Current (https://current.org/2009/11/)
Harvard University history prof Niall C. Ferguson has won an International Emmy Award for his documentary series, The Ascent of Money, which aired on PBS in July 2009, reports the Harvard Crimson. The series examined the history of money, credit and banking, going back as far as ancient Babylon. It was based on his course, “International Financial History, 1700 to Present,” which he last taught at the college in 2007.
PBS and the NewsHour today announced a partnership with Boston-based GlobalPost to make use of its international correspondents for “timely on-the-ground information about breaking news developments” for both broadcast and online audiences, according to a statement posted on Jim Romenesko’s media blog on the Poynter Institute’s website. The effort will supplement the NewsHour’s current international reporting, the statement noted. GlobalPost correspondents and videographers will produce weekly video segments for NewsHour and the show’s web site; GlobalPost and NewsHour staffs will collaborate on story selection and production. GlobalPost has some 70 reporters in more than 50 countries, and already is partnered with WorldFocus as well as many print publications. As Broadcasting & Cable notes, the syndication deals are “significant” to supporting its work.
Ruth Reichl, host of PBS’s Gourmet’s Adventures With Ruth, opens her refrigerator and pantry to Salon.com for a peek at what one of America’s most respected foodies noshes on. A few goodies: Arkansas black and Knobbed Russet apples, three kinds of butter, frozen banana leaves, strawberry elderflower jam, lacinato kale and “gallons of turkey stock.” You know, the usual.
WGBH will broadcast some television programming on the radio starting Tuesday, the Boston Globe reports. It’s part of the station’s move to transform 89.7-FM into a viable competitor for news powerhouse WBUR’s 90.9-FM. The station will use existing shows such as the NewsHour and local Beat the Press, as well as create a new midday weekday public affairs show. The moves are part of WGBH’s purchase in September of classical music station WCRB-FM 99.5 for $14 million, which allowed WGBH to shift classical programming and convert 89.7 to an all news and talk station.
Kids can now journal on their iPhones thanks to a new app, Make a Journal, from the ever-creative Mister Rogers folks. The $1.99 app, available via iTunes, is a “delight,” according to the iPhone Footprint blog. Kids get five topic suggestions: School, Mad Feelings, Playtime, Pretending, and Books. They can save their personalized journals in a digital library and use virtual crayons and designs to draw a cover for each journal to make it easy to find later.
On Tuesday night, Sherri Westin, e.v.p. of Sesame Workshop, hit the O’Reilly Factor with host Bill O’Reilly on Fox to discuss the ongoing “Pox News” controversy. Appearing with her: Spill O’Reilly, an in-your-face, over-the-top, book-hawking Muppet. Check out the video.
Several pubcasters are part of the 200 largest charities in America in Forbes magazine’s annual list. Figures are for end of fiscal 2008, comparisons are with end of fiscal ’07. Calculations include charitable commitment, fundraising efficiency and donor dependency. PBS scores quite high in fundraising efficiency; it’s seventh on the list. Its $356 million in assets, however, is down 7 percent.
Ladies and gentlemen: The Muppets perform “Bohemian Rhapsody.” (And doesn’t the green dude at 3:47 look like … Brian Williams?)
Good news for Peconic Public Broadcasting, new owners of WLIU in Southampton, N.Y.: Listeners contributed a record total of more than $90,000 during its on-air fund drive Nov. 19-22. Nearly 700 supporters pledged almost three times the highest amount raised when the station was under Long Island University, according to Hamptons.com. “From Saturday afternoon, when we had received more than $50,000, we knew this was going to be a different fund drive,” said General Manager Wally Smith.
Thursday’s the big day, and while most of us are gobbling our holiday dinners at least a few pubcasters will be catering to the culinary needs of NPR listeners. Once again American Public Media’s The Splendid Table offers its Turkey Confidential live call-in show for chefs in a panic over their uncooperative bird or puzzled over what to do with those slimy giblet things. Guests include Lake Wobegon’s favorite son Garrison Keillor and road foodies Jane and Michael Stern. The show runs on many stations nationwide 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern — unless of course you’re listening to KIPO-FM 89.3 in Hawai’i, where you’ll have to set your alarm for 6 a.m. Meanwhile, Chris Kimball of America’s Test Kitchen stopped by All This Considered this morning with a few old-timey dish suggestions; there are more Thanksgiving suggestions on the Kitchen’s site (whoa, Garlic-Scented Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Coconut Milk and Cilantro). But of course the four words many listeners long for this time of year are: Mama Stamberg’s Cranberry Relish.
