Current (https://current.org/2006/06/page/3/)
The New York Times profiles NPR’s Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!” “The ability of the people on the show to think on their feet just astounds me,” says a devoted fan.
Connecticut Public Radio in Hartford has replaced midday classical music with local and national news and talk programming. Execs tell the Hartford Courant that a 37 percent decline since 2003 in the station’s classical music audience prompted the change. “I hope that listeners understand that we’re not making a snap decision,” says President Jerry Franklin.
The film adaptation of A Prairie Home Companion offers “the pleasant addition of [Robert] Altman’s trademark layered improv by celebrity actors and the unsettling subtraction of the listener’s imagination,” writes the Washington Post’s Marc Fisher.
Public radio engineers are forming their own association, reports Radio World. The Association of Public Radio Engineers will advocate “good engineering practices,” develop training programs and organize the annual Public Radio Engineering Conference, among other duties. It will also have a formal relationship with NPR Labs. (More from Radio World.)
Michael Lazar has stepped down as president of Capital Public Radio in Sacramento, reports the Sacramento Bee. Citing unnamed sources, the paper reports that CPR’s board wanted more aggressive leadership in a president.
A New York Times article presents evidence to counter arguments that classical music is withering away. “One way to keep the gloomy reports in perspective is to understand that the rumored death of classical music has been with us for a very long time,” writes Allan Kozinn. (Coverage in Current from 2005 of classical music’s decline on public radio.)
The New York Times writes up Garrison Keillor and his seven-bedroom Georgian home in St. Paul, Minn. “The house is so grand that Mr. Keillor and his wife, Jenny Lind Nilsson, a violinist in the Minnesota Opera orchestra, feared their friends might consider them pretentious for buying it.”
Defenders and critics of Louisiana Public Broadcasting wage battle on the pages of the Baton Rouge Advocate over the significance of recent ethics and audit investigations of the public TV network.
Workers making routine repairs to an 1,100 foot Iowa Public Television broadcast tower fell to their deaths on Wednesday, reports the Des Moines Register.
Bill Johnston, a former productions chief at Georgia Public Broadcasting, died of a heart attack May 25. He was 64. Colleagues told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Johnston brought drive and ambition to GPB’s local TV production at a time when few other stations produced their own programs.
The Seattle Weekly reveals an unusual aspect of the deal for KXOT-FM in Tacoma, Wash., between Public Radio Capital and Seattle’s KUOW-FM. “If it doesn’t work out, KXOT will be sold and KUOW will reap a share of the proceeds,” the paper says.