Programs/Content
Revamped Detroit news show looks to community to set agenda
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With “One Detroit,” Detroit Public Television is taking longtime hosts out of the studio and into the middle of local conversations.
Programs/Content
PBS initiative will encourage intergenerational reading, determine America’s ‘Best-Loved’ book
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The series will feature authors, celebrities, athletes and other public figures sharing their favorite fiction books and interest in literacy.
Programs/Content
Novice filmmaker rejects ‘ruin porn’ to showcase Detroit’s vibrant spirit
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“Let’s Have Some Church Detroit Style” profiles the Hallelujah Singers, an energetic all-star gospel choir.
Programs/Content
Study reveals surprising diversity among public TV viewership
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Data examined by TRAC Media Services “refute mischaracterizations of public TV’s audience as homogeneously white retired folk.”
Programs/Content
Detroit Public TV expands niche programming with National Book Festival coverage
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Book View Now will provide live coverage of the event in Washington, D.C., this weekend.
System/Policy
Detroit journalism project gets additional boost from Knight Foundation
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The Detroit Journalism Cooperative has “much more work to do,” says its convener.
Detroit Public Television
PBS to share coverage of major book fair with online viewers
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The coverage from the Miami Book Fair International will stream live on PBS.org, member station websites and WorldChannel.org.
People
Paula Sulinski, DPTV communications manager, dies at 59
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Sulinski worked for the station’s public-affairs division from 1976 to 1993.
Quick Takes
Thursday roundup: Commercial classical wanes; Jane Seymour to host Detroit PTV show
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Plus: radio from a tugboat, and a Reading Rainbow parody.
Quick Takes
Wednesday roundup: Pubradio breaks True Detective news; DPTV covers policy conference
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And we’re still waiting on spectrum auction specifics.
Programs/Content
Detroit Public Television outsources programming to Public Television Programming Service
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Starting Tuesday, Detroit Public Television is outsourcing programming functions to the Tampa, Fla.–based Public Television Programming Service as part of a corporate restructuring announced last week. Detroit Public Television CEO Rich Homberg announced the changes in a memo to employees March 28. The decision to outsource programming brought with it elimination of the positions of Dan Gaitens, longtime director of programming, and Joann Havel, assistant director of programming, effective Friday. In addition to the programming change, Homberg announced the creation of a new communications department. The department will be headed by a newly hired manager scheduled to start April 21.
Quick Takes
Tuesday roundup: a pubradio brew; WGBH show goes national
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• Minnesota Public Radio’s music station The Current will get its brand on a local craft beer this summer. The station is partnering with Minnesota-based brewery Schell’s on a limited-edition, Current-branded run of the brewmaker’s seasonal Zommerfest offering. Sixteen-ounce tallboys will be sold across the state, and all proceeds will support the station. • Public Radio International will make WGBH-FM’s popular weekly show Innovation Hub available for pubradio broadcast starting May 1. The show also airs at 10 p.m. Eastern time Saturdays on XMPR, SiriusXM’s channel of public radio programs.
• Detroit Public Television will provide a live video stream of the Beyond the Connected Vehicle Conference, a look at the future of transportation, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Eastern time Friday.
Detroit Public Television
Focus on collective impact highlights pubTV’s role as community convener
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Stations work with local partners to identify challenges faced by their communities and to coordinate outreach. Our first in a series about public service in pubTV.
Programs/Content
Detroit PTV looks to bring cultural groups together through its new arts series
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Detroit Public Television is using its new arts series, Detroit Performs, to showcase the Motor City’s talents on a wider scale. Local reaction to the show, now 10 weeks into broadcast, “has been tremendous,” DTV President Rich Homberg said in a note to his Major Market Group (MMG) pubTV coalition colleagues. “Every day we are hearing from new producers, emerging organizations and raving fans.”
The series grew out of the MMG Arts content initiative, curated by WNET in New York City, and DTV’s five-year-old “category strategy,” which set a course for engagement and partnership around specific topics. Similar efforts include DTV’s Great Lakes Now, which evolved from a reporting focus into a conservation conference attracting more than 300,000 participants. “We wanted to find a way for Detroit Performs to create a voice beyond our city,” Homberg said.
People
Robert Larson, “urban missionary” at Detroit Public TV, dies at 83
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Robert Larson, a mission-driven public broadcaster who helped pioneer techniques for creating television programs and outreach for underserved communities, died Sept. 13 in Kissimmee, Fla., at the age of 83.
Arizona PBS
PubTV stations move to pitch sustainer gifts during pledge
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“Sustainers,” as this increasingly commonplace breed of member is called, renew at higher rates than those responding to traditional pledge pitches.
Development
Foundations favor grantees with digital, local news chops
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By giving two seminal news-related grants last year, the Pittsburgh Foundation broke from what chief executive Grant Oliphant described as the foundation’s history of “generic support” for public media. Answering the call from the Knight Foundation for matching grants to address gaps in local news coverage …
Programs/Content
Opening doors to region’s inner policy circles
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The Great Lakes, formed by melting glaciers 10,000 years ago, were ready last week for their close-up. Detroit Public Television, seizing an opportunity that comes about as often as a planetary alignment, televised 25 hours of speeches, conferences, workshops and meetings about the future of the massive lakes that nearly surround Michigan. Great Lakes Now, a three-day event organized by a regional group and two government agencies, was documented by DPTV’s live streaming and on-demand video of speakers, nightly half-hour wrap-up broadcasts and satellite feeds that extended the speakers’ reach south to Houston, east to New York and west to Phoenix. DPTV clearly demonstrated how a midsized public television operation could give people unprecedented access to those who make policy on local and regional issues. “Look at the role we can play in our community and communities throughout the country,” said Rich Homberg, DPTV president.