Current (https://current.org/2004/04/page/3/)
Louis Schwartz, an attorney active in public broadcasting for three decades and a partner in Schwartz, Woods & Miller, died March 31. His family is holding a memorial service Saturday, April 10, at the River Road Unitarian Church in Bethesda, Md.
WAMU-FM in Washington, D.C., has received the largest donation in its history, a $250,000 bequest from late journalist and communications professional Ellen Wadley Roper.
New BBC Chairman Michael Grade doesn’t have an easy choice of a man to fill the director general post, reports David Cox in London’s New Statesman. The job might go to a woman for the first time. (May require subscription.)
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that an anonymous “friend” of KCTS is lending the station $7 million to pay off its creditors, including PBS.
Listeners remain steamed about losing Bob Edwards, says NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin, and NPR has erred by not reporting more extensively on the departure of the Morning Edition host. Cokie Roberts tells the Philadelphia Inquirer that NPR goofed: “When you have 10,000 listeners saying it’s a mistake, it’s probably a mistake.” (Req. req. Via Romenesko.) One general manager says in the Houston Chronicle that NPR’s claim that stations pushed for the change could be called “a bald-faced lie.”
Pittsburgh’s WQED announced today that it will lease out its second channel to HSN’s America’s Store shopping network for three years, retaining the right to air some public TV programs and promos on the channel. Rumbles of a new deal were heard in March by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which said the station has tried several plans to “unload” the station and bolster its revenues since 1996. The station signed to sell it to a California broadcaster in 2001, but the deal fell through in 2002.
Execs at WOUB-FM in Athens, Ohio, changed the station’s format from news/classical to all-news in response to financial pressures, reports the Athens News. The station has suffered cuts in CPB funding due to its small audience and low membership income.
Jay Kernis, NPR’s senior v.p. of programming, answered questions about Bob Edwards from listeners today in an online chat. “The news demands of the broadcast require more than one host to keep the program timely every morning,” he said. Kernis has also written an FAQ: “Twenty-five years ago, Morning Edition was created with a single, in-studio host. That model is no longer sufficient to bring the weight of credible, in-depth reporting that we are demanding of ourselves.”
Monkey, a devoted public radio supporter, recently went on a tour of NPR’s headquarters (and sent this Current editor a postcard while in town).
A few months after listener complaints provoked “Car Talk” to switch its streaming audio to Windows Media Player, the program has returned its stream to Real Player. According to hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi, Real has promised to eliminate pop-up ads, make its free player easier to access, and otherwise address the issues that fueled listeners’ web rage.
In an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, NPR President Kevin Klose talks publicly about the reassignment of Bob Edwards—though he says little that other NPR execs haven’t already said: “Edwards’ strengths are actually anchoring from the studio. What we’re looking for is more diversity in our studio hosting and a kind of knowledge of what is happening in places that may be very far away from the studio.”
Michael Skoler, managing editor of news at Minnesota Public Radio, talks with Leonard Witt about the network’s efforts to involve the public in its reporting.
Jay Kernis, NPR’s senior v.p. of programming, will answer questions about Bob Edwards’ reassignment in a live chat on NPR’s website, Monday at 1 p.m. EDT.
Bill Marimow, incoming managing editor at NPR, tells the Buffalo News he wants to stress “excellent reporting, investigative and enterprise stories and in-depth work” at his new job.
Queen Elizabeth, among others, has signed off on the hiring of Michael Grade as BBC chairman, the London Telegraph reported today. Grade, a former BBC program exec, spent eight years at semi-public Channel 4, earning the nickname “Michael de-Grade” for his racy program choices. Both BBC’s chairman and its director general resigned in the Iraq reporting scandal. [Washington Post report.]
The organizer of the “Save Bob!” petition is now urging Bob’s backers to boycott NPR underwriters. He also wants them to ask lawmakers to cut NPR’s funding and limit underwriting credit language. Columnist Ellen Goodman calls Edwards’ removal a “wake-up call” to an aging America. Another columnist says NPR “is acting like any other big, powerful, dumb, clumsy, unfeeling, implacable, stonewalling, soulless bureaucracy.”
In letters to listeners posted on their websites, public radio stations are discussing the departure of Bob Edwards from Morning Edition. Jim King, director of WVXU in Cincinnati, is particularly blunt: “…[I]t is impossible for me to convey my own sense of outrage and betrayal by the network we supposedly ‘own’ as member stations.”
“We have listened to a lot of Bob Edwards’ Morning Edition lying down in our beds but we should not take this dismissal from Morning Edition lying down,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) in the Senate March 24. (His comments start three paragraphs down on this page.)
Romanesko of Poyntless Online reports that Bob Edwards will deliver the voice of NPR’s telephone system after leaving Morning Edition.