Quick Takes
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Chuck Niles, a renowned Los Angeles jazz deejay who called KKJZ-FM home since 1990, died yesterday at the age of 76, reports the Long Beach Press Telegram.
Quick Takes
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Ruth Seymour, KCRW g.m., admitted fault today and invited Sandra Tsing Loh to return to the air, but Loh declined.
Quick Takes
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New laws raising indecency fines are worrying some smaller broadcasters, including noncoms, reports The Oregonian.
Quick Takes
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The Washington Post profiles Joan Kroc, the unorthodox philanthropist who left NPR $200 million in her estate last year.
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Also coinciding with the recent ruckus over broadcast indecency, KPCC-FM in Los Angeles cancelled The Play’s the Thing, a radio theater series, last month after naughty words were said on the show, reports the LA Weekly.
Quick Takes
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The Los Angeles Times reports that religious broadcaster Daystar submitted a new bid to purchase Orange County public TV station KOCE. Meanwhile, a pending deal to sell the station to the KOCE Foundation may be unravelling.
Quick Takes
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Don Lockett, formerly NPR’s chief technology officer, has written The Road to Digital Radio, a “management level overview” of the technology.
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Public Radio Program Directors rescheduled its conference this fall to avoid a conflict between its old dates and the observance of Yom Kippur. PRPD is now set for Sept. 29 through Oct. 2 in San Antonio. See Current’s Calendar for more events.
Quick Takes
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Sandra Tsing Loh briefly discussed her recent firing from KCRW on last night’s On Point, a show produced at Boston’s WBUR-FM. (RealAudio; Loh starts at 35:13.)
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Anxieties over anti-breast fever in Washington prompted American Experience to re-edit a love scene in its upcoming documentary about Emma Goldman, according to the Washington Post.
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The American Prospect previews the forthcoming Air America Radio, the talk radio network aimed at liberals that has so far hired away four denizens of public radio, including Katherine Lanpher.
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Minnesota Public Radio is seeking applications for its Classical Music Initiative, an NEA-backed project to incubate new ways of presenting classical music.
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The New York Observer discusses the return of Kurt Andersen–host of public radio’s Studio 360–to the pages of New York magazine, which he formerly edited.
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PBS’s American Experience plans a three-hour film on the history of Las Vegas, according to the Miami Herald.
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PBS is demanding that KCTS-TV pay $3.2 million in back dues, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. President Bill Mohler is appealing to viewers for help.
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Listen to or read Sandra Tsing Loh’s Marketplace commentary about getting fired from KCRW-FM in Santa Monica, Calif.
System/Policy
Public TV’s vision of itself: a lens for understanding the world
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After some fiddling with language, station leaders Feb. 23 [2004] endorsed a new mission statement describing public TV as a “unifying force in American culture.” Several participants celebrated the agreement at the PBS Annual Members Meeting as a significant demonstration of unity among the network’s notoriously divided members. “The beauty of this is that all the stations could sign on to something,” commented Ellis Bromberg, g.m. of WMVS/WMVT in Milwaukee. During the debate, station leaders agreed that the proposed “Vision” paragraph at the end of the mission statement had grown too wordy and needed to be simplified.
Quick Takes
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L.A. Observed reports that Sandra Tsing Loh will comment on her firing from KCRW-FM in Los Angeles on today’s Marketplace. In the Los Angeles Times, Loh said public radio is becoming “a seeping beigeness, a grim, endless, drumbeat of ‘responsibility’ that all the groovy Argentine trance-hop music in the world can’t make up for.”
Quick Takes
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The Guardian features a lengthy profile of Garrison Keillor. “He must live like a 19th-century vicar having to write his sermon every week,” says Jane Smiley of Keillor. “In some ways that’s why it is so reassuring.”