An analysis of aging among public radio listeners put numbers behind Garrison Keillor’s observation that every year there are more gray heads in the audiences for live tapings of Prairie Home Companion.Long dominated by Baby Boomers, the audiences of public radio news, jazz and classical music stations in the top 50 markets are aging at slightly different rates, but the lifestyle changes of retirement loom for this sizable group. In fact, nearly half of classical listeners are already out of the workforce. Over the past decade, spring 1999 to 2009, the audience of news-format stations has aged more slowly than those of classical or jazz stations, according to George Bailey of Walrus Research. News-station listeners’ median age climbed five years from 47 to 52; for jazz, the median aged seven years, from 48 to 55; for classical, the median also grew seven years older, going from 58 to 65.Bailey notes that “half of the classical audience are not Boomers, rather they are seniors on Medicare.” The percentage of classical music listeners who are employed dipped to 47 percent this year. That’s a 16 percent drop from spring 1997, when 63 percent of the classical audience was in the workforce.
When retiring newsman Carl Kasell entered NPR’s broadcast booth in 1975, his voice went out over airwaves bounced across antennae nationwide to reach radio listeners. When incoming PBS NewsHour staffer Hari Sreenivasan presents his news, he’ll be anchoring video updates connected across digital platforms to bridge the on-air TV show to Web users worldwide. Starting Dec. 7, Sreenivasan will deliver online video news updates on the NewsHour’s website and anchor the headline summary of each evening’s broadcast edition of the newly retooled program. He comes from a similar spot at ABC News Now, where he anchored the 24-hour online service.
Longtime pubcasting voice Carl Kasell, 75, is retiring after three decades of rolling out of bed at 1:05 a.m. for Morning Edition, according to a statement to staffers at NPR. He’ll stay on as judge and scorekeeper for the popular quiz show Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! NPR noted that his role on the show “turned him from a newsman into a rock star!” He’s been with the program since its inception in January 1998. Kasell has been in broadcasting for 50 years, with NPR since 1975. He’s won several major broadcast awards, including a Peabody he shares with Morning Edition and another he shares with Wait Wait.
Sesame Workshop is making a $7.5 million investment in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education with its new Math is Everywhere initiative, the Workshop announced today. The grant is from PNC Financial Services Group Inc. Math is Everywhere, part of the Workshop’s $100 million Grow Up Great program, will develop multiple media, bilingual (English and Spanish) resources to teach early mathematics skills for young children along with best practices for the adults in their lives, including parents, childcare providers and teachers. The effort is part of President Obama’s “Educate to Innovate” campaign, also announced today, to boost science and math achievement over the next decade.
A Rutgers law professor is getting input from NPR, PBS and CPB, along with independent media-makers and community activists, for a report suggesting ways to develop a blueprint for system’s future “as it makes a transition from public broadcasting to a network of services that range over many platforms,” according to a Rutgers statement. She’s examining the intersection of public media, best practices, governance and public policy. Goodman advised the Obama-Biden transition team on telecommunications and media law, and briefed incoming administration officials on technology innovations. She also is a research fellow at American University’s Center for Social Media. Her current work is funded by a Ford Foundation grant.
Health-care legislation now pending in Congress may be one of the best new sources of support for public-service content, public TV’s lobbyists are saying.
Now a dot-com called Kachingle is starting to roll out an online service designed to make voluntary support easy for even the most Internet-dazed, pledge-averse, marginally committed and low-budgeted Medici to virtually toss coins, or dollars, to reward the online media they love and appreciate.
Winter D. Horton Jr., a leader in public broadcasting since the 1960s, died Nov. 12 in Pasadena, Calif. He was 80. In 1964 Horton was among the founders of Los Angeles public television station KCET. From 1965 until 1970, he served as v.p. for development at National Educational Television, a predecessor of PBS.
Bill Moyers will retire his weekly series at the end of April, at the same time its Friday-night stablemate, Now on PBS, comes to the end of its run. This means not only a reduced presence for one of PBS’s journalistic stars and the possible idling of two prize-winning public-affairs production teams, but also the mixed opportunity/problem of a 90-minute opening on the network’s Friday-night feed.PBS will announce plans in January for its public-affairs lineup to take effect in May, according to a statement from the network last week, and declined to comment on the plans prematurely. Moyers, who is 75, told Current he had planned to retire from the weekly Bill Moyers’ Journal on Dec. 25, but PBS asked him last month to arrange extended funding and keep the program going through April.
Ruth Seymour, who built a successful but insistently idiosyncratic Los Angeles station and Internet music source with go-it-alone intuition, announced this week she’ll retire at the end of February. She’s 74 and will have managed Santa Monica’s KCRW-FM for 32 years. Current’s story.