Current (https://current.org/2005/03/)
The host of this year’s Input conference plans to go ahead with the international pubTV producers’ screening conference in San Francisco, May 1-6, despite a union boycott of the SF Hilton and 13 other large hotels, the Chronicle reported yesterday. ITVS, host of the event, said it favors good treatment for hotel workers but could not afford to lose $663,000 tied up in reserving the conference space. Groups of lawyers and historians have relocated events from the boycotted hotels.
DCRTV points to MPT Mole, a blog maintained by an anonymous someone claiming to be a Maryland Public Television employee. Note that it “should be viewed as fictional musings and unfounded speculation, not official truth.”
The Washington Post previews Nova’s tsunami special, “Wave That Shook the World,” scheduled to air tonight.
Louis Rukeyser’s Wall Street Week played a small role in the Internet speculation bubble, writes Jay Hancock, a Baltimore Sun business journalist, but its contributions were greater as originator of financial journalism on TV.
The plan was for a Public Television Act with no mention of dusty old radio. Not everyone signed on to the plan.
Iowa state senators have introduced a bill asking the nascent Iowa Public Radio network to consider playing “modern progressive musical content.”
In a new example of the creeping commercial- ization of PTV under- writing, spots plugging burrito chain Chipotle will spoof pledge drives and Masterpiece Theatre, the New York Times reports. The 15-second ads, er, credits will accompany American Public Television’s How to Cook Everything: Bittman Takes On America’s Chefs beginning in April.
This story in the New York Times suggests that Washington’s indecency crusade will only get tougher with the departure of Michael Powell from the FCC. It also contains the following quote, excerpted from a dissenting opinion penned by new commission chairman Kevin J. Martin: “Despite my colleagues’ assurance that there appeared to be a safe distance between the prostitute and the horse, I remain uncomfortable.”
“I guess once Rukeyser left, it was inevitable.” That’s what Douglas Gomery, a professor and media economist at the University of Maryland, told the Baltimore Sun in its story about the end of Wall $treet Week. Louis Rukeyser hosted the groundbreaking investment news show, which will air its final episode June 24, from its debut in 1970 through his firing in 2002. Maryland PTV President Rob Shuman tells Broadcasting & Cable that the show’s cancellation “signals the end of an era for us.”