Current (https://current.org/tag/pbs/page/19/)
Occidental College professor Peter Dreier takes issue with PBS coverage of a 2010 education documentary, while advocating for a new doc being offered for pubTV distribution.
• PBS has promoted two of its programming execs. Michael Kelley, formerly v.p. of strategy and business affairs, ascends to s.v.p., programming and business affairs. In addition, Bill Gardner, formerly director of general audience programming, is now v.p. of programming and development, overseeing science, history, natural history, cultural and current events programming. Both joined PBS in 2012. “Mike’s strong business skills and strategic leadership coupled with Bill’s acute editorial judgment and significant development chops have been instrumental to the success of PBS, our producers and member stations nationwide,” Beth Hoppe, PBS chief programming executive, said in a statement.
• NPR introduced voice recognition–enabled ads this week on its smartphone app in an attempt to connect its nearly one million mobile listeners with sponsors, Adweek reports. The 15-second audio spots ask listeners to say “Download now” or “Hear more” after hearing an ad that sparks their interest. • The Knight Foundation has awarded a joint grant to the nonprofit newsrooms Voice of San Diego and MinnPost to help them develop plans to grow membership. The two-year, $1.2 million grant will be divided evenly between the news operations, who will collaborate on using membership data more effectively. Nieman runs down how the sites will use the grant.
PBS’s fiscal 2015 draft budget contains a recommendation for a 2.5 percent increase in dues paid by member stations. The PBS Board, meeting Friday morning at headquarters in Arlington, Va., voted to send the proposed budget to member stations for comment. Stations did not see an increase in membership assessments this year due to an anticipated FY13 windfall of $22 million generated in part by higher income from PBS Distribution deals for Masterpiece megahit Downton Abbey. By the end of FY13, PBS officially closed its books with an extra $24.5 million. PBS management is proposing the 2.5 percent dues increase for FY15, which would generate about $4.6 million.
When Carl Sagan’s widow Ann Druyan couldn’t reach an agreement with PBS over her remake of the iconic pubTV series, Fox rolled out the celestial welcome mat.
It’s a question that parents and teachers struggle to answer at home and in the classroom: how do we make math fun for kids? The creative minds at PBS Kids have spent the last few years devising a solution to that problem. With Ready to Learn funding provided through the Department of Education in 2010, PBS staff set their sights on creating two math-focused children’s shows. Their answer for the 3- to 5-year-old crowd was PEG + CAT, an animated series that debuted last fall. Produced by Fred Rogers Company, PEG + CAT teaches measurement, shapes and patterns, skills that help the characters solve their real-life problems.
Odd Squad, a live-action math series geared toward children ages 5 to 8, is the latest addition to PBS’s slate of math-based kids’ programming.
Two NPR alums are gunning for the afternoon listening sweet spot.
Maybe honey badgers do care?
WNET will return a $3.5 million grant it received for a series of reports on public pensions after facing questions about the funder’s involvement with the issue. In a joint statement, PBS and WNET announced Friday that the grant to support the Pension Peril series would go back to the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, whose co-founder John Arnold has supported efforts to reduce public pensions. “While PBS stands by WNET’s reporting in this series, in order to eliminate any perception on the part of the public, our viewers, and donors that the Foundation’s interests influenced the editorial integrity of the reporting for this program, WNET has decided to forego the Arnold Foundation support and will return the gift,” the statement said. The statement continued:
“We made a mistake, pure and simple,” said Stephen Segaller, Vice President of Programming at WNET. “The PBS NewsHour Weekend is a new production and while we thought we were following the guidelines and the correct vetting processes, we were incorrect.
PBS filmmaker Ken Burns put a new spin on U.S. history today, debuting his first app and a new website dedicated to his films.
Ted Krichels, CPB’s senior v.p. for system development and media strategy, recently talked to Current about the 50-page “Public Media Models of the Future” report he co-authored this fall with PBS Director of Strategy Stephen Holmes. Edited, rearranged and condensed excerpts from that conversation follow. Current: How did you start the process? Did you survey the entire system, or was it more word of mouth? Ted Krichels: Stephen and I initially were collecting stations, ones you would have heard about.
As some local pubcasters have started to forge paths toward models of public service developed through their own strategic planning or in collaboration with other stations, PBS has sought to bring more attention to their work, and progress, to date. Last year, it tapped Ted Krichels, former g.m. of Penn State Public Broadcasting, to lead its Sustainable Models Project, identifying models that other stations can replicate. Krichels completed that study last fall and recently joined CPB as senior v.p. for system development and media strategy. PBS released the 50-page “Public Media Models of the Future” report, written by Krichels and Stephen Holmes, PBS director of strategy, in November. Based on six months of research with public television station executives nationwide, the report identified eight service models: four within a broad category it called “community impact” and four that were focused on education.
The PBS Board unanimously voted today to amend national program underwriting standards to require a higher level of review for food and beverage companies seeking to sponsor kids’ shows. Under the revision, President Paula Kerger told the board, “a potential sponsor for a PBS Kids series will be acceptable only if its product could be considered to make a meaningful contribution to a healthful diet.”
The amendment will have “only a minimal impact on our funding mix,” Kerger said. Less than 1 percent of children’s content sponsors in fiscal 2013 will be affected, she noted. The recommendation came after months of review of current underwriting guidelines for children’s shows by PBS staff and the board’s corporate services advisory committee. Major producing station WGBH, Sesame Workshop and nutrition experts also participated.
PBS is in “the final stages” of hiring a new executive to improve public TV fundraising efforts at both the local and national levels, President Paula Kerger announced during the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif., Monday.
The Downton Abbey blitz is on, from festive station events to huge digital ads behind the famous New Year’s Eve countdown ball in Times Square.
As the Public Media Platform prepares for its phased rollout across the system in January, Executive Director Kristen Calhoun is seeking opportunities and partners willing to experiment with its still-unknown potential.
Pipeline 2014, Current’s latest preview of programs planned for future seasons on public TV, details more than 100 shows offered for broadcast by various distributors through fall 2016 and beyond.
Apple has signed PBS to create an app for its Apple TV set-top box service, AllThingsD reported Nov. 19. The app will allow Apple TV users who sign in through Facebook, Google+ or PBS’s own registration system to access the pubTV network’s digital library of on-demand programs.
Previous seasons of Downton Abbey will be largely unavailable due to Amazon’s acquiring of exclusive on-demand rights to the program in June. But Apple TV users will be able to watch recent episodes of the show within a short window of their airing on PBS, including station reairings of the second and third seasons between now and December, a PBS spokesperson told AllThingsD. The Apple app is PBS’s latest expansion into set-top content streaming.
PBS has renewed its commitment to Tavis Smiley for another two years, keeping the talk show on public TV through 2015. “The highlight for me is surviving” as a late-night talk show, Smiley told the Associated Press. The program, which tapes in Los Angeles, will face less competition in booking guests once NBC’s The Tonight Show moves to New York in February, he noted.
A grass-roots organization that protested Ken Burns’s exclusion of World War II Latino soldiers’ experiences from his 2007 documentary The War is speaking out in the wake of PBS NewsHour Chief National Correspondent Ray Suarez’s resignation from the program. Defend the Honor, headed by Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, sent an Oct. 31 email to its 5,000-member database saying it is “distressed that PBS has treated veteran journalist Ray Suarez so disrespectfully.” Suarez left the show Oct. 25 after nearly 15 years and subsequently told Fox News Latino in an Oct. 28 interview that he felt his contributions to the program had been minimized during his tenure.