Three months after WNET/WLIW launched Worldfocus and KCET took over U.S. distribution of BBC World News from WLIW, many public TV stations have decided not to choose between the Brits and the Yanks. Instead, they’re airing both of the half-hour world newscasts, expanding the airtime devoted to news and public affairs. MORE Pictured above: BBC World News anchor Mike Embley, left, and Worldfocus counterpart Martin Savidge.
Electric Company returns, Naomi still missing "HEY YOU GUUYYYS!” Yup, it’s back. A new Electric Company, based on that 1970s PBS hit, premieres Jan. 19. And, yes, Paul the Gorilla is there, and the silhouettes sounding out words and all the wisecracking humor. Bill Cosby may be gone, but Whoopi Goldberg (pictured) and other stars drop by. MORE
Now in its sixth year, after some 24,000 oral history interviews, StoryCorps is evolving new variations for both intake and output of its intimate personal stories. The nonprofit is developing a website with social-networking features and will let subjects decide whether to put their interviews online, founder Dave Isay says. StoryCorps is also working with a future civil rights museum in Atlanta to establish a permanent booth in its new building ... MORE
Sixty-four jobs go,half in L.A. outpost: An era of dramatic expansion of NPR’s operations and program portfolio came to a sobering halt Dec. 10 as the network cut its budget by $23 million, laid off 64 employees and canceled Day to Day and News & Notes, two California-based shows that sought to expand the breadth of news coverage and voices heard on NPR. MORE
Even APM, WGBH trim their payrolls: Dozens of employees at stations and networks around the country found themselves in the same boat as NPR’s dismissed staffers in recent weeks, and another pubradio network canceled a show to save costs. MORE
Vickie Santa, 56, was station manager of WMNF-FM in Tampa; Otto Schlaak, 89 was longtime manager of Milwaukee Public Television; James Armsey, 90, was a key grantmaker to public TV in its early days.
Earlier obituaries: Kermit Boston, 73, was a longtime lay leader in public television and community churches. Cherry Enoki, 33, was a video editor for Design Squad and other public TV programs.
There's no shortage of factors that could explain why public TV ratings have dropped 37 percent in the past decade, from 1.9 in 1998-99 to 1.2 in 2007-08. The biggest factor is a surge in audience fragmentation, says Chris Schiavone, an audience strategist who works with PBS, in a Current commentary.
The afternoon team at Chicago’s newest noncommercial radio station is on the air, talking crime and punishment. Most public radio shows would steer a conversation about the city police force along a course charted by producers well in advance and predictably typecast with expert pontificators. Not Vocalo.org. ...
Part 1: The sound
Part 2: Awaiting judgment, Vocalo gets practice
Pharma fees to Infinite Mind doctor call attention to conflict-of-interest issues: Bill Lichtenstein, executive producer of pubradio’s The Infinite Mind, got a phone call Nov. 20 from a New York Times reporter with troubling information: the program’s host, psychiatrist Fred Goodwin, had been paid more than $1 million by drug giant GlaxoSmithKline since 2000. MORE
How could we have doubted that TV, which has beaten so many things into Americans’ heads on behalf of advertisers, would fail to make it clear where to tune in broadcasts when they go all-digital Feb. 18? ¶ As if they march under the banner, “Leave no grandma behind,” commercial and public stations, city by city, have begun a series of “soft shutdowns” of analog transmitters that’s likely to grow in frequency and duration until all viewers are converted and accounted for. MORE
The performance artists of Cyclecide build bicycles out of junked parts — including a manual lawnmower — for their bicycle rodeo. Cris Benton takes aerial photos by rigging remote-controlled cameras to handmade kites. . . . All appear on Make, a new program from Twin Cities Public Television that showcases inventors and provides how-to instruction. The show, syndicated by American Public Television, airs starting in January. MORE
To make time for talks with concerned stations, NPR has put on hold a proposed trial of online giving on NPR.org. The experiment, previously slated to begin in the spring, is one of several fundraising initiatives proposed during station talks that began this summer. MORE
Local pubcasters are failing to attract significant audiences to their online offerings, according to data collected by the Integrated Media Association and presented at the Public Television Programmers Association meeting this month. ¶ IMA’s Public Media Metrics, which tracks daily activity on 120 station sites, found that 70 percent of visitors to local station websites visit once a month or less often. MORE
Well-connected think tanks take a turn with trust fund proposal. When the president-to-be got elected, in part, by mastering Internet social media, and now wants to spread the Web’s powers to citizens as part of his platform — how does public broadcasting fit in? MORE
Where are Barack Obama's policymakers and public broadcasting in sync? Where are there disconnects?
