Current (https://current.org/2004/01/page/2/)
The new PBS Kids series Boohbah may seem trippy to grown-ups, but the idea behind the show is to get preschoolers to jump off the couch and join in the calisthenics, reports AP. The Boston Globe’s Suzanne Ryan found the show didn’t hold much interest for her own three-year-old.
Brooke Gladstone, latest guest in Transom’s online forum, reveals how she and WNYC’s On the Media team rebuilt the show. Newsmags generally have had too much passion drained away, she says, and need to syncopate their too-soothing talk. OTM’s dirty secret: they “edit like crazy.”
Leaders of the Public Radio Partnership in Louisville, Ky., defend their decision to add more triple-A music to the schedule on one of their stations at the expense of jazz. A former board member charges PRP with eyeing the bottom line rather than serving audiences with diverse programming.
Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times spoofs “another blast of limp-wristed, angsty self-loathing” brought to him by NPR.
If you tell your 10th grade daughter that you’ve begun dating after the divorce, what does she want to know, besides the obvious “What’s on her iPod?” Pubradio producer Jay Allison recounted the grilling in the New York Times Magazine.
Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey, among Bill Gates and other tycoons, are among the 25 business leaders cited by public TV’s Nightly Business Report and the University of Pennsylvania, marking the program’s 25th anniversary, AP reported.
Joseph Tovares, producer of the Feb. 2 American Experience doc about the Alamo, focused on Texas pioneer Jose Antonio Navarro, though he struggled with Navarro’s early involvement with slavery, the San Antonio Express-News reported.
Backed by a $200,000 Knight Foundation grant, PBS will develop a proposal for a public affairs channel — working title, Public Square — that public TV stations could air on DTV multicast channels, the network announced Jan. 8 [2004]. The channel would offer “sustained electronic journalism” that contrasts with other networks where “sleaze repeatedly trumps substance,” said Hodding Carter, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, in a news release. “You might say what CNN’s potential seemed to be at the height of its potential is where we’re going,” Carter told Current. Repeats of PBS public affairs shows on the new channel could bulk up the programs’ audiences, cable-style, but Public Square would also need exclusive programming, said PBS co-chief program executive Coby Atlas.
Elizabeth Campbell, founder of WETA in Washington, D.C., and a pioneer of educational television in the U.S., died Jan. 9 [2004] in Arlington, Va., after suffering from respiratory problems.
A revised ethics guide for public radio asks journalists to “remain reportorial” instead of spouting opinions when they’re off the air, and it urges that they apply the same standards to call-in shows and websites as they do to newscasts.
Quick — what’s your reaction when someone asks to see your station’s public file? A smile or a wince? And why does it matter? Read on.In November the New York Times published a series on nonprofit accountability, once again parading before the public the missteps of the American Red Cross post-9/11 and the malfeasance of various United Way agency executives. You could imagine nonprofit leaders across the country in a collective cringe.
A revised ethics guide for public radio asks journalists to “remain reportorial” instead of spouting opinions when they’re off the air, and it urges that they apply the same standards to call-in shows and websites as they do to newscasts. CPB, which underwrote the project, will release the concise guide, Independence and Integrity II, on its website this week [PDF]. The authors are Alan G. Stavitsky, associate dean of the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication, who wrote the original pubradio ethics guide in 1995, and NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin. Though the pair consulted widely — discussing issues with pubradio and other journalists at the Poynter Institute last spring and then in workshops at three stations — Dvorkin says they didn’t end up with ambivalence about what they wrote. One reason is that the authors avoided hairsplitting in favor of brevity.
Bill Siemering has created Developing Radio Partners, a nonprofit supporting independent local radio stations in burgeoning democracies. Board members include Jay Allison, Julia Barton and Corey Flintoff.
An FCC official says that a completed agency report headed for Congress includes recommendations on whether LPFMs could be sited closer to full-power stations, reports Radio and Records. [Earlier coverage in Current.]
A Seattle Weekly article about suicide revisits the death of Cynthia Doyon, a KUOW-FM host who killed herself last year. (Via Romenesko.)
If a lefty talk radio network succeeds, “maybe we could finally get Congress to stop using taxpayer dollars to subsidize NPR,” says the Wall Street Journal. (Via Romenesko.)
Ira Glass makes Newcity Chicago’s list of “10 Chicagoans We Love to Hate,” with the author railing against “that nasally, whiney, apathetic drone affected by legions of Ira Glass wannabes clearing their throat, adjusting their horn-rims, with their microphone in the other hand.” (Via Romenesko.)
Bill Davis of KPCC in Los Angeles says an inaccurate article about Joan Kroc’s NPR gift hurt his station’s recent pledge drive returns, reports the Christian Science Monitor.
Minnesota Public Radio host Katherine Lanpher is being discussed as a “probable” co-host for comic Al Franken on a new liberal talk radio network, reports the Star Tribune. [Home page for Lanpher’s MPR show.]
A long Los Angeles Times profile of Frank Deford accuses the high-profile sportswriter and NPR commentator of broad hyperbole and a loose grasp of some facts. Many Romenesko readers, meanwhile, back up Deford.