Current (https://current.org/2010/03/page/2/)
On March 14, Larry Sidman, president of APTS, announced his departure. On March 24, John Lawson, former president of APTS, announced his departure from ION Media Networks. The timing has some in the system wondering — could Lawson be returning to the APTS helm? Not so, Lawson tells Current: “I can confirm that I will not be a candidate for the CEO position at APTS.”
Michael Rosenblum, former WNET worker and now “on the cutting edge of the digital videojournalist revolution” (he’s worked for BBC, Voice of America, New York Times television) is vehemently proclaiming that he no longer contributes to PBS. He’s particularly annoyed — well, far past annoyed — by Thirteen’s forthcoming Need to Know pubaffairs show (Current, March 22, 2010). One problem, he writes: “Three years! The show has been in the planning phase for three years! .
At the Movies, the latest incarnation of WTTW’s PBS show Sneak Previews, is ending due to low ratings. Disney-ABC Domestic Television and ABC Media Productions made the announcement today. The show lasted 24 seasons, according to the Chicago Tribune’s media writer Phil Rosenthal. WTTW first paired Gene Siskel, who was reviewing films for the Tribune and the local CBS affiliate, with Pulitzer Prize-winner Roger Ebert, for Opening Soon … at a Theater Near You in 1975; about three years later it went nationwide on PBS as Sneak Previews.
After more than three years of task force analysis, a PBS Board Nominating and Corporate Governance committee will recommend to the full board that it continue “one station, one vote” representation. The alternative would be giving large stations more votes on the PBS Board. Chair Jennifer Lawson told the panel today at headquarters in Arlington, Va., that data from professional director elections was tracked to see if there would have been different results with weighted voting, and how that would have affected composition of the board. Research showed that votes weighted by station size would not have had significant impact on the board composition; 3 percent of elections would have been affected. Lawson added that station surveys indicate lack of support for weighted voting, and a nonprofit governance expert discouraged weighted voting.
WLIU 88.3FM is now ensconced in new Southampton, NY, studios, with only three hours of dead air while transmitting equipment was move, reports the Southampton Press. The station moved from the Stony Brook Southampton college campus, its home for the last 20 years. The university agreed in October to sell the station to Peconic Public Broadcasting (Current, Oct. 13, 2009) but Peconic has run into challenges along the way (Current, Aug. 24, 2009; Feb.
CPB is about to announce funding for five new media start-ups to be operated by public broadcasting stations and for an NPR-led project to begin planning a shared web platform for public media’s digital content. The projects, to be unveiled at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. this morning, aim to build pubcasting’s newsgathering capacity and create a more efficient and flexible technical system for distributing content.Twenty-seven different pubcasting stations will collaborate in creating the five local journalism centers; CPB is seeking proposals to establish two additional LJCs in coming months. At each center, multimedia teams of journalists will produce reporting on topics of particular interest to that region. The LJC for the Plains States will report on agribusiness and farming practices, for example; in Upstate New York, the LJC will report on economic development efforts focussed on innovative technology.”The Local Journalism Centers will enhance public media’s ability to meet the information needs of local communities at a time when access to high quality, original reporting is declining,” said CPB President Patricia Harrison. Over two years, CPB and participating stations will invest $10.5 million in building the centers, with the expectation that each will become self-supporting when grant funding ends.The largest LJC will be located in the Southwest, where 7 stations will collaborate in building a bilingual reporting team to report on cultural shifts in the region, including Latino, Native American and border issues.
In a message on its website, Louisiana Public Broadcasting tells visitors it may have to cut local programming, lay off 20 percent of its staff and possibly even “go off the air one or two days a week,” possibly Monday and Friday, as it comes up against state funding cuts. The pubcaster is facing a $656,000 reduction before the end of June and a potential $2 million cut beginning in July. “It’s not anything we want to do. It’s not our choice,” Joe Traigle, LPB Foundation chairman, told the Advocate newspaper on Tuesday. The reporter got readers’ attention by pointing out that no programming on Mondays and Fridays would mean — gasp!
CPB’s announcement of a “major journalism initiative” on Thursday, March 25 will be streamed live from the Newseum in Washington, D.C., beginning at 10 a.m. ET. CPB President Patricia Harrison will be joined by top execs from PBS and NPR. After the announcement, a panel of pubcasting journalists will discuss public media’s role in newsgathering. CPB’s funding of five “local journalism centers,” expected for months, will support more in-depth reporting by public radio stations on a regional basis.
All-classical KING-FM in Seattle, one of the few remaining commercial classical stations in the country, plans to convert into a noncommercial, listener-supported public radio operation by July 2011. The station cited changes in media technology and declining ad revenues yesterday in announcing the change, which first must be approved by the IRS and the FCC. The station has suffered under Arbitron’s new Portable People Meter ratings methodology, according to the Seattle Times. KING-FM is operated by Beethoven, a nonprofit owned by three Seattle arts organizations; over the years its revenues have been converted into dividends for the Seattle Opera, the Seattle Symphony and the Arts Fund. “That vision worked well for a time, but the handwriting is on the wall,” said Christopher Bayley, board president.
John Lawson, former president of the Association of Public Television Stations, is leaving ION Media Networks to relaunch his consulting firm. He ran Convergence Services Inc. from 1993 to 2001, when he accepted the head position at APTS (Current, March 26, 2001). He oversaw the lobbying org until 2008, then departed for ION (Current, Feb. 19, 2008). Convergence Services will provide consulting for the digital media industry “at the intersection of business, technology and policy,” Lawson said in a statement he distributed to pubcasting execs yesterday.