NPR’s next president made one giant leap in the news business two years ago when she moved from long-form documentary production into digital media for the New York Times Co., but it wasn’t the first or the last of Vivian Schiller’s career. ¶ In the early 1980s, Schiller was living in the Soviet Union, working as a translator and guide for professional groups touring the country, when she was hired as a “fixer” for the Turner Broadcasting System.... MORE
The former g.m. of KWMU-FM, dismissed by the licensee University of Missouri-St. Louis five months ago, has reached a settlement with the school. ¶ Patty Wente received $50,000 from the school, along with official recognition of her departure as a resignation, not a firing, and a letter of recommendation describing the station’s gains in audience and revenue under her 19-year management. MORE
Her assignment: recording traditional wisdom from the elder generation: When filmmaker and anthropologist Elizabeth Kapu’uwailani Lindsey was 7 years old, her Native Hawaiian elders predicted she would “keep the voices of the ancestors alive.” ¶ “I just naively thought every 7-year-old goes through that conversation,” she says.... MORE
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, 160-plus program projects for future seasons on public TV.
Users of Apple iPhones will soon be able to install an application (its menu screens shown below) that puts 150 public radio stations from around the country in their pockets. Smartphones from BlackBerry and other brands are also gaining similar “radio tuner” apps that pick up stations’ web streams over wireless Internet connections. MORE 
Report from Des Moines: Though TV has been creeping headlong toward digital broadcasts for two decades, and we’ve known for more than two years that next Feb. 17 [2009] will be the end of analog TV, it seems there are still a lot of details left to be dealt with. There will be DTV pictures that are way too little for the screen, for example, and sounds that blast much too loud, until engineers bring them under control. MORE
Los Angeles producer Phillip Rodriguez is two programs deep in what he hopes will become a provocative PBS series about the country’s growing Latino population. His new Latinos ’08, an examination of Latino voting and politics, airs Oct. 8 and follows last year’s Brown Is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream, about Latinos and the American media market. MORE
WETA draws fire from Latinos, this time over Latinos '08.
The four-year struggle to establish WRNI in Providence, R.I., as an independent public radio service for the state crossed a long-awaited threshold last month, when its aspiring licensee announced the station’s independence from Boston’s WBUR ... MORE
A last-minute addition to public radio’s pre-election coverage is Down to the Wire, a four-hour special airing the Sunday before Election Day that pairs onetime CNN anchor Aaron Brown with former NPR national correspondent Elizabeth Arnold. MORE
Commentary by Louis Barbash: Toward the end of a campaign that sometimes seems to have devolved into a farrago of gotchas, hair-trigger umbrage and pig lipstick, it’s impossible not to wonder whatever became of issue-driven campaigns. What happened to selecting candidates for their policy positions instead of their personalities? MORE
Stations airing torture doc that PBS delayed ’til JanuaryThe buzz over PBS’s decision to offer Sherry Jones’ documentary Torturing Democracy an Jan. 21 air date — well after the election and the day after the Bush administration leaves office — may get the doc near-national carriage this fall. MORE Pictured: Detainee under guard, Guantanamo Bay, November 2007. (Photo: Navy Petty Officer Michael Billings.)
