Current (https://current.org/author/ben-mook/page/2/)
Betsy Gerdeman, former senior v.p. of development at KLRU-TV in Austin, Texas, has been named PBS’s senior v.p. of development services. She replaces John Wilson, a veteran PBS program executive who resigned Jan. 3. PBS President Paula Kerger announced the hiring Wednesday. “For much of the last 20 years, I have considered public television my home and its employees my family,” Gerdeman said in a statement.
Canadian organizations that raise financial support for U.S. pubcasters are fighting a shift in tax policy that could threaten the funds they deliver to stations across the border.
A federal appeals court last week upheld a ban on political and public-issue commercials on pubcasting stations, ruling that its removal would compromise their educational mission. The split 9–2 decision was handed down Dec. 2 by a panel of judges on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Writing for the majority, Judge M. Margaret McKeown said that the restrictions Congress imposed on advertising were intended to shield noncommercial broadcasters from the competitive pressures of commercial media, not to limit constitutionally protected free speech. “The hallmark of public broadcasting has been a longstanding restriction on paid advertising to minimize commercialization,” McKeown wrote.
The financial stranglehold on Pacifica is taking down Free Speech Radio News, a progressive news show that relied on the five-station network for the bulk of its operating costs. The show, airing weekdays on 100 stations, will close production Sept. 27 and lay off its staff, a core of part-timers and an international network of nearly 100 stringers. Owed nearly $200,000 in back payments by the California-based Pacifica Foundation, FSRN’s board of directors decided Sept. 13 to shutter the program, holding out hope that FSRN could be revived under a different production model.
Celeste Headlee, former co-host of The Takeaway, is launching Middle Ground, a pubradio show concentrating on the vast swath of the country not fronting an ocean.
A recent PBS Research analysis found that donors who contribute the most money to public TV rarely if ever watch its programming.
The vehicle donation process that plays out from the donor’s first phone call to the check’s arrival at the station is opaque and can involve a number of for-profit and nonprofit companies that take 20 percent or more of the sale price in fees.
Reductions in tax-based support for pubcasting have shortened the financial gap between public television and radio stations, accelerating public TV’s decade-long financial decline and demonstrating resilience within segments of the public radio system.
The contract paves the way for public TV station KCSM to go dark if a wireless company buys its broadcast spectrum.
A new kind of public media signal expansion will rock Kansas City, Mo., under a license transfer agreement announced April 19 by KCPT. The Missouri-based community licensee is purchasing KTBG-FM, a split-format NPR News and Triple A music station licensed to the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg. KCPT will pay $1.1 million in cash to the university and provide $550,000 worth of in-kind services, according to Kliff Kuehl, KCPT c.e.o.
“I’m a big fan of the station and love what they’ve been doing,” Kuehl said. “We want to make it a place to go for live, local music, the arts and culture of the nonprofit community in the Kansas City area.”
KCPT’s plans for its new station include an $600,000 engineering project to boost the KTBG’s signal and reach. The station’s transmitter will be relocated to a site 20 miles closer to Kansas City.
The April 13 broadcast of Weekend Edition Saturday was the first to originate from NPR’s new $201 million headquarters.
For the last few years, three well-funded buyout firms have been quietly picking up licenses to commercial and noncommercial TV stations in a gamble on big payouts from next year’s FCC incentive auction of television spectrum. Current’s research of FCC license applications filed since 2010 found at least 25 separate deals involving three firms: OTA Broadcasting, NRJ TV and LocusPoint Networks. The stations they’ve acquired to date are on the peripheries of major markets, primarily ranging from Boston to Washington, D.C., in the eastern U.S. and from Seattle down to Los Angeles along the West Coast. The three firms are all owned or funded by private equity firms that command billions in assets. Due to vagaries in the FCC’s reporting requirements, it’s likely that the commission’s records provide an incomplete picture of the companies’ purchases.
Maryland’s Salisbury University is backing away from a consultant’s plan to farm out operations of its two Delmarva Public Radio stations. A proposal unveiled Feb. 14 would provide funding to WSDL in Ocean City, Md., and WSCL in Salisbury for at least three years. The proposal calls for the Salisbury University Foundation, Delmarva Public Radio’s license holder, to transfer the license to the school, said Salisbury University President Janet Dudley-Eshbach in a statement. Salisbury would maintain current operations for three years, but would require that WSCL and WSDL hew even closer to the school’s agenda. At the end of three years, the university would reassess the situation.
From roughnecks to singing cowboys and itinerant knife dealers, North Dakota’s oil boom has lured thousands to remote areas of the state to find their fortunes, and in the process became a fertile source of stories for an immersive yearlong multimedia reporting project.
Pubcasters and their advocates in the state capital credit the change of heart to help from sympathetic lawmakers, the governor’s willingness to change his mind and agreement by pubcasters to strengthen their case for support.
Nearly a decade after HD Radio went live on its first station, iBiquity Digital Corp., the company that developed and sold the technology to terrestrial broadcasters and electronics manufacturers, has yet to convince consumers that they must have HD Radio in their cars and homes.
An analysis recommends that the Salisbury University Foundation negotiate with another pubcaster to operate its two Delmarva Public Radio outlets as music stations.
A consultant’s report released Thursday afternoon recommends that the Salisbury University Foundation negotiate a deal with another public broadcaster to operate both of its Delmarva Public Radio stations as music stations, dropping the NPR News format now airing on WSDL 90.7 FM in Ocean City, Md. The foundation, licensee of WSDL and WSCL 89.5FM in Salisbury, Md., has been covering financial losses at the stations for three of the last four fiscal years — most notably covering a loss of more than $150,000 in 2008 — and faces increased capital expenses in relocating the stations’ studios from a university building that’s set to be demolished. The Delmarva stations closed fiscal 2010 in the black with about $25,000 in net income, but the overall financial picture and increased competition from other NPR stations in the market prompted the foundation to reconsider how the station is managed and financed. “It was a good opportunity for us to take a look at the stations and what’s happened over the last 25 years and what will happen in the future,” said Jason E. Curtin, interim assistant director of the Salisbury University Foundation. “We’re trying to find the best way to serve the area and be good stewards of the stations that we hold.” The foundation retained Public Radio Capital, the Colorado-based consultancy specializing in public radio signal expansion and preservation, to analyze the stations’ performance and recommend options for operating them in the future. According to Arbitron’s fall 2012 survey, Salisbury/Ocean City is the 140th largest market in the U.S. with a 12-plus listening population of 329,700.