Current (https://current.org/2003/01/)
NPR commentator Cokie Roberts will sit on President Bush’s Council on Service and Civic Participation. A rep for ABC News, Roberts’ employer, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer the appointment raises no conflict of interest. But Jeffrey Dvorkin, NPR’s ombudsman, told Current, “I’m not sure that it’s a good idea at this time.”
WXPN-FM in Philadelphia hired Roger LaMay, former manager of a Fox TV affiliate, as general manager. The Associated Press profiles the station, which will move next year to a $9 million space including studios, performaces stages and a “World Cafe” restaurant.
“In Washington, where you sit is almost always more important than what you say,” and PBS’s Jim Lehrer rubbed elbows with President Bush at a lunchtime media briefing yesterday, notes The Washington Post. (Second item.)
The FCC is seeking comment on proposed DTV rules for channel election, replication and maximization requirements as part of its second periodic review of the digital TV transition. The commission is also soliciting comments on whether there are steps it could take to help public TV stations during the conversion. Read press release. See full NPRM.
CNBC, home of ex-PBS star Louis Rukeyser, is adding celebrity editor Tina Brown to its roster of hosts. The cable net is shifting away from heavy stock market coverage and scheduling programs that are “branded toward people who are smart, curious and interested in a more sophisticated take on the issues,” said CNBC President Pamela Thomas-Graham in the New York Times.
One musical voice gaining ground on public radio sounds a little scruffier than the rest. Rather than a viola or sax, it bears a six-string axe and a heavier backbeat than your average chamber ensemble. Triple-A, an eclectic format that blends rock, folk, blues, world music and other genres, has already proven popular and lucrative for stations such as New York’s WFUV, Philadelphia’s WXPN and southern California’s KCRW. But smaller stations in fly-over country, inspired by the format’s major-market success, are also displacing jazz and classical music for newer musical genres that carry themselves like outsiders. As a result, listeners may be tuning in to the sultry lilt of young chanteuse Norah Jones or the twang of O Brother blues rather than Mozart and Gershwin.
How should NPR handle the sticky situation of reporting on itself? Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin takes on the question in his “Media Matters” column.
The Boston Phoenix profiles Christopher Lydon as he prepares to launch his new public radio show, The Whole Wide World. (Via MediaNews.)
“At first, he glanced at the tube only occasionally while doing homework. Then Mamie Till Mobley began describing the condition of her son’s body after it was pulled from the Tallahatchie River near Money, Miss.” A Washington Post columnist describes watching PBS’s “The Murder of Emmet Till” with his 13-year old son.
The South Bend Tribune previews Shades of Gray, an hourlong documentary on abortion airing this month on public radio stations. Lee Burdorf, p.d. at South Bend’s WVPE-FM, calls it “one of the best radio productions I’ve heard in my life.”
An angry WTTW staff confronted President Dan Schmidt about the company-owned Lexus he drives in the wake of last week’s layoffs of 16 colleagues, reports the Chicago Reader (second item).
“A clear sign that Armageddon is near: The ballroom, at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel, was easily twice as full for [WB reality show featuring washed-up celebs] “Surreal Life” as for “Becoming American” on PBS with Bill Moyers.” So writes the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jill Vejnoska of this year’s Television Critics Association tour.
Tampa’s WUSF-FM plans to convert to digital broadcasting within the next few weeks, making it one of the first public radio stations to go digital. In other digital radio news, NPR is teaming up with Harris and Kenwood to test the secondary audio channels the new technology allows.
Listeners may have booed NPR’s recent comedy miniseries on Morning Edition, but On the Media’s extended parody of pubradio drew an “overwhelmingly positive” reaction, at least according to hosts Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield. The Jan. 2 parody needles lefty commentors and toadying general managers with equal glee and intense audio detail. Gladstone and Garfield later read the viewer mail.
WLRN-FM is weighing a newsroom partnership with the Miami Herald, reports the Miami New Times.
The Houston Chronicle reports on a Texas appeals court hearing of the Frontline jury taping case.
Media reporter and critic Mark Jurkowitz slams public radio in today’s Boston Globe, accusing NPR President Kevin Klose and WBUR General Manager Jane Christo of dodging and patronizing supporters of Israel who say the network’s reporting is biased. [Earlier article from Current about WBUR and its pro-Israel critics.]
A new CPB-backed website for producers offers guidance on enhancing education in public TV programs. It includes case studies that assess educational outreach strategies for recent PBS series and specials.