseman Andy Russell (senior v.p., PBS Ventures, center in photo). Former team members have included Mel Rogers of KOCE/Huntington Beach, Calif., and Jeff Clarke of KQED/San Francisco. The far-flung players practice on their own using local batting cages and, no doubt, family members drafted into playing catch. The California Blue Jays come together for one week each year to compete; Wright reports that last fall they won the 1A Division of NABA National Tournament in Las Vegas. Jerome, whom Wright calls "a crafty southpaw," was starting pitcher; Russell and Wright were the team's top two hitters in the tourney. Quips Wright: "You might say these executives are 'out standing in their field.'"
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"Peer teaching is at the heart of Youth Radio," Jacinda Abcarian, executive director of the Oakland-based media program, tells San Francisco Chronicle. "You don't get that school-like feel; there are no adults talking down to you." In a feature noting the organization's 10th anniversary, music journalist Ben Fong-Torres reports on Youth Radio's growth from a tiny storefront operation in Berkeley to a media training ground that has served "some 10,000 urban kids," produced news reports for NPR and other major news outlets, and established radio streams for musical expression and health concerns.
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New episodes of the 1970s PBS hit Upstairs, Downstairs are coming to Masterpiece in 2011 as part of a co-production deal with BBC World Sales and Distribution, Americas, the partners announced in a press release today. There'll also be a 21st-century version of Sherlock Holmes, and three Aurelio Zen mysteries about a fictional Italian detective. The original Upstairs, Downstairs won seven Emmys including a best actress for Jean Marsh; she'll recreate her role of Rose the parlor maid. The three-part series will be set in the same house. The new episodes take place in 1936, advancing the storyline that left off in 1930. Read more in the UK's Guardian.
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PBS won three Writers Guild of America Awards on Saturday night, which honored outstanding achievement in television, radio, news, promotional writing and graphic animation during the 2009 season. Frontline's “The Madoff Affair” took the Documentary–Current Events honor; American Experience won for "The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer" for Documentary–Other Than Current Events; and Bill Moyers Journal scored in the News–Analysis, Feature of Commentary, for its segment “A Private War: Expose: America's Investigative Reports.” Announcements were made in simultaneous ceremonies in Los Angeles (Writers Guild, West) and New York City (Writers Guild, East). A list of winners is available at the Writers Guild website.
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Jennifer Ferro is the new g.m. of Los Angeles’ KCRW-FM, following her formal approval by the Santa Monica College Board of Trustees Saturday. “Jennifer epitomizes the perfect mix of traditional public radio experience and the strategic and creative new media thinking that will be critical to KCRW’s continued success in the years ahead,” said Chui L. Tsang, president of the college, in a press release. KCRW is licensed to the school. Ferro joined KCRW in 1991 as a volunteer arts reporter and since 1997 worked as assistant g.m. to outgoing station chief Ruth Seymour, who announced her retirement in November. “Jennifer is an ideal choice to lead the station forward,” Seymour said. “She’s innovative, courageous and independent. … She will make a terrific manager and I look forward to a KCRW under her leadership.” Ferro told the Santa Monica Daily Press that she does not plan any major changes to the station’s signature lineup of news, public affairs and cutting-edge music. She does plan to increase major gifts and support for independent producers, the Los Angeles Times reported. Look for more coverage in Current’s March 1 issue. UPDATE: Seymour appeared on KPCC's Air Talk last week to discuss her legacy: "I’m very much about the present, responding to the moment. And I think that’s the art of radio — that it isn’t about the past and it isn’t about the future, but it’s about now, and capturing 'now.'" Also, Ferro will appear on KCRW's The Politics of Culture at 2:30 p.m. Pacific time tomorrow (Feb. 23) to talk about the station. Stream available at KCRW's website.
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PubTV and radio in Minnesota are in for less funding if Gov. Tim Pawlenty's proposed budget is adopted, according to the Duluth News Tribune. The plan puts forth some $1.4 million reductions for TV, and for radio, $287,000 in service grants, $100,000 in equipment grants and $250,000 of equipment grants for Minnesota Public Radio; indie KUMD 103.3 FM in Duluth would also be subject to those cuts. WDSE-TV station manager Al Harmon told the paper that would mean staff cuts at the station and the end of some local programming. Harmon said state grants make up about 10 percent of WDSE’s operating budget, and 20 percent of the salaries for the station’s 30 employees. Similar reductions are happening in state budgets across the country (Current, Jan. 25, 2010).