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NTIA has reached its $1.34 billion limit for its digital converter box coupons, so new requests are being put on a waiting list, according to Meredith Baker, acting head of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration. There are currently more than 100,000 on the list, with thousands more each day. Those on the list probably won't get the $40 coupons until after the Feb. 17 transition.
posted at 12:46 PM EST
Democratic Virginia Rep. Rick Boucher is expected to introduce in the new Congress this week a DTV antenna subsidy bill. The legislation would subsidize rooftop anntennas for over-the-air viewers to receive digital reception after the transition in February. Boucher's district includes rural viewers without cable access.
posted at 11:43 AM EST
The National Association of Broadcasters and the Association for Multiple Service Television have asked the FCC to make more stations eligible to run an "analog nightlight" signal for 30 days past the Feb. 17 DTV transition. The nightlight enables stations to run public service programming about DTV, as well as emergency messages. The groups also suggests the commission allow underwriting for the nightlight similar to pubTV. The FCC must vote on implementation requirements for the nightlight service by Jan. 15.
posted at 10:02 AM EST
iPod usage and the ubiquity of podcasts present both opportunities and threats to public radio, according to this overview of findings from the first annual Public Radio Technology Survey. More than 30,000 respondents nationwide participated in the study, making it the largest-ever survey of public radio listeners. Public Radio Program Directors, one of three pubcasting organizations to collaborate with Jacobs Media on the study, also posted this list of key findings.
posted at 11:21 AM EST
Pubcasting pioneer Joan Ganz Cooney and her husband are the second largest donors of 2008 on The Chronicle of Philanthropy's annual list. Cooney and her financier husband pledged $1 billion to his Peter G. Peterson Foundation in New York, which focuses on issues including budget deficits, national and personal savings and the national debt.
posted at 2:38 PM EST
Radio Moab, a Utah pubradio station powered by solar panels, boasts a somewhat rare title: A station run by volunteers. KZMU operates on about $100,000 annually with a few part-timers, none of which receive benefits. The s.m. once arrived at the station in a bath towel to cope with glitches in its 500-watt signal; the p.d. calls herself a "communitarian"; the music director is barefoot year-round and boasts several toe rings. A story in The Salt Lake Tribune captures the station's distinctive charms.
posted at 2:11 PM EST
The Center for Social Media has made suggestions to President-elect Barack Obama's transition team for advancing the "public media 2.0" agenda. In addition to working to increase broadband capacity, the center, part of American University's School of Communication, advises that CPB be awarded stimulus funds "for digitally-savvy staffers to build social networks at local pubcasting stations." Actions should be taken immediately, the center adds.
posted at 1:54 PM EST
CUTFATT, the Coalition United to Terminate Financial Abuses of the Television Transition, is petitioning the FCC to change rules on digital TV patent licenses. The consumer advocacy group contends that manufacturers are overcharged for the technology, which raises the price on digital sets. CUTFATT wants the FCC to use a "patent-pool" system in which TV manufacturers would pay a flat rate of about $1 per set for the rights to all the necessary patents. Manufacturers in Europe and Asia are charged that fee. In the United States, the group says, manufacturers are charged $20 to $30 for the rights.
posted at 11:47 AM EST
Support from new partner CPB is enabling the Patchwork Nation project to continue in 2009, past its original focus of the election year. The project examines the issues of concern and politics in 11 types of communities across the nation: Monied ’Burbs, Minority Central, Evangelical Epicenters, Tractor Country, Campus and Careers, Immigration Nation, Industrial Metropolis, Boom Towns, Service Worker Centers, Emptying Nests, and Military Bastions. The project's other partners are the Knight Foundation and The Christian Science Monitor.
posted at 11:09 AM EST
IdahoPTV says it needs six new digital translators to maintain coverage during and after the digital transition in February, reports Boise Weekly. More than 400,000 people in Idaho watch over-the-air signals; during a pubTVshow on DTV in November, some 2,600 viewers called in seeking advice. For IdahoPTV, buying more repeaters would need to be done through a privately-funded capital campaign. Peter Morrill, g.m., says broadcasters need opportunities from the FCC to apply for digital translator channels.
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Pubradio marketing and programming consultants Deborah Blakeley and Israel Smith propose a 12-month audience growth goal for public radio stations and outline the steps needed to achieve it in "Thinking Audience," the latest article published by Station Resource Group's Grow the Audience project.
