Quick Takes

CPB Board chooses Ramer as chair, Pryor as vice-chair

By |

At its meeting in New Orleans today (Nov. 16), the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting elected Bruce Ramer (left) as its new chairman, and David Pryor as vice-chairman. Ramer is an attorney and partner at Gang, Tyre, Ramer and Brown in Beverly Hills, Calif., specializing in entertainment and media. He has been active in public television for nearly 20 years, joining the board of KCET in Los Angeles in 1992 and serving as its chair from 2001 to 2003. He was appointed to the CPB board by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate in October 2008.Pryor, who joined the board in November 2006, is a former U.S. Senator, Representative, and Arkansas governor.

Quick Takes

Gov. Barbour proposes end to state aid for Mississippi’s MPB

By |

Two-term Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour called for an end to state subsidies for Mississippi Public Broadcasting in a $5.5 billion fiscal 2012 spending proposal released yesterday. Barbour, who acknowledged at his Nov. 15 news conference that he’s considering a bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, vowed to close the state’s $700 million deficit during his last year as governor, according to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. The budget proposal [PDF] reduces state spending an average of 8 percent, but targets MPB and the state’s arts and library commissions with cuts of 20 percent. Barbour recommends that MPB take a $1.5 million hit in its state appropriation next year, reducing its state aid to just over $6 million.

Quick Takes

FCC chair says current spectrum allocations “still reflect previous era”

By |

“The world has changed, but our spectrum allocations still reflect the previous era,” said Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski Monday (Nov. 15) in a speech to the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners in Atlanta (full remarks here). He told the audience that by opening spectrum to commercial use in the 20th century, “we made it possible for entrepreneurs to create a large and successful over-the-air broadcast TV industry that in turn helped create our extraordinarily successful U.S. content industry, bringing real benefits to our economy and beyond.””Fast forward to today,” he said. “Less than ten percent of us — down from 100 percent — still get our television programming from over-the-air broadcast transmissions.  Instead, people watch TV through cable or satellite.”His appearance came on the same day that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration released its report setting mid-2013 as the target date to begin spectrum reallocation for wireless broadband. Genachowski issued a statement backing the NTIA’s work.

Quick Takes

Fey’s remarks on conservative women edited from Twain show, paper reports

By |

The Washington Post is reporting that PBS edited out controversial remarks made by Tina Fey (left) during her acceptance speech for the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize last Tuesday night (Nov. 9). Here’s what didn’t make it into the Sunday (Nov. 14) broadcast:”And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women — except, of course, those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape ‘kit ‘n’ stuff. But for everybody else, it’s a win-win.

Public Media Policybase

Leaders of Obama’s deficit panel advise: Drop CPB by 2015

By |

Among the 58 possible federal budget savings recommended by the vice chairs of the president’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform are the entire appropriations to CPB, the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program and the Agriculture Department’s facilities grants to rural public stations. That could put public broadcasting in a congressional bull’s-eye, since a number of bigger items on the list would be too politically devastating to okay. Who on either side of the aisle would vote to boost the retirement age to 69, wipe out income-tax deductions for health benefits and mortgage interest or raise the payroll tax? “The current CPB funding level is the highest it has ever been,” the draft says, with no comment on the merits, and notes that erasing the appropriation would save nearly $500 million in 2015 alone. The authors and vice chairs of the panel are former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming, and Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles.

Quick Takes

NTIA sets mid-2013 to begin spectrum reallocation

By |

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) recommended today (Nov. 15) that 115 MHz of spectrum be reallocated for wireless broadband service within the next five years. The Federal Communications Commission will need to identify the spectrum by mid-2011 and begin removing broadcasters by mid-2013, it said in a timetable for identifying and releasing spectrum for wireless broadband. President Barack Obama’s goal is to free up some 500 MHz over the next decade. Public broadcast stations will need to decide whether to participate in the voluntary giveback (Current, Feb.