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Thanks to a pair of Joe Paterno's trademark black glasses, Penn State Broadcasting is $9,000 richer. The much-loved Penn State University's football coach donated the glasses for the station's Connoisseur's Dinner and Auction. WPSU seems to be working its way around the much-loved coach's body, already having auctioned autographed khaki pants, white socks, sneakers and neckties from several bowl games.
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Next summer's annual weeklong CPB/PBS Producers Academy, led by top TV production specialists, will accept applications through Tuesday, March 23, 5 p.m. Experienced indie and station-based producer/writer/directors are eligible for scholarships that cover the cost of the workshops, room and board in Boston, June 19-25. Details and app form are online at PBS.org.
Questions go to PBS and CPB, not WGBH: Kathryn Lo of PBS and Angie Palmer of CPB.
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Preparing for a bond issue this spring to finance construction of its new headquarters, NPR got a vote of confidence from two of the big-three bond rating agencies, the network said in a news release yesterday. Standard & Poor’s gave NPR an AA- rating and Moody’s gave it a comparable Aa3. Both are high-grade ratings, the fourth of 20 or more grades. Last March, NPR bought the site seven blocks east of its present home and is planning a new seven-story, 330,000-square-foot structure incorporating about two-thirds of an old historic-landmarked warehouse. NPR plans to break ground next fall and occupy the building by mid-2013.
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The FCC officially launched its inquiry into future news and information needs of communities at its meeting in Washington yesterday, Broadcasting & Cable reports. Steve Waldman (right), special adviser to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, has been working for several months to assemble a cross-agency team and begin gathering information. The first formal group workshop will be March 4. Waldman said that discussion would be TV and radio stations, adding that there had been a "newspaper centrism" to past media discussions.
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A bill in the Florida Legislature would amend a statute that limits state money for public broadcasting only to stations under the purview of CPB. It adds “nondenominational television stations licensed by the FCC as full-power educational broadcast stations”as eligible for funding via the State Board of Education. “What this bill would do is open it up to a larger group of licensees,” said Sandra Ceseretti, g.m. of WSRE at Pensacola Junior College. “It could be community or perhaps religious licensees that are nondenominational. It would take the current infrastructure and grow it, perhaps to another 200 new licensees." As the college's newspaper, the Corsair, reports, that could dilute funding to existing stations, causing problems WSRE. The station has already had cutbacks and layoffs as a result of a deficit last year.
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The FCC has granted an extension to APTS, CPB, NPR and PBS for comments on the report, "The Future of Media and Information Needs of Communities in A Digital Age." The deadline, originally March 8, is now May 7. The G4 told the FCC the delay was necessary because of the "wide-ranging nature" of the topics involved. Also, the organizations are planning regional town meetings to solicit viewpoints of community leaders and broadcast station execs. FCC order here (PDF).
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At a public meeting in Washington today, the FCC previewed part of its upcoming report to Congress on a National Broadband Plan. The focus was the "national purposes" portion of the plan, "designed to support America’s competitive advantages in key sectors of the economy and society," according to an FCC press release (PDF) with details of the presentation (a more specific report, also in PDF, here). The agency discussed potential solutions for challenges in areas including health care technology, education, energy, jobs, public safety and civic engagement. A final report is due to Congress in mid-March.
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Rob Bole, CPB's veep of digital media strategy, is working to bring together public media folks at the upcoming SXSW event. "I see an opportunity to help get out of parochial grooves, network, make connections and generally be more collaborative," he told Current in an email. He's gathering a list of interested pubmedia types that he'll redistribute. There'll be a call for "SXSW newbies" with Kevin Dando, director of digital and education communications at PBS. Bole is also planning a Sunday evening social event, a #pubsxsw Twitter hashtag for back-channel communications, and a post-SXSX briefing via WebEx conferencing. Interested? Email Bole at rbole(at)cpb.org, ping him through #pubmedia, direct message to @rbole or sign up online.