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"We are among the smaller stations in the public radio system," writes Tom DuVal, g.m. of WMRA and WEMC in Harrisonburg, Va., in an email appeal for year-end donations. "We cannot cut enough expenses without having a noticeable and undesirable impact on the quality of the service you receive." Underwriting revenues have dropped sharply and decreases in government support and private contributions have added to the stations' financial woes, DuVal tells the Daily News Record. Staff members have already taken 10 percent cuts in their salaries; lay-offs and cost-cutting program changes may come down next month.
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Outgoing FCC Chairman Kevin Martin concedes in a Q&A with Broadcasting & Cable that challenges remain as the February DTV transition nears. One potential problem: Running out of money for converter boxes. The president-elect's transition team favors a stronger call-center program to assist viewers; Martin is calling on state broadcasters to assist. As far as funding for them, "We have some money, but there are strict rules on the government process that I can’t comment on until the contracts are awarded."
posted at 11:09 AM EST
Public TV stations serving rural populations can get up to $750,000 each for digital transition aid from the Agriculture Department. Feb. 18 is the annual application deadline for the Rural Utilities Service’s Public Television Digital Transition Grant Program. Last year’s grants totaling $5 million were used for power upgrades, translator stations, master control and digital production equipment as well as DTV transmitters, according to USDA’s Federal Register notice in November (PDF). Application materials are online.
USDA also set a March 24 deadline for grants aiding distance-learning and telemedicine projects in rural areas.
Want to develop a community-engagement project prototype? The application deadline is Jan. 30 for the Bay Area Video Coalition’s 10-day creative incubator, with high-level technical mentors, for stations and independent producers to develop an interactive application for possible funding. The Producers Institute for New Media Technologies begins late in May. Prototypes may include such projects as mobile apps, games, maps, social networks and virtual worlds. More info at www.bavc.org/ producersinstitute.
J-Lab offers aid for participatory local news ventures. Proposals for New Voices start-up grants are due Feb. 12, according to J-Lab, the Institute for Interactive Journalism. Eligible projects would serve a defined community, foster exchange of sound information and innovate in use of new technologies. The competition, funded by the Knight Foundation, will award eight grants of up ot $25,000 each. Earlier this year J-Lab moved from the University of Maryland to American University in Washington, D.C. Web: www.J-NewVoices.org.
Jan. 15 is the deadline for this year's George Foster Peabody Awards competition. Programs distributed by broadcast, cable or the Web during calendar 2008 are eligible. Details are on the University of Georgia's website. Phone: 706-542-3787. E-mail: peabody
uga.edu.
WNET/WLIW will hold its fourth annual Celebration of Teaching & Learning March 6-7, 2009, in New York City. Speakers will include Google CEO Eric Schmidt, The Human Spark host Alan Alda, autistic scholar Temple Grandin and Kenneth Robinson, expert on creativity. Though most of the 8,000 educators who attended last year were from the metro area, the organizers welcome others. Lowest registration rates available through Nov. 10. The site, as last year, is the New York Hilton. Info at www.thirteen celebration.org. See Current's article on last year's celebration.
Investigative Reporters and Editors have set dates for their '09 conferences. Its Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference will be held March 19-22 in Indianapolis. Registration information is available online. IRE's main annual conference will be held June 11-14 in Baltimore Details to come: ire.org.
Jan. 31 is the next entry deadline for the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards, which honor reporting on social justice issues and the disadvantaged. Entries are judged by more than 50 journalists. Separate awards are given for professional and college and high school journalists. More info: Simone Greggs, 202-463-7575, ext. 234, or greggsrfkmemorial.org. PDF brochure.
Input goes to Warsaw next year. The international public TV screening will be held May 10-15, 2009, in the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, organized by Telewizja Polska (TVP). For more information about next year's event, see www.input-2009.org. Information for U.S. participants is available from Terry Pound and Amy Shumaker at South Carolina ETV. Also online: information looking back at the 2008 Input in Johannesburg.
Central portion of this home page updated Dec. 30, 2008, by Current, a service of Current LLC, Takoma Park, Md.
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