Current (https://current.org/2008/06/page/2/)
Sometime within the next week, New York’s WNYC will begin broadcasting from its new headquarters in lower Manhattan. The New York Times marks the occasion with a feature recounting the station’s history in city Municipal Building.
Although listeners contributed a total of $278 million to public radio stations in fiscal 2006, when adjusted for inflation the impressive sum was less than the year before, according to a report just published by Station Resource Group. The report, “Individual Giving to Public Radio: Analysis, Theory, Proven Practices and Good Ideas to Raise More Money,” is a call to arms and tactical guide for public radio stations to improve their fundraising performance, combining analysis of the latest available financial data with shared wisdom of the field’s development leaders and researchers.
At the National Conference for Media Reform last weekend in Minneapolis, O’Reilly Factor producer Porter Barry confronted keynote speaker Bill Moyers in the hallway about coming on Bill O’Reilly’s show (see video of the encounter). Moyers had a few things to say about Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch: “I will come on the O’Reilly show first when Rupert Murdoch has explained why we’re not getting $20-a-barrel oil…the Iraq war he said would deliver.” Moyers asks Barry, “Why doesn’t Bill do his own reporting?…Bill is not a journalist, he’s a pugilist…I like to honor the people who do the real work in journalism, and that’s producers and reporters. It isn’t anchors, it isn’t blowhards.” Moyers repeatedly invites Barry–and O’Reilly–to come on his show, Barry repeatedly says he’s there to get Moyers on O’Reilly Factor. The footage, and discussion of Moyers’ body language, appeared on the Factor (video). Countdown with Keith Olbermann also used the footage in a segment (video).
Recent audience gains for KUSC-FM in Los Angeles have boosted its weekly listenership to 525,800, bigger than all other public radio outlets in the market, according to diary-based Arbitron ratings reported in the Los Angeles Times. The Times attributes the growth to the live and local element of KUSC’s drive-time broadcasts and the demise last year of K-Mozart, its one-time commercial classical competitor. KUSC plans to add more live-hosted time slots next month, after the syndicated Classical Public Radio Network goes dark.
“This could be one of those things where we slap our foreheads and say, ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time,'” says PBS program exec John Wilson in the Boston Globe. “Or it could be the start of something big.” He’s describing the prospects for Click & Clack’s As the Wrench Turns, an animated series debuting on PBS next month. The cartoon spin-off of NPR’s Car Talk, which fictionalizes the personal lives of stars Tom and Ray Magliozzi, has been in the works for nearly seven years, and the Magliozzis are skeptical about whether the show will be a hit for humor-challenged PBS, according to the Globe. When asked whether the TV show could help improve PBS’s image, Ray Magliozzi said: “I think they need to run and hide .
Wasatch Public Media, a new nonprofit established just 10 weeks ago to buy KCPW-FM in Salt Lake City and keep it a public radio news station, now has the signed contract.
Patty Wente tells the St. Louis Business Journal that she is considering her legal options after the University of Missouri-St. Louis ended her employment this week as g.m. of its public radio station, KWMU. “There has been no financial mismanagement at KWMU, and the university knows everything that has transpired,” she said. Wente also spoke with the St.
Exxon Mobil is returning to PBS as a national sponsor, four years after the company ended its 32-year sponsorship of Masterpiece Theatre (see Current story on loss of funding here). This time around, Exxon will be partially underwriting Nightly Business Report and NOVA, beginning June 9.