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WNIT Public Television in South Bend, Ind., is letting go eight staffers and restructuring in the wake of a 50 percent drop in state funding, according to the Elkhart Truth newspaper. The station had been studying a restructuring plan but the $200,000 loss moved it more quickly ahead, president and g.m. Mary Pruess told the newspaper. Employees were cut from several departments and levels of seniority. And bookkeeping, accounting, program scheduling and marketing will be outsourced. The state is just one facing a fiscal meltdown that endangers pubcasters (Current, Jan. 25, 2010).
posted at 10:25 AM EST
NPR will produce two live music showcases from the South by Southwest Music and Media conference: the previously announced March 17 festival opener to be headlined by Spoon, and a March 18 daytime concert featuring the Sleigh Bells. (Details on both line-ups here.) Both shows will be offered for broadcast by NPR stations, as well as live webcasts for online listeners on NPR Music. Five station partners--Austin's KUT, New York's WFUV, Philadelphia's WXPN, Minnesota Public Radio's The Current, and Seattle's KEXP--will collaborate on the SXSW coverage by producing artist interviews and reporting on other performances throughout the festival. NPR's own All Songs Considered will post updates to Twitter (@allsongs) and produce a daily podcast in which Bob Boilen, Robin Hilton, Stephen Thompson and Carrie Brownstein geek-out about their best music discoveries of the day. To prepare for the music extravaganza, bookmark npr.org/sxsw, where all this coverage will reside (and where you'll find archives from previous years' coverage) and check out the Local Natives, one of the bands to be featured at NPR's SXSW day party. More than 1800 bands are scheduled to perform during SXSW. WXPN's Bruce Warren recommends that you keep your ears to the ground for Austin's own Strange Boys.
posted at 5:42 PM EST
A blogger for the San Diego Reader is reporting on a project last year from local pubcaster KPBS to buy an additional local FM station and switch its existing news frequency to a "lucrative classical music format." That plan was not executed, says Matt Potter, staff writer and editor at the publication. He obtained the report -- labeled Privileged and Confidential -- titled, “Funding Our News Future: A Case for Purchasing a New Radio Frequency,” through California's public records act. That study says that KPBS management was looking to purchase KPRI, a 30,000-watt FM station, for $8 million. Potter quotes the document: “A properly run classical music station can generate significant revenue. In fact, this scenario, with a purchase price of $8m and conservative listener sensitive revenue projections, shows positive cash flow after debt service in year #2. We could potentially reach $1.5m cash flow by year #5. These revenues will go toward funding the KPBS News service, which rarely operates with positive cash flow.” Nancy Worlie, spokeswoman for KPBS, told Current: "We're no longer interested. After careful consideration we never made an offer. We decided to keep our focus on our current media outlets and toward expanding our local news service."
posted at 3:15 PM EST
The campaign to establish Long Island's WLIU as an independent public radio outlet is faltering, according to this report by the Hamptons Independent. With a looming deadline to relocate from WLIU's longtime home on the Southhampton campus of Stonybrook University, station leaders are also trying to raise money through a new nonprofit, Peconic Public Broadcasting, to acquire WLIU's license. The Independent reports that actor Alec Baldwin, one of several celebrities who backed the campaign, is not fulfilling his pledge. Meanwhile, critics of G.M. Wally Smith say he hasn't done enough to reduce operating expenses. "We do have a plan," Smith said. "Our goal is to not live hand to mouth."
posted at 1:35 PM EST
Jessica Clark, director of the Center for Social Media's Future of Public Media project, takes on a big question on the MediaShift blog: How well are stations measuring success in multiplatform public media projects created to inform and engage the public? "Very few stations define success with concrete metrics," Clark writes. "Most examples are anecdotal. ('I just have a sense.') What they consider to be 'successful' is very subjective. Those that do have an idea of what success means to them include metrics such as page views, unique users, and calls into station when online offerings fail to work." She cites "Embracing Digital: A Review of Public Media Efforts Across the United States," a June 2009 CPB-funded report by Gupta Consulting, which revealed that "few station executives can quote quantitative measures of either goals or achievements related to their digital offerings." Some stations were not even able to provide a rationale for creating particular digital offerings. "Clearly, accurately measuring impact is difficult -- if not impossible -- if producers are not able to identify their own motivations," Clark points out. Read the entire CPB report here (PDF).