Both chambers of the Minnesota State Legislature have voted to restore general fund appropriations for public broadcasting, almost completely rolling back a proposal by Gov. Tim Pawlenty to zero-out $2.015 million in public media subsidies. Differences between House and Senate bills are yet to be reconciled, reports MinnPost’s David Brauer, but the largest cut proposed for pubcasting totals $161,000 over the biennial budget cycle.
Beginning later this week, Frontline, NPR’s Planet Money and PBS NewsHour are partnering across platforms to report on post-earthquake life in Haiti. Planet Money will look at what new economies are emerging from the rubble in Port-au-Prince. That piece will develop into several Web-original Frontline video reports, TV segments on PBS NewsHour and companion radio on Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Planet Money’s podcast. The project culminates in Frontline’s broadcast next Tuesday, March 30, of “The Quake,” examining the world’s response to the catastrophe. Featured in that program are interviews including former President Bill Clinton, special envoy to Haiti; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; and Dr. Paul Farmer, deputy special envoy to Haiti.
In the last three months of 2009, viewers had their eyes on both TV and the Internet — at the same time — for three and a half hours a month, up 35 percent from the previous quarter, according to the latest news from Nielsen’s Three Screen Report.“The rise in simultaneous use of the web and TV gives the viewer a unique on-screen and off-screen relationship with TV programming,” said Nielsen spokesman Matt O’Grady. “The initial fear was that Internet and mobile video and entertainment would slowly cannibalize traditional TV viewing, but the steady trend of increased TV viewership alongside expanded simultaneous usage argues something quite different.”
Comic recreation of a gripping behind-the-scenes drama playing itself out at the Federal Communications Commission, animated using Xtranormal technology.
The stars of TV’s very first reality series, PBS’s An American Family, are reliving their 1973 lives as consultants on Cinema Verite, a behind-the-scenes look at the making of their family’s groundbreaking doc. The Hollywood Reporter says that the film, written by David Seltzer (The Omen), will be directed by Shari Springer Berman and Bob Pulcini (American Splendor). HBO updated the family’s story in 1983, and in 2003 PBS aired Lance Loud!: A Death in an American Family, which focused on the family during his final months. WNET rebroadcast the 1973 doc in 1990 (Current, Nov. 5, 1990).
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps advises Congress to move carefully in reclaiming spectrum from broadcasters because of the potential harm to a diversity of voices, reports Broadcasting & Cable. His comments come in his testimony prepared for a Thursday House Energy & Commerce Committee oversight hearing on the National Broadband Plan (Current, March 22 issue). “I will be urging great caution,” he tells the committee, “because of the possibly detrimental effects of reallocating spectrum from those stations currently using it to serve diverse audiences. Every local voice that disappears runs against the grain of localism, diversity and competition.” The Plan recommends that Congress set up a spectrum auction to gain bandwidth for the growing number of mobile devices.
Rick Cohen of the Nonprofit Quarterly, who blogs on the intersection of nonprofs, politics and policy, asks the question: “When is a nonprofit organization sort of like a public agency for the purpose of levels of transparency and disclosure beyond what all nonprofits (above a specific threshold annual revenue level) provide to the Internal Revenue Service in their Form 990s?” The New Hampshire State Supreme Court recently ruled unanimously that nonprofit quasi-public corporations, such as the Local Government Center in Concord (providing advocacy support for municipal governments) are subject to that state’s Right to Know, or “sunshine,” law, reports the Nashua Telegraph. A justice wrote that while the Center’s workers aren’t public employees in a strict sense, their wages are paid mainly by tax dollars and much of their work is to benefit taxpayers. But the New Hampshire House just voted down legislation would have defined nonprofits as public agencies if they generated more than $100,000 in annual revenue and received at least half their funding from the state or local government, according to the Eagle Tribune.
David Fanning, e.p. of Frontline, discussed the WGBH program’s evolving use of the Web Aug. 23, 2010, in accepting the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism at Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. At the same time, the Center honored the winner and finalists for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. One of the four finalists was a reporting project, including a Frontline doc, “Law & Disorder.” The film about white vigilante activities in New Orleans was prepared in collaboration with ProPublica, the Nation Institute and the New Orleans Times-Picayne.
The host of Latino USA for all of its 17 years, Maria Hinojosa, is now its proprietor, too, along with producer Sean Collins, her partner in a new media company in the digital cloud. Futuro Media Group, announced this month, starts off highly virtual and will get moreso. Hinojosa records her reports in a soundproofed closet in Harlem. Collins, her e.p. for five years and a former producer of All Things Considered, works in his hometown of St. Louis.
Americans’ response to the post-earthquake crisis in Haiti demonstrated the power of technology-enabled charity, but public broadcasters who have tried raising funds from mobile givers say it’s been a money-losing proposition so far. A handful of public stations have tried various ways of soliciting donations by text messaging. Philadelphia’s WXPN asked attendees of last summer’s XPoNential Music Festival to chip in $5 each via text message. In San Francisco, KQED made appeals during campaigns tied to Earth Day programming and 2009 year-end giving. Twin Cities Public Television made pitches during pledge drives, animated 10-second spots and e-newsletters.