Quick Takes

Pick a poll

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No matter whether you’re a DTV optimist or someone with real concerns about next year’s analog shut-off, there was a survey released yesterday that validates your feelings. Bright-siders could take comfort in the NAB’s finding that 79 percent of consumers are aware of the transition, a figure that has doubled in the past year. The NAB found that 83 percent of over-the-air households are hip to the coming shut-off. However, Consumer Reports released its own survey suggesting that a smaller figure, 64 percent, were aware of the transition and that 74 percent of those folks had “major misconceptions” about the shut-off. “The good news is that surveys from Consumers Union and the broadcast industry show that more Americans are becoming aware of the DTV transition,” said FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein.

Quick Takes

Will KRCL lose its quirk?

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Salt Lake City Weekly laments the coming transformation of KRCL from a quirky, eclectic community radio station into one designed to net to a larger music audience, with paid DJs on-air from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays. The station is moving to a more broadly appealing music mix format, says James Roberts, chairman of the KRCL board. The change is being fueled by a $195,000 CPB station renewal grant. The station was in danger of losing CPB funding and being shut out from its music-licensing agreements because it failed to maintain the minimal levels of listening or community financial support to be eligible for Community Service Grants.

Quick Takes

Will there be pledge breaks?

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Pubcasters in the Netherlands are sticking to their plans to air the pornographic film Deep Throat next month after the nation’s media minister rejected calls from conservatives to prohibit the broadcast. “There can be no question of a ban, and no investigation of this will be mounted either,” said Ronald Plasterk. “The government also has no views on any programme, [sic] moral or otherwise.”

Quick Takes

KOOP ex-volunteer torched the station over music picks, officials charge

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On Jan. 5, Paul Feinstein, a 24-year-old former KOOP volunteer angry about past playlist decisions, poured gasoline over the community radio station’s control panels and lit them on fire, Austin fire officials say. The resulting blaze caused more then $300,000 in damage and knocked the station off the air until last week, when it resumed operations in a donated studio. Feinstein has been charged with second degree felony arson and could face two to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. Feinstein, who has no criminal record, had clashed with another volunteer because his selections for an overnight Internet-only program had been changed, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

Quick Takes

Detroit radio vet will head pubTV station

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Detroit Public Television’s new president, as of Friday, will be Ritschard (Rich) Homberg, who has been v.p. and g.m. of CBS’s all-news WWJ-AM for more than a decade, the Detroit Free Press reported. Homberg succeeds Steve Antoniotti, who resigned in April after an apparent conflict with his board. “My strongest interests are in local programming and really working to complete the capital campaign,” Homberg told the newspaper.

Quick Takes

NYTimes on WNET’s Shapiro: He’s not shy

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WNET’s new president Neal Shapiro, who came from NBC News, “hasn’t been shy about putting his at times unorthodox stamp on WNET and his own team in place,” write Elizabeth Jensen in a New York Times article about his first year at the station. “Four of the station’s top executives have left,” and Shapiro says a coming restructuring of staff may lead to “change behind the scenes.” The story highlights his focus on local documentary, online video, and a new arts program with him as host. “Mr. Shapiro said he was reveling in no longer chasing Britney Spears interviews and in having an educational department to work with,” writes Jensen, “but he acknowledged that he found the pace at his new employer slow. ‘One of the things that I think I can bring here is to try to make us a little more nimble,’ he said.” 

Quick Takes

Flailing WTVP strikes new deal with Bank of America

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WTVP in Peoria, Ill., has struck a new deal with Bank of America to settle the station’s debt, writes station President Chet Tomczyk on the WTVP website. The bank accepted WTVP’s offer to settle the station’s debt at $5.2 million, due by February 28. See Current’s story on the station’s debt problems here.

Quick Takes

Gates incorporates genealogy into new mag

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Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard professor and host of the PBS series African American Lives, is heading up The Root, a new online magazine launched this week by The Washington Post Company. The magazine, aimed at a black audience, covers politics and culture and features interactive tools for readers to track their ancestry.