posted at 1:26 PM EST
WFSU at Florida State University has demanded that its video of an Air Force commander discussing offshore drilling be removed from a state House candidate's website. Democrat David Pleat thought the video explained the reasons he opposes oil drilling near the Gulf Coast, so he put a copy from Youtube.com on his campaign Web site, according to the Northwest Florida Daily News. The video “can be posted for educational purposes," said Florida Channel Executive Director Beth Switzer. “We can’t, and are not allowed to, grant use in political advertisements or on websites.” Pleat's site now carries a red X over the spot where the video once played. On a page linked to that spot, the website says the campaign feels WFSU's request "is censorship of important information regarding oil drilling in the Gulf." Pleat told the paper: "We simply put forward information that was taped in a public hearing with public dollars.”
posted at 10:16 AM EST
In a lengthy feature on WGBH's ambitions to compete against WBUR for NPR News audiences, Boston Magazine goes behind the scenes to describe rifts between WGBH management and rank and file. By its account, WGBH staff were demoralized by months of budget cuts and downsizing when station leaders opted to spend $14 million on all-classical WCRB. Author Paul Kix portrays the scene during a staff meeting at which WGBH veep Marita Rivero announced the decision: "one woman sobbed and, according to numerous accounts, screamed something at Rivero to the effect of 'Jesus, you've got a lot of nerve! I can't believe this has happened.'"
"This wasn't just fury over the company's financial state. It was also the creeping clash between the old culture of WGBH and the new, between the way things had been and the way things would need to be."
"Part of the problem with 'GBH is there's a culture of mollycoddling where everyone's treated the same, and everybody's patted on the back," Emily Rooney, WGBH's top news talent, tells Kix. Rooney, a veteran of commercial TV news, adds that, had the "sobbing, shouting woman" been her employee, she would have been fired.
posted at 5:04 PM EST
Today in Washington, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski (right) provided insights into what will be contained in the agency's National Broadband Plan report to Congress next month. In a speech to the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (PDF), he cited several important issues, including spectrum use. He said that the commission will make the recommendation to "free up a significant amount of spectrum in the years ahead for ample licensed and unlicensed use." Experts have been predicting a coming spectrum auction, which might leave pubcasters with a tricky decision ("At what cost spectrum? Stations may face choice: Cash soon or opportunities later," Current, Feb. 10, 2010). Several other recommendations Genachowski mentioned included "lowering the cost of broadband build-out -- wired and wireless -- through the smart use of government rights of way and conduits," and developing "public/private partnerships to increase Internet adoption, and ensure that all children can use the Internet proficiently and safely." He also said the plan will set goals for the United State to have the world’s largest market of very high-speed broadband users, which he dubbed a “100 Squared” initiative: 100 million households at 100 megabits per second.
posted at 3:54 PM EST
An international broadband study out today (see previous item for national numbers) shows the United States is a "middle of the pack" performer on broadband efforts, but has higher prices for high-speed and next generation Internet. The research was commissioned by the FCC and conducted by examination of existing literature from 30 countries by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Another finding: America has 30 wifi free and pay hotspots per 100,000 residents; that compares with Sweden, which has 80. The 333-page report in PDF form is here.
posted at 11:07 AM EST
WVIA, a dual licensee in Pittston, Pa., is slowly returning to the air after a devastating electrical fire on Friday. Newswatch 16, in nearby Moosic, Pa., has loaned out an unused transmitter. The FCC okayed the shift in order to restore the signal, according to the Scranton Times-Tribune. Over-the-air viewers can rescan their TVs to find the new PBS signal, Newswatch 16 reports. Radio is at reduced power but operating. WVIA will rebuild the transmitter site but WVIA President Bill Kelley said the building is a complete loss. "That building is toast. Every transmitter, every wire, every tube. It's melted, it's gone," he told Newswatch 16. Construction estimates are between $1 and $2 million.
posted at 10:32 AM EST
"Going Radical," an NPR investigative series that begins airing tomorrow, is the first to be produced by the new reporting unit headed by Suzanne Reber. The three-part series examines the radicalization of the Christmas Day bomb suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Three reporters--Peter Kenyon, Dina Temple-Raston and Ofeibea Quist-Arcton--collaborated on the investigation, according to Poynter Online. Within NPR headquarters, the investigative team working under Reber includes correspondents Daniel Zwerdling and Joseph Shapiro, librarian Barbara Van Woerkom and computer-assisted reporter Robert Benincasa. NPR plans to hire a producer/off-air reporter to complete the team, but journalists will "cycle through" the unit on assignments, NPR News chief Ellen Weiss says.
