Quick Takes
Goodman recovering from Bell’s Palsy
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Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! described her recent bout with Bell’s Palsy in an online column for Truthdig.
Quick Takes
Low power FM bill clears Senate panel
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The Senate Commerce Committee approved S. 1675, a bill that expands the availability of low power FM frequencies by eliminating third channel protection, according to Radio Online.
Quick Takes
PRPD reports on its classical music tests
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Public Radio Program Directors has published the findings of its midday classical music study on its website, along with audio and graphics from a presentation at its recent conference in Minneapolis.
Quick Takes
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Philadelphia’s rock-oriented WXPN increased the power of its repeater in central Pennsylvania yesterday, the Harrisburg Patriot-News reported. A staffer at Harrisburg’s classical/news-formatted WITF-FM said the interloper was not unwelcome competition; she admitted to being a WXPN member.
Quick Takes
PBS Ombudsman: did funding compromise editorial content of Human Heart?
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“What I didn’t do at the time, yet should have in my ombudsman’s role, was pay much attention to the main sponsors of the series [The Mysterious Human Heart],” writes PBS’s Michael Getler. In a letter to the ombudsman, Jeffrey Chester, director of the Center for Digital Democracy, asked, “how PBS (and presenting station Thirteen/WNET in New York) sought and publicly promoted the involvement of Medtronic and AstraZeneca as underwriters? As you know, both Medtronic and AstraZeneca have major commercial interests involving heart disease related medical issues.” Another viewer wrote, “Viewers are told that the best treatment for certain potentially deadly heart arrhythmias is an implantable pacemaker. Who’s the leading manufacturer of such devices?
Quick Takes
Merger recommmended for WMUB
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A committee that examined WMUB’s relationship with its licensee, Miami University of Ohio, has recommended that the station pursue a merger with other public stations and develop partnerships with academic programs within the university. General Manager Cleve Callison tells the Cincinnati Enquirer that he’s been talking at a “fairly serious level” for six months with WYSO in Yellow Springs and Dayton’s WDPR.
Quick Takes
Martin worries about being pigeonholed
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“We’re trying to make a safe place to talk about hard things,” said Michel Martin, host of NPR’s Tell Me More, in Marc Fisher’s Washington Post radio column. “One thing I’m more worried about than being pigeonholed as a black show is being pigeonholed as a women’s show.”
Quick Takes
WCNY: no more “beg-a-thons”
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“Two years ago when I took over as president of this station, I made my pledge to the community that we would be pledge-free within two years,” Robert Gaino, president of WCNY in Syracuse, told the New York Post in an article titled “Syracuse Public TV Abandons Beg-A-Thons.” The station’s professedly last pledge period ended Sept. 23. Columnist Adam Buckman’s previous complaints about pledge drew a written response from WNET President Neal Shapiro in August.
Quick Takes
Wisconsin passes budget, pubcasting escapes cuts
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Four months beyond deadline, the Wisconsin state legislature finally approved a two-year, $57.2 billion budget last night that will maintain funding levels for Wisconsin Public Broadcasting. WPB, a service of the University of Wisconsin that includes Wisconsin Public Television and Wisconsin Public Radio, had originally been targeted for a $13 million cut by Republican lawmakers, but the amount was fully restored in the final version of the budget.
Quick Takes
Senate approves $420 million for CPB, but White House veto threat looms
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On Tuesday, the Senate approved legislation that includes a $420 million advance appropriation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2010, as well as 2008 funding for digital conversion, pubradio interconnection and educational programming for children. The House’s appropriations bill for Labor, Health and Human Services and Education includes similar funding levels for public broadcasting, but the White House, citing excessive spending on discretionary social programs, has threatened to veto the legislation. NPR’s David Welna reports on the spending stand-off here and a Congressional Quarterly report on the status of all 12 appropriations bills for 2008 is here.
Quick Takes
Court orders “Prairie Home Companion” fan to leave host Garrison Keillor alone
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A Minnesota court issued a restraining order against a Georgia woman who sent weird gifts and correspondence to Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor, according to the Pioneer-Press. The episode began when Andrea Campbell, 45, met Keillor after a Prairie Home Companion performance in Georgia this spring. Campbell then sent him “disturbing” e-mails and letters, one of which “graphically described making love to me,” Keillor wrote in a petition requesting the order. Early one summer morning, she turned up outside his family home in St. Paul.
