Quick Takes

Lehrer on podcasting, The Takeaway and more

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Brian Lehrer, host of an eponymous weekday talk show on New York’s WNYC, fielded a variety of questions this week from readers of the New York Times’s website. “Frankly, I don’t consider my program a radio show anymore,” he wrote in response to a question about podcasting and the future of radio. “I think of it as a radio-based multiplatform interactive news and issue … media thing. If we come up with a short, cogent name for that, I’ll use it. Ideas welcome.” (Via the PRPD blog.)

Quick Takes

Rowland: Create trust fund for pubcasting’s political coverage

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Public broadcasters should receive proceeds from a tax on campaign ad spending to support their political coverage, argues Wick Rowland, president of Colorado Public Television, in an op-ed in the Rocky Mountain News. “A 3 percent tax on the commercial media expenditures for the 2008 federal elections would have provided roughly $100 million, which could have been invested in a public broadcasting political coverage trust fund,” he writes. “With such a resource, public television and radio stations all over the country could greatly expand and improve their debate work.”

Quick Takes

PBS Hawaii plans move to new home

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PBS Hawaii plans to buy the soon-to-be-vacated headquarters of Honolulu’s NBC affiliate and move into the studios within the next few years, reports the Pacific Business News. The pubcaster now leases space from the University of Hawaii but failed to secure another long-term lease from the school. It may add a building to its new home, which is much smaller than its current space. “It’s a wonderful ‘control your own destiny’ moment,” said PBS Hawaii President Leslie Wilcox.

Quick Takes

CPB, PBS to evaluate Challenge Fund

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CPB has released its FY 2009 Business Plan, which details use of discretionary funds. Up for evaluation is the Challenge Fund, a joint effort with PBS to fund programs that draw a larger audience. “We will investigate alternative methods for attracting and developing these projects,” according to the plan. The 10-part PBS series Carrier, which won widespread critical acclaim, was a Challenge Fund project. CPB also will select one or more of the seven project prototypes in the American History & Civics Initiative for full production funding.

Quick Takes

Kerger fancies newsgathering partnership with NPR

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PBS President Paula Kerger says the network is “thinking very carefully about what role we will play in news coverage moving forward,” adding that PBS continues to look at “different ways we can partner” with NPR. She spoke to blogger Leonard Witt, a media prof at Georgia’s Kennesaw State University after her speech at an Atlanta Press Club luncheon Dec. 3. One hurdle to PBS’ newsgathering capabilities: funding. The radio network has “made a huge commitment to newsgathering.

Quick Takes

Kermit Boston, KQED and APTS leader, dies in San Francisco

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Kermit H. Boston, a longtime lay leader in public TV, died Nov. 23, the San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday. Boston, 73, suffered a heart attack after returning home from Grace Cathedral, where he chaired the board. The onetime Pennsylvania school teacher and principal had guided many nonprofits as well as individuals in a long life of mentoring, educational publishing and leadership in the African-American communities of several cities. He served on the boards of Mt.

Quick Takes

Funding credits for E-Verify prompt complaints

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Underwriting credits for the Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify program, an electronic database that allows companies to verify employment eligibility of new hires, have stirred up objections from listeners and some station managers, reports NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard. The credits, which began running last month, create the perception of a conflict of interest between NPR’s news coverage and funding relationships. “It just makes you a little queasy,” says Sean Collins, executive producer of Latino USA, a weekly series that is also carrying the spots. “I don’t think we do a good enough job of reiterating the concept of a firewall. It really does exist.”

Quick Takes

Public Radio Tuner 2.0 gets a thumbs down

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The Public Radio Tuner is now being offered to iPhone users, but this blogger is less than impressed with the application. “Seriously, you can’t mark a station as a favorite and there is no search function. Not the most convenient app I have seen.” Web technologists at APM, NPR, PRX and PRI are collaborating on enhancements to the tuner, to be released in early 2009.

Quick Takes

NPR newsmags seen as engines for future growth in pubradio news audience

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The latest analysis from public radio’s Grow the Audience project identifies a “short list” of market factors that drive performance of individual NPR News stations–namely education levels, competition within each market for NPR News listeners and the presence of key psychographic segments. The report [PDF], published online last week by Station Resource Group and Walrus Research, concludes that strategies to grow the public radio news audience start with the two most-listened to programs, NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. In addition, the analysts predict that the cume ratings for NPR News would grow substantially if hybrid news/classical music stations in Houston, Tampa and Atlanta went to all-news formats.

Quick Takes

25 years of Mountain Stage

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On Sunday, West Virginia Public Radio’s Mountain Stage will celebrate its 25th anniversary with its 684th production, Joan Osborne, Kathy Mattea and a multilayer cake from Baltimore’s Charm City Cakes (home of the Food Channel’s Ace of Cakes). The show has presented nearly 1,700 musical artists of all genres, produced on stages around the state, in both Charleston, W.Va. and S.C., and as far afield as San Diego and Winnipeg. Traditionally, host Larry Groce invites the performers for a joint number at the end of each broadcast. (The producers also have done 39 standard-definition TV shows and nine HDTV specials.) Next year, the production goes all-digital.

Quick Takes

NPR’s Baghdad team targeted in car bomb attack

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NPR’s Baghdad-based reporting team narrowly escaped an assassination attempt on Sunday. After conducting interviews and having lunch with their two Iraqi drivers in a kebab shop, correspondent Ivan Watson and producer/translator Ali Hamdani were returning to their parked car when Iraqi soldiers intercepted them and pulled one of the drivers away from the vehicle. The armored BMW, which had been planted with a so-called “sticky” bomb, exploded into flames. Multimedia reporting on the incident, including video, photos and Watson’s reportage for NPR, are here.