posted at 10:19 AM EST
A new report on broadband Internet usage that surveyed 50,000 households reveals all demographic groups are using more broadband but disparities among particular groups continue to exist, according to the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Among the findings: 64 percent of households have broadband access compared with 51 percent in October 2007. Lagging behind in broadband use are low-income households, seniors, minorities, the less-educated and the unemployed. And 30 percent of all Americans surveyed do not use the Internet in any location. The research was commissioned by the NTIA and conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in October 2009. Access the full report here (PDF).
posted at 10:09 AM EST
Mobile app developers will get “a simple route to market” that lets them develop a single app for wireless devices’ various incompatible operating systems, according to the Wholesale Applications Community announced in Barcelona yesterday by more than two dozen cell phone carriers and device makers. The “distribution ecosystem” based on “openness and transparency” is backed by carriers weary of being outflanked and bullied by Apple’s iBandwagon, including such open and transparent corporate citizens as Verizon, Sprint, major foreign carriers and even AT&T, Apple’s U.S. iPhone carrier. Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson also joined. Information Week ‘s blogger expects this new League of Nations to get bogged down, fall behind and fall apart.
Demonstrating that even alliance-hungry Apple competitors can’t agree on the same strategy, two more such companies, Nokia and Intel, said they will combine their Linux-based open-source mobile/netbook OS efforts, under the Linux Foundation, Ars Technica reported. The joint effort is MeeGo.
posted at 7:32 AM EST
Idaho Public Television has removed spots touting the importance of public television that featured state legislators, reports the Twin Falls, Idaho, Times-News website. In a recent hearing before the state joint finance-appropriations committee on funding for the station, a senator asked IPTV g.m. Peter Morrill if the appearances gave the politicians a political advantage. Morrill looked into the spots, then replied to the committee in a subsequent letter. The legislators "did not advocate for any funding proposal, only for the general public service that we provide,” Morrill wrote. “To avoid any further confusion, I have instructed my staff to take these spots off the air during the legislative session.” The promotion project is funded by CPB.
posted at 10:39 AM EST
Plenty of interesting comments in this week's Mailbag (well, Snowbag) from the PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler. Topics include "The Bombing of Germany" from American Experience, and Frontline's "Flying Cheap."
posted at 9:55 AM EST
Illinois Public Media in Urbana-Champaign will realign its AM, FM and TV staffing to survive its budget woes. The operation at the University of Illinois will eliminate nine staff positions, phase out the weather department, add news to its FM classical format, shift its AM news staff to more local coverage and outreach, and add three staff positions in "areas with potential for revenue growth." General Manager Mark Leonard announced the overhaul in a statement on its website. Illinois Public Media has been operating with a deficit during the current fiscal year as a result of $110,000 in budget cuts from the Illinois Arts Council that were announced in October, Leonard said. “We cannot continue to do things the way we’ve done them in the past,” he said. “If we do, we’re spreading ourselves too thin across too many projects. And we’ll miss the opportunities that technology offers to provide public media in new ways.” The station provided an FAQ to address listener and viewer concerns. The station is one of several in Illinois working with CPB consultants to explore a cost-saving merger.
posted at 9:51 AM EST
Tom Bettag, who authored a recent advisory report for PBS on its news and public affairs initiative, has joined CNN Worldwide as senior e.p. for State of the Union with Candy Crowley and Reliable Sources, effective immediately, according to a CNN statement. PBS had asked Bettag last year to consider how public TV could reinvent its news offerings, and Bettag spent time meeting with executives in both pubTV and radio news units (Current, May 11 and 26, 2009.)
posted at 8:51 PM EST
John Boland, former PBS chief content officer, was today named president and CEO of Northern California Public Broadcasting. Boland succeeds Jeff Clarke, retiring after nearly 45 years in pubmedia and broadcasting. Boland was the system's first chief content officer (CCO) at KQED in 2002. He became PBS's first CCO in 2006. Clarke’s last day is March 19 and Boland will take the helm on March 22.
posted at 8:32 PM EST
Want a PBS-style ringtone? That catchy theme for Nova is now available. Download it here. It's free.
posted at 3:13 PM EST
