Remember Budget Hero? That’s the interactive national budget game launched in May 2008 by American Public Media. Players use the same economic model and data as the Congressional Budget Office, choosing from among more than 160 policy options to try to balance the budget. The game caught on quickly: Within three weeks it had been linked in at least 100 blogs. Since its inception about 10 percent of players, around 15,000, left enough anonymous data to do some crunching.
Wisconsin Public Television is cutting five positions. Gone are three unfilled slots, and two contracts that will not be renewed, James Steinbach, WPT director of television tells WisBusiness.com. Travel expenses have also been cut. One of the network’s flagship shows, the half-hour weekly magazine In Wisconsin also shrinks from 19 new episodes per year to 13. Steinbach cited the ongoing recession and state budget woes.
Now pubcasters can keep up with the Association of Public Television Stations through its Twitter account and Facebook page. Jeffrey Davis, vice president of communications, said in an email to Current that APTS will use Twitter to update stations on legislative and regulatory hearings, press conferences, projects of importance and other tweets. On its Facebook page, visitors can read APTS news updates, post links and comments, and find out about hearings and other events. Davis said APTS hopes both will “enhance the presence of APTS in the online community.”
Michael Kinsell imagined that his Michael’s Enchanted Neighborhood show would replace Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on public television. Instead, Kinsell and his dream ended up on The Museum of Hoaxes website, which tracks “dubious claims and mischief of all kinds.”
For at least the past 18 months, the young San Diego man took his plans to a sequence of top entertainment pros, pitching a gala fundraising concert that would pay tribute to the late Fred Rogers while presenting Kinsell as Rogers’ successor. Though the event fizzled last month, leaving an empty concert hall in the San Diego suburb of Escondido on Sunday night, May 31, Kinsell had demonstrated he could come from nowhere, win the assistance of others and nearly reach the spotlight. The 1,500 seats in the hall were to be filled with people who paid $300 or more per seat to support children’s public television; millions more would watch the broadcast as a pledge special. In his quest for pubcasting fame, Kinsell sent e-mails, obtained by Current, in which he touted the “confirmed” luminaries who would appear at the tribute: Andy Williams, Bill Cosby, Christina Aguilera, Diana Ross, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, President Bill Clinton, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and first lady Maria Shriver.
CPB has announced it will be accepting applications for Round 14 Digital Distribution Fund grants from qualified noncommercial educational TV licensees for Priority One: Digital Television Transmission Facilities and Priority Two: Digital Master Control Services projects. More information is now online.
Debra Delman has been named NPR’s senior vice president for strategic operations and finance, the network announced today. Since 2005, she has been with Discovery Communications Inc. as senior vice president, CFO, leading a global team of more than 150 and managing a division with more than $1 billion in revenue. Delman assumed her post June 1.
Parody site CAP News (motto: “Are you in on the joke?”) “reports” that scientists investigating the origins of human laughter now know that baboons have a laugh reflex very similar to humans — and a special fondness for certain types of comedy, such as pubradio’s Prairie Home Companion and Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me. The site said baboons laughed “consistently” at episodes of Car Talk, “even though few of them had ever actually been in a car, much less driven one.”
University of Florida’s public radio station will soon begin airing more news in addition to its current classical music, according to The Gainesville Sun. It broadcasts as WUFT/Classic 89 in that city, and WJUF/Nature Coast 90 in Citrus County. The move comes as the university consolidates its media operations of several radio and television stations. College of Journalism and Communications Dean John Wright said there are no plans to close any station, although jobs may be lost. A detailed announcement will come in the next few weeks.
Three $10,000 awards have gone to students for work on children’s media projects in the spirit of Fred Rogers. The annual scholarships are presented by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation and Ernst & Young. Alexis Lauricella of Georgetown University is at work on a project about the relationship between children’s media use and learning. Mayuran Tiruchelvam of Columbia University is developing live-action short film and animated series. And Thy Than of the UCLA plans to create an animated short about a girl who emigrates with her family.
A federal appeals court turned down a lawsuit that would have stopped the FCC from protecting low-power FM stations from full-power station signal interference, reports the Ars Technica website. Around 800 educational stations operating at 10 or 100 watts commit to eight hours of local programming a day in exchange for licenses. After the FCC first authorized the service, the National Association of Broadcasters and NPR claimed that the stations would interfere with full-power signals (Current, May 2008), and persuaded Congress to force a “third adjacent rule” on the service. Citing potential interference from LPFMs, the two also wanted the FCC not protect these smaller stations from signal “encroachment” by new full power licenses nearby.
Lots of letters in the PBS ombudsman’s mailbag this week, including more “dealing with challenges arising from the five-part American Experience series ‘We Shall Remain’ on American Indian history,” writes Michael Getler.
The Tony Awards belong on PBS, actor Kevin Spacey told New York Post theater columnist Michael Riedel. In fact, Spacey said: “The Tonys should be produced by theater people. Mike Nichols should be the director. The show should be on PBS and everyone should get their award, and then we don’t have to give a (bleep!) about ratings.” The show currently airs on CBS.
