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Embedding “has been a public relations bonanza for the military,” says NPR host Bob Edwards, who shared other criticisms of the media with an audience in Kentucky, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
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“Where should journalists draw a line separating news from opinion? Throughout much of Fox, the question never arises.” Howard Rosenberg reviews the Fox News Channel’s war coverage in the LA Times.
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The contract for Mark Keefe, program manager of WNCW-FM in Spindale, N.C., will not be renewed after expiring June 30, according to the Asheville Citizen-Times. But Keefe told Triplearadio.com that “the report was premature.” WNCW recently faced FCC scrutiny over fundraising practices. [An earlier version of this post misrepresented the Citizen-Times article.]
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The FCC released a Report and Order today explaining how it will handle situations in which commercial and non-commercial broadcasters compete for non-reserved spectrum. Report and Order: PDF, Word, text. Concurring statement by Commissioner Michael Copps: PDF, Word, text. News release: PDF, Word, text.
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The Cleveland Plain Dealer profiles ideastream, the merger of local public stations WVIZ-TV and WCPN-FM.
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Educational TV can’t exist without marketing tie-ins, but some toys teach better than others, reports the Christian Science Monitor.
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The American Journalism Review profiles Jefferson Public Radio, an extensive regional network based in Ashland, Ore. “It’s the tie that binds the region together,” says a former news director.
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New media staffers at Boston’s WBUR-FM have created a weblog devoted to the war against Iraq.
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Chicago police believe that Fe Corizon Cruz-Fabunan, the retired WTTW finance manager accused of embezzling $260,000 from the station, is on the lam, reports Chicago Business.
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John Willis, WGBH’s new national production chief, is returning to the U.K. to direct BBC’s Factual and Learning programs, reports the Guardian. In a February speech to documentarians, he said an “infection of entertainment” dilutes news programs in the U.S.
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Sesame Street launches its 34th season on PBS today. The long-running series is as “creative and vibrant as ever,” writes Lynne Heffley in an LA Times review. Heffley also reviews
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The New York Times reports on how war coverage has altered the TV habits of viewers in Millville, N.J.
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The Chicago Sun-Times’ Lloyd Sachs praises NPR’s Anne Garrels, one of the few American journalists still in Baghdad. “There may be no one on the air who better conveys the difficult mood swings that this kind of assignment can produce, or its utter lack of glamor,” he writes. (Via Romenesko.)
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“The spirit of documentary filmmaking is thriving, but it is against the odds that you will make money doing it,” comments filmmaker Thom Powers, in an LA Times feature about the financial struggles of documentarians. Powers’ film “Guns and Mothers,” about women who lost sons to gun violence, airs on PBS’s Independent Lens in May.
Programs/Content
Friday nights, PBS has balance on its mind
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PBS has initiated fast-track development of a new 10 p.m. public affairs
series to supplement its two-hour Friday night block. The half-hour show — to
be chosen from proposals submitted last week — will debut by July. Coby Atlas, the network’s co-chief program executive, already has commissioned
a pilot adapting a pubradio series — KCRW-FM’s weekly Left, Right
and Center. She expects to ask for minipilots of up to four proposals
before green-lighting the winning concept next month. CPB, which is jointly
funding the new series, is also “in the mix of decision-making,” she
said.
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Public television and radio producers won 11 of this year’s George Foster Peabody Awards.
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In tonight’s Frontline documentary, “Blair’s War,” the British Prime Minister “comes across as a valiant lead guitarist who struggles to keep two intransigent divas from destroying a long and highly successful collaboration,” writes New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley.