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Alex Chadwick is keeping an online diary for Slate about the launch of Day to Day, the new NPR newsmag that is being produced in partnership with … Slate. Revelation: Chadwick made an intern cry.
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A Yankee remake of the BBC’s Coupling, coming to NBC this fall, will feature rewrites of the British scripts, the New York Daily News reported. The original Britcom now airs in the States on public TV stations.
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Undercut fiscally by underwriting declines, San Francisco’s KQED trimmed its work week and salaries 10 percent and reduced its staff 11 percent (including nine layoffs), the Associated Press reports.
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In a New York Times op-ed, Yale political scientist David Greenberg weighs the meaning of a revelation in the new PBS Watergate documentary — Nixon aide Jeb Magruder’s remark that he heard Nixon okay the Watergate break-in. As reprinted in the Charlotte Observer.
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Conservative writer Rob Long writes in the L.A. Times why he donates to NPR though its programming drives him to shout back, spraying his dashboard with angry spittle.
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A Venice Beach bike repairman told coworkers a recent pledge to KCRW scored him “a kick-ass tote bag,” “reports” the humor mag The Onion. (Last item under “News in Brief.”)
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WNET’s Bill Baker decries the twin disasters of FCC deregulation and diminished support for pubcasters in an op-ed for the University of Minnesota’s student newspaper.
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The new Broadway show Avenue Q, produced by former employees of Sesame Street, spoofs the kids’ show by dragging it “into a curse-filled world of Gen-X angst, unemployment and promiscuous, drunken sex,” writes Jake Tapper in The New York Times.
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“We’ve changed our strategy from being an exporter of British programming into being a creator of global programs,” says Mark Young, president of BBC Worldwide Americas, in the L.A. Times.
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FCC Chairman Michael Powell is paying a hefty political price for ignoring populist concerns about big media, reports the Washington Post.
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The team behind Day to Day, NPR’s new midday newsmagazine, hope the show will be “looser” and “more spontaneous” than other network fare, reports The Los Angeles Times. Day to Day debuts Monday, July 28.
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Marketplace host David Brancaccio is leaving the show to co-host PBS’s Now with Bill Moyers. TV Barn has the PBS press release.
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Religious broadcasters are among the entities bidding in the sale of Orange County public TV station KOCE, reports the Los Angeles Times.
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New York Times columnist Frank Rich contemplates why liberals can’t get a foothold on talk show TV.
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A new genre of makeover programs flourishes in Britain, reports the New York Times. “Their proliferation has led to criticisms that British television, once known for its quality and innovation, has deteriorated into a showcase for relatively inexpensive programs that cater to viewers’ lazier and meaner instincts.”
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A new report discusses the future of WNCW-FM in Spindale, N.C., according to the Asheville Citizen-Times. In the report, administrators at Isothermal Community College, the station’s owner, tell their board that other broadcasters want to buy or manage WNCW. They also suggest changes to the station if the board decides not to sell. [Earlier coverage of WNCW in Current.]
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Joe Hagan reports in the New York Observer that PBS talk host Charlie Rose rushed back to Manhattan when deposed New York Times Editor Howell Raines offered an interview. In the newsmaking interview, Raines came off about as poorly as Jayson Blair in HIS post-scandal debut.
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Sept. 16 is the application deadline for rural public TV stations to apply for aid to put their digital signals on the air. The Agriculture Department is making $15 million available, according to a press release. APTS sought the aid as part of a strategy to find federal money beyond the CPB appropriation, as President John Lawson wrote in a commentary this spring.
Public Media Policybase
CPB Goals and Objectives for fiscal year 2004
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The CPB Board of Directors adopted these goals as part of the corporation’s fiscal year 2004 budget, July 22, 2003. I. LOCAL SERVICES AND CONTENT
Strengthen the value and viability of local stations as essential community institutions by improving their operational effectiveness and fiscal stability, and increasing their capacity to invest in and create sustainable services and content that will advance their local mission. To achieve this Goal, CPB will pursue the following objectives:
Measure the value of local service as perceived by the intended beneficiaries – Conduct research to understand how various media are used by the audiences that stations serve or hope to serve in the future, and how the pattern of use is changing as new platforms and media emerge. Create mechanisms that can be used to evaluate the success of local content and services, and inform the local/national conversation. Improve station practices and institutional effectiveness – Assess the performance of individual stations and station cohort groups within public broadcasting to identify opportunities to increase stations’ income earning capabilities and reduce the cost of current operations, through improved practices and new operating and service models.