KRVS-FM, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette licensee, has a new home on campus. Spiffy new equipment includes Wheatstone Evolution 5 consoles in editing suites and studios, and custom-made furniture for console units. An Evolution 6 console operates the master control room positioned to oversee interview and performance studios, according to 2TheAdvocate.com, website of the local WBRZ-News 2 comstation in Baton Rouge. “We experienced no down time,” reports Dave Spizale, KRVS g.m. “It was a great coordinated effort with the construction, the university and our staff.”
That’s what Steve Bornfeld dubs the pubcaster in his Mediology column for The Las Vegas Review-Journal. He’s troubled by pledge shows such as the Brain Fitness for Kids programs, which he compares with infomercials hawking related books and CDs. “PBS should position itself above high-class hucksterism that, stripped of production polish, would be a cozier fit in its natural habitat: paid-for filler on commercial TV,” he writes. “Perfumed by PBS, it still has the stench of salesmanship on airwaves long home to cultural/educational enrichment.”
NPR’s three-pronged strategy to extend local coverage, engage audiences via social media and provide ubiquitous access to its content is helping the network “grow now” and position itself for the digital media landscape of the future, according to this Mashable article by Josh Catone. “Perhaps the most important aspect of NPR’s approach to new media, is that they have an organizational level commitment to allowing listeners and readers to access their content on their own terms,” he writes. “NPR’s commitment to going to its audience rather than making its audience come to them is a smart strategic move.” Be sure to read the comments from readers who beg to differ with the author, including this: “One fly in the ointment of this argument: a great deal (perhaps the majority) or local content for many NPR stations is often generated by local print media, especially daily newspapers. I’m a big fan of NPR (and daily newspapers, for that matter), but — like local TV and many, many bloggers and Twitterers — a lot of the coal in those furnaces comes from the black-and-white newsrooms. At least today.”
Since 2005, they’ve put nearly $128 million into news and journalism initiatives and experiments, says a report this week from J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, now based at American University. That’s on top of funding to public broadcasting, which the report doesn’t count (“because we’ve long known of the generous philanthropic support for their work”). The narrative report are is online and available as a PDF.Of the 115 projects in the project database, three received nearly half the funding, including ProPublica, which got $30 mil from the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation. Also among the field’s top 10 funders: Knight Foundation, $11.2 mil; California HealthCare Foundation, $8.7 mil; Pew Charitable Trusts, $7.5 mil (mostly to Stateline.org); Schuster Foundation, $5 mil (to Brandeis University’s Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism); Irvine, $4.8 mil; Chicago Community Trust, $3.6 mil; William Penn Fndn, $2.6 mil; Atlantic Philanthropies, $2.7 mil; and Ford Fndn, $2.4 mil.Second in the field of funders is California HealthCare Foundation was created as part of the pact when nonprofit Blue Cross of California was converted to for-profit WellPoint Health Networks [10-year report in PDF].A notable departure among the funders: JEHT Foundation closed in January because its assets were managed by all-star crook Bernard Madoff.
Some happy pubcasting news: HoustonPBS is the first pubTV station to locally sponsor the Scripps National Spelling Bee, after The Houston Chronicle discontinued its longtime sponsorship. The bee is the third largest in the country with more than 1,000 schools in 42 counties participating. HoustonPBS coordinates the 1,000 school champions into 37 playoff bees and runs the final bee — broadcast live. The first HoustonPBS spelling champ, Aditya Chemudupaty, advanced to the 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee and missed the finals by just one word. He was eliminated May 28 in the sixth round of the semi-finals on ESPN (pictured).
Rough economic times have prompted WNED in Buffalo to schedule its first June pledge drive. Senior managers have already taken 7.5 percent cutbacks, staff salaries have been cut 5 percent and some jobs are unfilled. If this month’s drive doesn’t bring in more cash, WNED-TV President Don Boswell told The Buffalo News, the station may cut programs.
CPB’s Mark Erstling, a senior veep, said the struggling WSEC in Springfield, Ill., needs “to have a plan so we can change their trajectory so they can become sustainable.” Erstling told the local State Journal-Register that he and COO Vinnie Curren met with station managers in May in Springfield. “Our goal is to make sure no one loses public television service in America,” Erstling said. “We’re a funder for public television and radio stations, but there’s not a lot of discretionary funds for dealing with situations like this.” Jerold Gruebel, CEO of the PBS affiliate, on May 29 told The Hannibal Courier-Post in Missouri that CPB is trying to “dismantle” smaller PBS stations.
As of July 1, reporter Keri Brown will be West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Northern Panhandle bureau chief. It’s part of a unique relationship between the pubcaster and several colleges around the state. “We cover the whole state so we need reporters all around the state,” Dennis Adkins, network exec director, told Current. The reporters are paid by the schools to teach journalism courses, and report exclusively for the pubcaster. Brown will be based at Wheeling Jesuit University.