Quick Takes

Light weekend reading from “Grow the Audience”

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As a follow-up to its recent report on public radio audience growth strategies, Station Resource Group asked 14 leading pubcasting and public media experts to react to its recommendations on new media. Which of the many activities proposed to advance pubradio in the “networked environment” should be top priority? In Proposals for Investments in New Media (PDF), an analysis and report on what the 14 respondents told SRG, two initiatives appear to have “relatively broad support”: developing a flexible local/national Internet structure for distributing all pubradio content, and exploring a coordinated online fundraising system. If you haven’t already read the final set (PDF) of recommendations from the CPB-backed Grow the Audience project, the section on new media–which is the focus of this particular discussion–begins on page 43.

Quick Takes

CPB issues affirmative action report

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The CPB Board earlier this week approved its FY08-09 affirmative action report and FY10 plan (PDF). According to the document, during FY09, total employees increased from 100 to 114; 12 staffers left during that year. Of the 26 employees hired, 13 are women and 10 are minorities. In FY 2009 CPB also hired five student interns: one male and four females, and three of the five were minorities. That brings the total staff breakdown for 2009 to non-minority, 61 percent; minorities, 39 percent; males, 45 percent; and females, 55 percent.

Quick Takes

President Obama congratulates Sesame Street on its 40 years

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President Barack Obama has released a minute-long video praising Sesame Street on its 40th anniversary year — or, as he says, “this video is brought to you by the number 40.” He congratulates the show “as a parent, and as the president,” and recalls watching it with his younger sister. His two girls as well “learned a great deal” from the show. “There are many adults who can stand to learn again the lessons Sesame Street offers: Compassion, kindness and respect for our differences,” the president noted.

Quick Takes

Goldsmith Prize finalists include Frontline producer

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Frontline’s Tom Jennings is part of a team of journalists that are finalists for the prestigious Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, the Harvard Kennedy School announced today. The investigation, titled “Law and Disorder,” revealed details of police shootings of at least 10 persons in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In addition to Jennings, reporters included Gordon Russell, Laura Maggi and Brendan McCarthy of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, A.C. Thompson of public interest journalism site ProPublica, along with support from the Nation Institute, a progressive think tank supporting freedom of the press. The winner of six project finalists will be announced at a March 23 ceremony at Harvard. The award is intended, according to the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, to “recognize and encourage journalism which promotes more effective and ethical conduct of government, the making of public policy, or the practice of politics by disclosing excessive secrecy, impropriety and mismanagement, or instances of particularly commendable government performance.”

Quick Takes

Public broadcasting obituaries

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Greg Shanley, 49, longtime news director, producer and show host for Iowa Public Radio, died Tuesday night at University of Iowa Hospitals in Iowa City, according to the Des Moines Register. He was hired in 1987 as a producer/reporter, and served as local host of Morning Edition before moving into the director post. Other obituaries in Current: Carlos Sena of KSUT in Colorado; Robben Fleming, former CPB Board president; and Lillie Herndon, who served on the boards of PBS and CPB.

Quick Takes

NewHour’s annotated version of Obama speech called “remarkable”

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PBS NewsHour’s “Annotated State of the Union” is being praised by the Poynter Institute’s Al Tompkins as a “remarkable analysis.” He’s the Group Leader for Broadcasting and Online at the institute, which is a school for journalists and media teachers. The feature breaks the speech into clips with links to resources for people who want to learn more. “It’s pretty brilliant,” Tompkins writes. Anne Bell, spokesperson for the show, said analysis by Mark Shields and David Brooks on YouTube also received more than 22,000 views.

Quick Takes

Haiti telethon, carried by PBS, has raised $66 million so far

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Relief organizations have raised a total of more than $525 million for victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. As of Wednesday, the figures from just a few: A worldwide telethon last Friday, “Help for Haiti Now,” raised $66 million; it was carried by a multitude of channels including PBS affiliates. The American Red Cross received about $185 million, some $29 million of that via text messages. And Convio, which provides software to charities, processed more than $195 million online.

Quick Takes

SRG, AGC partnering to formulate editorial integrity guidelines

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Over the next year, the Station Resource Group and the Affinity Group Coalition will be soliciting input from both inside and outside the pubcasting system for its project, “Editorial Integrity for Public Broadcasters in the 21st Century.” Tom Thomas, co-CEO of the SRG, and Ted Krichels, g.m. of Penn State Public Broadcasting, are organizing the effort. The two told the CPB Board at its meeting earlier this week that the project, expected to take about a year, is just getting under way. Both TV and radio pubcasters will be involved, as well as experts and others both inside and outside the system. This will be a “station-centric” undertaking, Krichels said.

Quick Takes

Webinars upcoming on broadband stimulus applications

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CPB and the National Center for Media Engagement are sponsoring two webinars in February to advise stations applying for broadband stimulus funding. Joanne Hovis, president of Columbia Telecommunications Corp. and an authority on community broadband topics, will offer background information on the availability of funds, explain the application requirements and answer questions from participants to help them develop and refine their applications. Sign up here for the 2 p.m. Eastern meeting on Feb. 4, and here for Feb.

