Ties with nets abroad will feed Worldfocus
NBC News correspondent Martin Savidge got wind of Worldfocus, the new WLIW/ WNET international news program, through the network-news grapevine. “The idea of the program had created a buzz within the journalistic community,” he says. People were asking, “Have you heard what Neal Shapiro is doing?”
Savidge — who has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan and Sarajevo for NBC and CNN — checked in with Shapiro, WNET president and former head of NBC News. Savidge says he soon realized “this was the program I had wandered about for so many years in journalism to find.”
He’ll anchor Worldfocus when it debuts Oct. 6, moving into a niche lately occupied only by a half-hour nightly BBC World News produced for American public TV.
PubTV stations in at least eight of the top ten markets have committed to carrying Worldfocus, which will feed at 5 p.m., 7 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Eastern time, with updated content if necessary. The program is distributed by American Public Television with no charge to stations.
Worldfocus, unlike the BBC newscast and nearly all others in TV, will regularly feature journalists reporting from their native countries. To launch the project, the producers are not only assembling the production staff for a nightly show but creating a web of reporting relationships with newsgathering units around the world.
As U.S. news organizations downsize their overseas bureaus, the TV audience needs a broadcast that addresses America’s role in the world, says Marc Rosenwasser, Worldfocus e.p. and a former NBC News producer. He plans to produce more in-depth stories than can be seen on network or cable news and to give American viewers a better context for understanding international news.
WNET/WLIW announced the new program (then titled Your World Tonight) in April, after BBC World News and WLIW, its distributor for nearly 10 years, decided to part ways. The BBC wanted more promotion and carriage rules that limited the number of licenses to one per market and dictated the times when the program could air. WLIW and Shapiro objected to those rules and wanted to create a new newscast.
Shapiro invited the BBC to participate, along with other overseas broadcasters, but the network and the station couldn’t agree on the terms. KCET in Los Angeles will now distribute the BBC newscast, beginning in October (Current, May 12).
The BBC’s program is “first-rate,” says Rosenwasser, but doesn’t contextualize its news for an American TV audience. “We’re just one of many of their audiences,” says Rosenwasser. “Our goal is to make foreign news less foreign.”
World-sourcing
To accomplish this, Shapiro and Rosenwasser have recruited veteran producers from network news and hired recent journalism-school grads from Taiwan, Brazil, India, Puerto Rico, Sierra Leone and Israel and the West Bank. Freelance reporters — mostly former network folks — will create longer enterprise pieces, shot by Worldfocus field producers. Savidge, who won an Edward R. Murrow Award for his coverage of the Elián González custody battle, will also report from the field.
For perspectives from journalists and citizens in other countries — and because Worldfocus won’t have as many overseas correspondents as the BBC does — the program will rely heavily on reports from an alliance of partner broadcasters that will likely include ABC of Australia, NHK of Japan, ITN of Britain, Globo of Brazil and Israel’s Channels 2 and 10. U.S.-based partners will likely include NBC, ABC, PRI’s radio program The World (co-produced with WGBH and BBC), the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times.
WLIW/WNET would not discuss the financial terms of these partnerships, and Rosenwasser says the terms depend on the partner’s level of involvement.
Those news organizations will provide reports for Worldfocus, often before they appear in their own venues, Rosenwasser says. “What’s in it for them is exposure to our audience,” he says. Savidge will supplement the reports by interviewing journalists who work on the pieces.
The Worldfocus in-house staff includes about 25 people, including a few part-timers, says Rosenwasser. Four of those staffers make up the online team, including one who will build connections with overseas bloggers.
In contrast, the long-established NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, with twice the airtime to fill, has a production and reporting staff of about 50, including four reporters and producers working in-house on foreign news — not counting the familiar team of on-air correspondents.
PRI’s The World, also a daily hour, has a staff of about 50 as well.
WNET declined to discuss Worldfocus’s budget and funding, but the New York Times reported a startup budget of $8 million, citing “station employees.” The NewsHour costs $26 million to $28 million a year to produce.
One way the show will save money is by receiving producers’ digital video files by the Internet via FTP, which Rosenwasser says is “wildly less expensive” than satellite.
Beyond the “official” news
Worldfocus will resemble an international version of network news — a roundup of the day’s major stories, expert and reporter interviews with Savidge, and Nightline-style enterprise stories, says Rosenwasser. The show will use more video than networks usually do, and big stories such as the conflict between Georgia and Russia may merit three to four reports in one newscast from partners abroad. Rosenwasser also wants to create weeklong series that address one topic—food prices, for instance—from various locations. Also in the mix: radio partners’ stories aired over b-roll video from the AP.
On Fridays, Worldfocus will feature a roundtable on the week’s news with analysts including Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Deborah Amos, who has reported for NPR, ABC News, Now with Bill Moyers and Frontline. Worldfocus execs want to take advantage of experts working for Columbia University, Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and other institutions. “The UN is heard from remarkably little,” Rosenwasser notes.
