Quick Takes
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The NewsHour’s coverage of the Democratic National Convention is posting big audience gains for PBS, reports the New York Times.
Quick Takes
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Bob Edwards is leaving NPR to host a morning show on XM Radio, reports NPR. The network’s initial reports that the show would involve Public Radio International were erroneous.
Quick Takes
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“Trying to track the unproven innuendoes and conspiracies in a Michael Moore film or book is as futile as trying to count the flatulence jokes in one by Adam Sandler,” says NPR’s Scott Simon in The Wall Street Journal.
Programs/Content
PBS again taps viewer curiosity about old things
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A spin-off of Antiques Roadshow, PBS’s most popular series, will visit memorable guests from past installments and guide viewers through the ins and outs of the antiques market. Antiques Roadshow FYI debuts early in 2005 as a half-hour weekly magazine program. PBS will pair it with another new half-hour series to be announced next month. PBS announced the new Roadshow series July 8 [2004] during the Television Critics Association summer press tour. The network also announced a three-part history series, Guns, Germs and Steel, to be made with Lion Television and National Geographic Television.
Public Media Policybase
National Educational Telecommunications Association Bylaws
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NETA, a successor of Southern Educational Communications Association, provides a range of services to public TV professionals and stations, including program distribution, specialized councils for the various disciplines in stations, and an annual conference. It is based in Columbia, S.C.
ARTICLE I: PURPOSE
The purpose of the Corporation is exclusively educational: to develop, exchange, and share on a nonprofit basis the educational, instructional, and cultural resources of and with participating members of the Corporation so as to assist the development of instructional, educational, and cultural activities of educational television and radio stations: to produce, distribute, or otherwise exploit, or any combination thereof, for broadcast by radio, television, or otherwise, or any combination thereof, material which is instructional to the public on subjects useful to the individual and beneficial to the community; to further the utilization of other forms of electronic communications of educational material; to aid in developing and implementing interstate exchange of instructional, educational, or cultural material designed or intended for broadcast by radio, television, or otherwise, or any combination thereof; and to aid in developing and implementing interstate exchange of materials and information relating to the educational use of electronic communications. In the event of dissolution of the Corporation, the residual assets thereof will be conveyed or transferred to one or more organizations which are exempt from federal income taxation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, as amended, or any successor section thereto; or to the Federal Government or to a state or local government, for public purposes exclusively. ARTICLE II: Membership
Section 1. The Corporation may accept for membership any eligible organization, agency, or individual, if such membership is consistent with the basic purposes of the Corporation.
Quick Takes
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WHUT in Washington, D.C., just launched its first pledge drive in eight years. “Our attitude is that every dollar we raise through this drive is a dollar more than we had last year,” says Jennifer Lawson, general manager.
Quick Takes
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“By default, documentary filmmakers are put in a dissident position because we are being critical of what’s happening in the world,” says film director Mark Achbar in the Washington Post.
Quick Takes
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Lehrer tells Brokaw, Jennings and Rather: “You guys are a hell of a lot more important than your bosses are willing to admit.” During a seminar yesterday on political reporting, Lehrer scolded the big networks for sparse primetime coverage of the party conventions. PBS’s senior newsman elaborates on Poynter Online: “Journalism organizations that say the conventions are not important are essentially saying the election of a president is not important.”
System/Policy
Cost of democratic safeguards is steep, Pacifica discovers
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Pacifica’s transition to a listener-elected board of directors carried an unexpectedly high price tag, and network executives are exploring cheaper alternatives. Last year the radio network enshrined its democratic principles in bylaws that empowered its staff and members of stations to elect Local Station Boards. Those boards in turn vote for the network’s national board. The bylaws were a crowning achievement to activists who spent years wresting Pacifica from an unpopular board, which had begun appointing its own members and installed a top-down governance style. But the additional governance costs have shocked some Pacifica leaders, who ask whether the cash-strapped network can sustain them.
Quick Takes
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Microsoft is considering selling Slate, its online magazine, according to the Washington Post and New York Times. NPR partners with Slate to produce Day to Day, its midday newsmag.
Quick Takes
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The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved today a bill that would allow for more low-power FM stations.
Quick Takes
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Bob Edwards declined to tell the (White River Junction, Vt.) Valley News whether he’ll return to NPR after his book tour ends in two weeks. (Via Romenesko.)
Quick Takes
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After a $12,000 travel spree charged to the credit cards of public TV donors in North Carolina, a former temp for UNC-TV was arrested last weekend on charges of grand larceny and identity theft.
Quick Takes
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Contrary to reports in August’s Vanity Fair, Bob Edwards is not shrinking. A miscommunication led the glossy monthly to list the 6’4 Edwards as 5’7. The Washington Post’s Richard Leiby reports that NPR alerted him to the gaffe in an e-mail with the subject “Bob Edwards is not a midget.”
Quick Takes
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The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation meets Thursday to consider Sen. John McCain’s low-power FM bill.
Quick Takes
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In a content analysis of WTTW’s flagship series Chicago Tonight, the activist group Chicago Media Action determined that more than half of the stories broadcast over three months dealt with sports and entertainment and that guests and commentators were predominantly white males.
Quick Takes
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Thomas Madigan, who produced an Emmy-winning PBS documentary, died at the age of 85, reports the New York Times. Madigan also oversaw corporate underwriting at several big public TV stations.
Quick Takes
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Democracy Now host Amy Goodman in Clamor Magazine, addressing the media’s reporting on the Iraq War: “And now that we know they got it wrong — and they know it — they’re still bringing on the same people, asking how did we get it wrong? What about letting someone who didn’t get it wrong speak?”
Quick Takes
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The Senate Commerce Committee will vote Tuesday on Sen. John McCain’s low-power FM bill, reports Radio World. McCain’s bill would remove most third-adjacent protections for full-power stations, allowing more LPFM stations to get on the air.