Quick Takes

New report recommends increased pubcasting funding

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Congress should not only increase money to pubcasting but also use its funding mechanism as a possible model to funnel financial support to news operations, according to a new report from the USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Geoffrey Cowan, one of the co-authors, is director of the school’s Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, as well as a past CPB board member; David Westphal is a longtime print and wire service editor, heading up McClatchy’s Washington bureau for more than a decade. They point out the value of pubcasting: “News coverage on public radio and TV has the highest trust ratings of any American media. . .

Quick Takes

Dump CPB, save “a quick $420 million,” says Washington Times

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CPB has become “a needless drain on the public coffers that has outlived its usefulness,” writes the Washington Times in an editorial today. Its reasoning: Pubcasting was born of the need to provide alternative programming to only three networks available in 1967; now there are a multitude of channels both on TV and the Internet. The newspaper cites demographics of viewers (mainly white, educated and older) that “reinforce the argument that public broadcasting is an upper-class subsidy. It’s highly doubtful that the urban American underclass is rushing home to catch Masterpiece Theater and the best of British comedy.” It suggests turning Sesame Workshop, “one of the most lucrative franchises to emerge from the public broadcasting system,” into a for-profit publicly traded corporation to support pubcasting.

People

Lillie Herndon, 93

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Lillie Edens Herndon, who served on the boards of CPB and PBS, died Dec. 3, 2010, at her home in Columbia, S.C. She was 93. Herndon’s CPB appointment was one of seven by President Richard Nixon. Five of those were in August 1974, just two days before Nixon turned over power to Vice President Gerald Ford. Herndon also served on the CPB Board under presidents Ford and Carter.

People

Robben Fleming, 93

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Robben Wright Fleming, 93, a former president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and of the University of Michigan, died Jan. 11, 2010, in Ann Arbor, Mich. Fleming’s CPB Board chair during his stint in Washington, Lillie Herndon, died just over a month earlier. During his CPB tenure from 1979 to ’81, he secured Walter Annenberg’s original pledge of $150 million to support a wave of college-level video telecourses commissioned by the Annenberg/CPB Project and distributed through public TV. [Longtime CPB executive David Stewart wrote that Fleming was one of CPB’s best presidents — “the first and last to bring a natural dignity, as well as an intellectual grasp of what the position required.”]

In his 1996 book, Tempests into Rainbows: Managing Turbulence, Fleming wrote: “The most delicate part of achieving success in administering a huge grant .

Quick Takes

Commercials on IPTV? Ah, no

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Peter Morrill, g.m. of IdahoPTV, appeared before the joint state finance-appropriation committee today in an attempt to persuade members against phasing out all funding over the next four years. One question, from Sen. Jeff Siddoway, a Republican from Terreton: Why doesn’t IPTV just sell commercials instead of taking state money? Because federal law prohibits that, Morrill explained.

Quick Takes

Forget mobile DTV, Proffitt says

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Pubmedia blogger and former pubcaster John Proffitt disagrees — strongly — with the the support of CPB, PBS, APTS and NETA for mobile DTV. “All momentum is in the opposite direction,” he writes, referencing Current’s story. “You seriously think that just by creating yet another distribution channel — one that competes with existing popular channels — millenials will suddenly get interested in news and public affairs programs? . .

Quick Takes

KCSM fundraiser falls far short; station faces sale

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Dual licensee KCSM in San Mateo, Calif., has raised only $30,000 of its $1 million goal to stave off being sold, according to the San Jose Mercury News. Tonight, the San Mateo County Community College District board is considering whether a plan to lease digital streams will generate enough revenue to sustain the station. The strategy could generate $750,000 to $1.3 million a year. The 1.5 million watt station broadcasts to San Mateo, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and is carried on 60 cable systems. Last year it dropped PBS membership to save money.

Quick Takes

Pubcasting funding down, “more cuts, some severe” in FY11

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PubTV funding is down $200 million and radio is down $38 million, the CPB Board heard at today’s meeting at headquarters in Washington. Mark Erstling, senior veep for system development, and Bruce Theriault, senior veep, radio, presented the figures providing comparisons between actual FY08 totals and FY09 estimates. Also discussed: Waning state support (see this week’s Current for details). Board member Bruce Ramer expressed concern about community service grants being tied to the amount of state funding a station receives. “Maybe state funds should not be included in the formula in the same way that federal funds aren’t,” Ramer suggested.

Quick Takes

Seymour sings her own song in farewell interview

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KCRW’s Ruth Seymour offers some advice to her yet-to-be-named successor in next month’s edition of Los Angeles Magazine: stay focused on creating great programming for radio listeners. “[T]he reason people listen is that they’re intrigued or fascinated or interested in the content,” she says in an extended Q & A to be published on the eve of her retirement. “That’s the most important thing to remember, and it is the thing that increasingly concerns me—that independent producers, the people who are the creative types, are marginalized today in favor of the technology people. It’s a real failure not to understand that the business you’re in is programming.” NPR itself would benefit from shifting its focus back to creating new programming, she adds.