Quick Takes

Retired CBS exec to helm KPCW in Park City

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The new manager of Utah’s KPCW-FM is retired television executive Jonathan Klein, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. Klein managed Baltimore CBS affiliate WJZ-TV and later became a CBS president in charge of 14 stations. Klein’s radio experience includes managing KDKA in Pittsburgh and serving on the board of Baltimore’s WJHU-FM, the NPR station sold by Johns Hopkins University in 2001. He succeeds Blair Feulner, a KPCW founder and longtime manager who announced his departure to listeners in July. KPCW also is accepting applications for program director and development director.

Quick Takes

New book details history of “Sesame Street”

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Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street by former TV Guide editor Michael Davis hits bookstores Dec. 26. The book “also covers early public television (then as ever an unwieldy, perplexing contraption). And it invokes the 1960s idealism that ignited Sesame Street and remains a fundamental part,” writes Frazier Moore of the Associated Press.

Quick Takes

NPR, pubTV holding steady for news viewers

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NPR is maintaining a generally steady listenership among Americans for their daily news, Gallup polling shows. Some 18 percent of Americans listen to the pubradio network daily, which is the same figure as in 1995 — but down slightly from 19 percent in December 2006. PubTV daily news viewership remains at 28 percent, same as in December 2006. Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,009 Americans ages 18 and older; polling was conducted Dec 4-7.

Quick Takes

MPBN shutting down transmitters, cutting jobs, salaries

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Cutbacks in state and federal funding have prompted changes at Maine Public Broadcasting Network, President Jim Dowe announced to staff on Dec. 18. Six jobs will be cut from a full-time staff of 86. There will be a hiring freeze on three additional open positions, temporary wage reductions of 5 percent to 20 percent through the end of the fiscal year next June, temporary suspension of the company’s contributions to employees’ 403(b) retirement plans and the shutting down of transmitters for WMED-DTV in Calais, WMEF-FM in Fort Kent and WMED-FM in Calais.

Quick Takes

“Newspaper death spiral,” and a proposal to avoid it, envisioned for pubcasting

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The worst of the “Econolypse” is yet to come and public broadcasters need a plan of action, writes Robert Paterson, a consultant on NPR’s New Realities project who also advises stations. Paterson plays out a grim scenario for the field in 2009 — continued cost reductions that put NPR on “the newspaper death spiral” and force stations to scale back until they become network repeaters. His solution? “In short there has to be a drive to create a true PUBLIC MEDIA NETWORK — to set up a network that can offer all the members the full value of the network effect,” he writes. Paterson points to a proposal co-developed with Alaska Public Media’s John Proffitt to reorganize the Alaska Public Radio Network as a collaborative public media entity, or “chaordic organization.”

Quick Takes

Transition team talks Public Media 2.0

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Alec Ross of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team met with pubmedia reps Dec. 16 in Washington at a forum organized by the Media and Democracy Coalition, reports Gigi Sohn, a communications attorney who blogs at the site of her group Public Knowledge. Ross, a member of the Technology, Innovation and Government Reform Policy Working Group, spoke with independent media and technology producers and distributors including ITVS, Public Radio Exchange and the National Public Lightpath Initiative. The pubcasters, Sohn reports, “urged the transition to think of public media as more than PBS and NPR, and to provide opportunities for more grassroots oriented public media.”

Quick Takes

APM/MPR deficit may be up to $2M

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American Public Media and Minnesota Public Radio are running between $1.5 million and $2 million under budget for the fiscal year that began in July, reports MinnPost.com blogger David Brauer. That’s just under 3 percent of APM/MPR’s $70 million budget. Brauer says he hears cuts may be coming, “just before or after the holidays.”

Quick Takes

Support grows after demise of college FM station

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KTXT-FM in Lubbock, Texas, one of the nation’s most powerful college radio stations, closed Dec. 10 due to financial constraints. Since then, a Facebook page supporting its return has more than 4,000 members, according to an Associated Press story in the Houston Chronicle. The 35,000-watt, noncommercial station operates under an educational license and is supported by Texas Tech University. The school’s media department, which ran the station, spent about 40 percent of its budget on items including the transmitter, building and antennae over the last four years.

Quick Takes

Skepticism within NPR about lay-off decisions; Facebook group fundraising to save ‘Day to Day’

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NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard answers questions about the budget cuts announced by NPR last week and reports on reactions among NPR staff: “Many, but not necessarily all, NPR employees seem to accept the rationale that big cutbacks were needed to ensure the company’s long-term financial health. Assertions by senior executives that the layoffs were not targeted at getting rid of specific individuals have not been as widely accepted, however,” she writes. Meanwhile, Save Day to Day, a Facebook Group established last week that now has 667 members, asks fans of the soon-to-be canceled show to send $50 to NPR. “[H]opefully we can save this, one of the best shows in the NPR line-up,” the group’s founder, a listener from Cincinnati, writes.

Quick Takes

“Grow the Audience” reports on classical music station performance

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Education levels within a market are the best predictor of classical music station performance, according to the latest report [PDF] from Grow the Audience, a CPB-backed project of Station Resource Group that is examining options for future pubradio audience growth. The report, published by SRG and Walrus Research, analyzes the performance of the entire field of all-classical stations, including the few remaining commercial outlets, and identifies stations that are over- and under-performing. It also predicts the performance of all-classical stations in Houston, Atlanta and Tampa, three top markets that lack the format. The project website recently added commentaries on audience growth strategies by former NPR News chief Bill Buzenberg, research consultant Mark Ramsey and Latino Public Radio director Florence Hernandez-Ramos.