Quick Takes
KPBS loses transmitter in wildfire; music station lends its channel to keep news on-air
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San Diego’s KPBS-FM lost its main transmitter this morning as a wildfire burned Mt. San Miguel. By 8:30 a.m., its all-news coverage of the region’s multiple fires moved from 89.5 to 94.9 MHz, using a music station’s frequency lent by Lincoln Financial Media Co. KPBS uses a full toolbox of web services to help, including web streaming, Google Maps to show evacuation areas and shelter locations, Twitter to report developments as quickly as possible and Flickr to show photos shot by listeners. The fires have chased 500,000 people from their homes in the San Diego area, Reuters reported.
Quick Takes
All-classical WOSU to add NPR newsmags
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In a bid to expand its audience, Central Ohio’s only all-classical station WOSU-FM will add NPR news and weekend programming to its line-up, the Columbus Dispatch reports. [WOSU’s announcement of the format change is posted here.]
Quick Takes
PBS’ E2 environmental series cheerier than usual fare
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“Most environmental documentaries try to persuade or preach or, these days, scare; E2 feels as if it’s trying to cheerlead and to sell,” writes the New York Times’ Mike Hale of the series’ second season, which premieres this month. “That makes it an odd fit on today’s PBS, where news and public affairs programs like Frontline, Now and Bill Moyers Journal, with their reporting and advocacy on Iraq, civil liberties and other fraught topics, are simultaneously among the best and the gloomiest shows on television.”
Quick Takes
Wall Street Journal interviews Ken Stern
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The Wall Street Journal asks NPR CEO Ken Stern whether the network’s new morning show and online music service will undercut Morning Edition and the streaming services of member stations.
Programs/Content
Rich and rare: docs that unfold over decades
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If you stand quite rightly in awe at Michael Apted’s 49 Up, which aired on P.O.V. [in October 2007], you’re likely to be cheered by the news that a Frontline producer is now in postproduction to start similar series of periodic interviews with nine diverse people in China….
System/Policy
Abortion issue heats dispute over WDUQ underwriting
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Pittsburgh jazz/news station WDUQ finds itself in the middle of an abortion-politics hardball contest between its licensee, Catholic-run Duquesne University, and Planned Parenthood. Soon after WDUQ began running Planned Parenthood underwriting spots Oct. 8 [2007], the university ordered the station to stop accepting money from a group “not aligned with our Catholic identity,” even though the underwriting went solely to the station. Though abortion is one of the reproductive health services offered by the local Planned Parenthood affiliate, the word wasn’t used in the spots. The text for one spot said: “Support for WDUQ comes from Planned Parenthood—reducing unintended pregnancy by improving access to contraception.” Another spot mentioned optional abstinence training.
Quick Takes
CPB’s Islamists alert gets a slot on Fox News
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Fox News Channel will air the CPB-funded doc Islam vs. Islamists on Saturday (9 p.m. Eastern time), with wraparound material in PBS style, Fox announced today. In the wraparound, Fox will interview the program’s producers about their conflicts with PBS, which refused to distribute the film without further revision. Think-tank pundit and co-producer Frank Gaffney says PBS wanted “to bring more of an Islamist flavor” to his film. Exec producers of CPB’s Crossroads series at WETA said the film’s warnings about Islamist influence were alarmist and unsupported, and omitted it from the initial series aired by PBS in April.
Quick Takes
Founding producer of American Experience dies
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Judy Critchton, the founding executive producer of American Experience, died Oct. 14 at age 77, the New York Times reported. She succumbed to complications of leukemia. Crichton talked about the state of the documentary arts in 1997, after retiring from the program.
Quick Takes
South Carolina ETC invites Colbert to announce presidential bid
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After Stephen Colbert announced last week on CNN’s Larry King that he might be running for president (on Republican and Democratic tickets), South Carolina ETV invited Colbert to formally announce his campaign on its air. South Carolina is Colbert’s home state. Colbert’s byline appeared Sunday in the New York Times, apparently the result of Maureen Dowd’s dare that he write an Op-Ed. In his column, Colbert discusses his presidential aspirations and writes “I want to return to a simpler America where we ate our meat off the end of a sharpened stick.”