Current (https://current.org/2004/11/page/3/)
This winter, director Robert Altman will begin shooting a film version of A Prairie Home Companion, reports the St. Paul Pioneer Press. (Reg. req.) More in the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post (fourth item), the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (also, an interview with Altman), and the Associated Press.
“I may care who gets elected, but my show does not.” The LA Times interviews David Brancaccio about succeeding Bill Moyers as host of Now. (Via Romenesko.)
The audience of Pacifica’s WBAI-FM in New York rose 40 percent from spring to summer, reports the New York Daily News.
Sesame Workshop President Gary Knell describes plans to create a PBS-branded
digital cable service for preschoolers as a “renewed marriage vow”
for PBS and the famed producer of Sesame Street, partners over three
decades in teaching young kids about letters and numbers and getting along. It’s a four-way marriage, however, and the two for-profit partners
are cable giant Comcast and Hit Entertainment, the London-based owner of Barney,
Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank Engine and other kid brands. The deal gives public TV stations on-screen credit — “brought
to you by your local public TV station” — and access to future
shows from Sesame and Hit, but it associates public TV with a new digital
channel that carries ads during program breaks and that’s available
only to cable subscribers who pay extra for digital-tier service. [The channel was later named PBS Kids Sprout.]
When the 24-hour channel starts next fall, moreover, PBS will discontinue
its packaged PBS Kids channel, leaving stations to package their own kids’
services if they don’t participate with the partnership. For PBS and Sesame Workshop, the agreement announced Oct.