Quick Takes

PBS puts free educational content on iTunes U

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PBS is now offering free multimedia educational content on iTunes U, the educational area of iTunes. Housed in the “Beyond Campus” section, the offerings–video, lectures, interviews, teacher guides–come from KQED, WETA, WNET and WGBH.

Quick Takes

Competition for Colorado news listeners

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The channel swap planned for Colorado Public Radio’s KFCR News and KVOD Classical stations will cut off service to music lovers in Fort Collins and bring competition for news listeners now served by Greeley’s KUNC, reports the Coloradoan.

Quick Takes

Summit for state ed officers and pubTV

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Rob Lippincott, PBS’s senior v.p., education, is urging stations to invite their states’ chief public school officers to a Council of Chief State School Officers executive summit about educational media (scroll down to third item) in New York March 6, preceding WNET’s Teaching & Learning Celebration. The third annual Celebration, March 7-8, will offer 90 workshops for teachers plus such events as a forum on future schooling, moderated by Judy Woodruff. For info on the summit: Scott Frein, CCSSO, 202-336-7015.

Quick Takes

Indecency police are on patrol

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Images of a nude woman’s backside, broadcast in February 2003 before 10 p.m. on ABC stations in the Central and Mountain time zones, prompted the FCC to fine the network $1.43 million, the maximum allowed at the time. “We find that the programming at issue is within the scope of our indecency definition because it depicts sexual organs and excretory organs–specifically an adult woman’s buttocks,” the FCC wrote in a decision issued on Friday.

Quick Takes

NTIA: Converter boxes coming next month

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Electronics manufacturers and retailers will have digital-to-analog converter boxes on store shelves by Feb. 18, said Meredith Baker, acting head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The NTIA, which is running the federal converter box program, also announced plans for special consumer education projects, including a “application completion” week in September in which churches and other community organizations will help people apply for $40 coupons for the converters. As of Wednesday, consumers had applied for 3.7 million of the coupons, the NTIA said. A recent APTS survey found that 40 percent of over-the-air households would rather get their digital TV via converters, as opposed to 12 percent who said they’d subscribe to cable or satellite.

Quick Takes

NYT: Kernis’s TV job is at CNN

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Jay Kernis will leave NPR to become managing editor at CNN, according to the New York Times’ TV Decoder blog. NPR announced Kernis’s departure internally Jan. 23. Kernis has served as NPR’s senior v.p. for programming for seven years.

Quick Takes

Humble Farmer angles for TV placement

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Maine’s Humble Farmer, booted from the state’s public radio network after refusing to tone down his political rants, is mounting a return to broadcasting via public-access TV, reports the Kennebec Journal. The Farmer, whose real name is Robert Skoglund, has said that 28 stations plan to air his show or consider it. “I see public access TV as one of the last bastions of free speech, and I really disagree with what happened to him,” said a manager at one station.

Quick Takes

Crossroads film gets Oscar nod

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Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, which aired as part of PBS’s America at a Crossroads series, has received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature. The Documentary Group production dramatized writings by veterans of the Iraq War in a variety of styles and featured vets from previous wars talking about their experiences. Operation stirred up less controversy than the other Crossroads films (previous coverage in Current) but earned positive attention from critics.

Quick Takes

Funding boost moves WTVP closer to survival

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WTVP in Peoria, Ill., is $1.5 million closer to staying in business, reports the (Bloomington) Pantagraph. Several major donors contributed the sum, bringing the station’s outstanding debt to $500,000. As Current has reported, WTVP hit financial trouble after borrowing to build new facilities and failing to reach the fundraising levels agreed on by its creditors.

Quick Takes

WUMB ponders end to its PRI affiliation

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The steep price of Public Radio International programming has prompted Boston’s WUMB to consider dropping Mountain Stage and Afropop Worldwide, according to the Boston Globe. General Manager Pat Monteith has approached producers of both shows about her dilemma, but they can’t help her. “Their contract won’t allow them to negotiate with us independently and PRI won’t give us a price that’s affordable,” she said. WUMB has been reevaluating its program schedule and branding as part of CPB’s Station Renewal Project.