Quick Takes

Eyeing ‘painful’ cuts ahead, Maine pubcasters convene town hall meeting

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The Maine Public Broadcasting Network, which provides public television and radio services to the state, closed last fiscal year with a $2 million deficit and is convening town hall meetings to gather public input about its future. Cuts in state funding, reductions in federal aid from CPB and declining member contributions have taken a toll on the state network’s bottom line, according to this news account of last night’s public forum. MPBN President Jim Dowe told attendees that it’s premature to talk about staff or programming cuts, but “MPBN will cut wherever necessary and some of it will be ‘painful,'” the Morning Sentinel reported.

Quick Takes

Candidate for deanship, Klose close to closure

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Kevin Klose, president emeritus of NPR, will visit with faculty and students of the University of Maryland’s journalism school on Tuesday. He is the only candidate now under consideration to become its dean, and officials may extend an offer if they are pleased after his visit to College Park, Provost Nariman Farvardin told the campus newspaper, the Diamondback.

Quick Takes

It’s unofficial Kent Manahan month at NJN

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The three-decade former anchor of NJN News gets an hourlong primetime special on Friday, “Kent Manahan: Anchoring a Legacy,” with excerpts from her past programs plus recent interview segments, the state net announced today. And a week earlier the state Public Broadcasting Authority appointed her acting executive director. Predecessor Elizabeth Christopherson quit NJN in November and old Current she will join a foundation.

Quick Takes

Pennsylvania stations tighten belts

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WLVT-TV in Bethlehem, Pa., will likely raise about $100,000 less during its current pledge drive than it did last year, but there are no plans yet to cut jobs or local programs, says Pat Simon, president. The station is also waiting on state funding, which usually comes in July. Like many stations, WLVT is slashing its travel and ad budgets. WVIA in Wilkes-Barre has fared worse — last week the station announced it was laying of five employees, axing two programs and reducing salaries to make up for a $200,000 shortfall. 

Quick Takes

“NextGen” training program for young journalists to be cut as NPR downsizes

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Behind last week’s headlines of NPR show cancellations and journalists losing their jobs, NPR eliminated Next Generation Radio, a training program created and managed by veteran producer Doug Mitchell. “What ‘NextGen’ (as it was known) did was to find young people from various backgrounds and give them the sense of wonder about radio journalism in all its forms,” writes Jeffrey Dvorkin, former NPR ombudsman, on his blog. “Doug taught these kids about sound and story-telling and taking risks.” Dvorkin describes the decision to let Mitchell go as a “huge loss for the company,” and so far 159 Facebook users have endorsed this view by joining the group “Save Doug Mitchell’s job.” Mitchell describes the rationale for NextGen, and its strategic importance to public radio, in this 2003 Current commentary.

Quick Takes

FCC asks ham radio operators for DTV help

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The FCC has approached the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), an association of ham radio operators, for assistance with the upcoming digital TV transition. The commission would like members ” to provide technical educational assistance to their communities,” according the league’s website. A spokesman for the organization says the FCC is letting ham groups nationwide decide how to best handle the task in each community. ARRL members will not be making house calls, the spokesman stressed, but handing out technical information and FCC materials on the transition.

Quick Takes

California’s KVIE reduces staff

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KVIE-TV in Sacramento, Calif., laid off seven staffers this week, reports the Sacramento Bee. The cuts amount to 10 percent of KVIE’s staff. General Manager David Lowe said a drop in viewer donations prompted the belt-tightening.

Quick Takes

Weiss explains why NPR decided against across the board cuts

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“[W]e didn’t want to cut across the board,” NPR News chief Ellen Weiss says in this NewsHour interview about the budget cuts and lay-offs announced on Wednesday. “We didn’t want to say, ‘You know what? Try to do the same quality, try to do the same amount of journalism, try to have the same reach nationally and internationally, but try to do it with less money.'” Efforts to diversify and grow the audience through News & Notes and Day to Day, two cancelled shows targeting African American and younger audiences, are no longer “just something we do through one program or even two programs,” but have to go across “everything NPR does,” from radio programs to web-based content and mobile services.

Quick Takes

StoryCorps to open permanent oral history booth in Atlanta

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The first permanent StoryCorps booth outside of New York City will be installed in Atlanta next year — located temporarily in a studio at Public Broadcasting Atlanta’s WABE-FM until 2011, when it moves in the city’s new civil rights museum, the Center for Civil and Human Rights, the station announced today. “WABE is family to us,” said project founder Dave Isay in the release. “There is no other station in the country that’s dearer to our hearts that cares more about StoryCorps and public broadcasting.” While New York now has the only permanent StoryBooth, San Francisco is hosting one through next October, and a mobile booth is patrolling Alaska through April.

Quick Takes

NewsHour to report on NPR downsizing

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Tonight’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer includes a segment on the NPR job cuts. The Washington Post’s Marc Fisher is a confirmed guest. NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard may also participate.Correction: The NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown will interview Ellen Weiss, NPR senior v.p. of news. Fisher and Shepard will not participate, according to a producer.