Worldfocus reporters and producers have already been in the field reporting on the rising cost of oil. They’re looking at how it’s hurting Americans, but the program also will examine how energy costs are affecting people from South America to Asia. Teams are also shooting unrelated slice-of-life stories where they travel.
“We think a lot of that is going to be picture and sound that’s unfamiliar to American viewers — less predictable pieces than the same three pieces they see from Africa every year,” says Rosenwasser. “One of my main goals of this show is to get past the ‘official’ world ... and to show our audience how people around the world actually live.”
Savidge thinks Americans are curious about the little things. When he returns from overseas trips, people ask him for a closer view: “What were the people like? What do they do there? What do they eat?”
“When you mention they have a KFC there,” he says, “people are floored.”
People in other countries want the same things Americans do, says Savidge. “We want to raise our family safely, we want to put a roof over their heads, we want to make a decent living, we want to have a place where we can pursue our dream, and we don’t want someone threatening the lives of our family,” he says. “That’s what you find when you travel, and that’s what I think I would like to deliver to an audience.”
Savidge comes in from the field to anchor Worldfocus for public TV starting next month. Above, he reports for CNN from Afghanistan. (Photo courtesy of Martin Savidge.)
Some of his viewers will be watching from across the ocean. The entire broadcast will be streamed on the Worldfocus website, where print partners may also contribute content. The staff is also discussing how it could ask people abroad to submit video segments about daily life in their countries or comments about what they think of life in America. Worldfocus could also collect video of overseas events online. Much of the footage of recent struggles in Burma, Rosenwasser points out, came from cell phones.
Is there room in primetime?
Some stations want to squeeze both the BBC and Worldfocus newscasts into their lineups. That may be easier if KCET’s carriage policies turn out looser than first expected. Initially, the plan was to license the BBC program to just one station per market, for broadcast only between 5 and 7 p.m. But KCET now says it will consider making exceptions to the one-market, one-station rule. Worldfocus decided originally that it wouldn’t have carriage restrictions.
Joni Helton, director of programming at WHYY in Philadelphia, thinks viewers hunger for more international news, so WHYY will air both programs. In Washington, D.C., both WETA and secondary station WHUT plan to carry Worldfocus. In Boston, WGBH is airing the program on its secondary channel 44 at 5:30, right after BBC. In the Los Angeles area, KCET will air only BBC, but its rival KOCE will air Worldfocus. KOCE programmer Patricia Petric says the station is pitching the new program to the show’s prospective audience—current-events junkies who were BBC news viewers.
But Val VanDerSluis, program director at KTWU in Topeka, Kan., says she couldn’t find a slot for a new daily program without cutting other heavily viewed and underwritten programs such as Nightly Business Report and Charlie Rose. She hopes to squeeze Worldfocus onto one of the station’s digital channels.
Worldfocus itself may experience a similar crowding with a potential abundance of reports coming in from journalists on a variety of platforms. “We are going to have more material,” Savidge says, “than we can possibly fit into our window of news each night.”
Readers write
Shared mission: aiding Yanks’ ‘global smarts’
To the editors:
In response to “Ties with nets abroad will feed Worldfocus” (Current, Sept. 2), MHz Networks would like to congratulate this new initiative for public TV and shed a little light on how much more can be done to help fill the international information gap in the U.S.
For over 15 years MHz Networks has been the premier U.S. public media importer of international broadcasters stateside. Our approach has been simple: deliver top-tier international programming “direct from the source” to U.S. audiences through public TV. We’ve done this first in Washington, D.C., where we carry 8 distinct international channels via digital multicasting. These channels are English accessible and bring global news, entertainment, music and sports from over 20 countries to the doorstep of Capitol Hill.
More recently, we’ve found an eager national audience for our national channel called MHz Worldview—a 24/7 international news, cultural and dramatic programming channel for the “Globally Minded.” MHz Worldview aggregates many of our broadcast partners: AFL, ANI, Beijing TV, Deutsche Welle, EuroNews, FCI, France 24, MAC TV, NHK, NTA, Press Media International Group, Russia Today and SABC News International, to name a few.
This simple but very powerful approach has garnered the attention of like-minded public TV stations and other distributors throughout the country looking for programming to differentiate themselves. When tallied, MHz Worldview is currently available to over 16 million households via broadcast, cable, satellite and telco. And as the digital conversion looms closer and closer, MHz Worldview’s distribution continues to grow via stations looking to engage their existing audiences and attract new ones.
For many years, MHz Networks has operated with a strong sense of purpose. Our mission, to improve everyone’s global smarts, hasn’t always been popular or “in.” But as it has become more obvious that Americans need to have access to “mo better” global information, there is a sense that our time has come.
Placed in tandem with the newness and excitement of the digital transition, MHz and efforts like Worldfocus, will provide diversity not only in the literal term of the programming content, but also to the face of American public media.
Frederick Thomas
Chief Executive, MHz Networks, Falls Church, Va., mhznetworks.org
Web page posted Sept. 3, 2008, letter posted Sept. 9, 2008
Copyright 2008 by Current LLC