CPB

Knives sharpened for renewed assault on CPB

By |

Bills to defund public broadcasting, or at least any radio network that fired Juan Williams, are beginning to seem like a real threat since the Nov. 2 midterm election gave Republicans a 60-plus majority in the House and a mandate to take huge bites out of federal spending. Last week the co-chairmen of President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform — assigned to suggest ways to reduce the $13.7 trillion deficit — advised dropping CPB from the budget, along with some vastly bigger federal expenditures that have even sturdier support in Congress (separate story). For conservative talking heads, ending aid to pubcasting would be a high-profile get-tough symbol. And for liberals, giving up CPB could be an attempt to avoid other more widely unpopular cuts.

Quick Takes

Former APTS president Lawson to head up Mobile500 Alliance

By |

John Lawson, former president of the Association of Public Television Stations, is the new executive director of the Mobile500 Alliance, the group announced today (Nov. 15). The Alliance is a broadcasting collective working to accelerate availability of mobile digital television, which allows consumers to see live TV on laptops, tablets, smart phones and other mobile devices via a broadcast signal. Lawson will help secure content arrangements and work with electronics manufacturers to enhance device features.Lawson ran APTS from 2001 to 2008. He was e.v.p. of broadcast company ION Media Networks from 2008 until earlier this year.

Programs/Content

Local, online, news, profitable, sustainable — Which word does not belong with the others?

By |

“The big opportunity — and where the most disruption is — is in local media.”—Vivian Schiller, president, NPR

“I have little doubt in my mind that, whether it’s us or somebody else, [local news] is going to be a very big space in the future.”—Tim Armstrong, chair and c.e.o., AOL

In the front of the room, NPR President Vivian Schiller and AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong are laying out their corporate strategies to almost a thousand online journalists. It’s the lunchtime general session of the Online News Association (ONA) Conference, and the topic is one of the principal challenges for American journalism: how to provide and sustain local news. The distinction between national and local news often gets lost among the gloomy statistics that surface in so many discussions of the news business. Local newspapers have been folding, probably at a faster rate than many people realize. According to Paper Cuts, 171 local newspapers have closed in the three years 2008-2010, resulting in the loss of 2,800 jobs, not counting early retirements. Locally is where disruptive technology has been the most profoundly disruptive.

People

Soon off to war for APTS: new president, Pat Butler

By |

Patrick Butler, public TV’s new chief lobbyist, wrote speeches for President Gerald Ford, was a founder of the Pew Research Center, and helped provide Ken Burns with funding for his acclaimed Civil War documentary series. Butler starts work as president of the Association of Public Television Stations Jan. 1. The APTS leader has represented major media firms in Washington — the Washington Post Co. for 18 years, and before that Times Mirror Co.

Quick Takes

Drool on camera first, retire later

By |

Jim Lehrer, the well-anchored anchor of PBS NewsHour, told the Dallas Morning News that he’ll have to “start drooling on the air” before he’ll retire. Being a journalist, he added, is “a state of mind – some of the youngest people I know in journalism are 76 years old, and some of the oldest are 23. It’s little-boy-and-little-girl work. You hear the fire engine, and you want to know where it’s going. I still want to know.”

Programs/Content

New NPR Chair Dave Edwards to name panel on improving net’s services for radio

By |

Dave Edwards, g.m. of Milwaukee Public Radio (WUWM) for 25 years, who took over this month as chair of the NPR Board, announced a task force that will consider “how we serve the audience through radio programming as well as digital.” The move responds to station leaders’ concerns that NPR’s focus on digital advances has meant that it’s “not spending as much time on radio as we should,” Edwards said. Task force members will “examine the economics of the programming landscape and articulate the role that NPR should play in that space,” he said, building on the recommendations from Station Resource Group’s “Grow the Audience” report and a recent audience study commissioned by NPR Research. “We do a disservice to this work and the American people if we don’t pay attention to that research,” he said at the board meeting. The new chair is recruiting a representative task force, including NPR insiders and outsiders.

Programs/Content

NPR Board hires counsel to probe what went wrong

By |

Reacting to NPR’s abrupt image makeover — from ascendant news organization to partisan punching bag  — the network’s board last week hired an outside firm to investigate the decisions that invited the comedown, the dismissal of news analyst Juan Williams.Dave Edwards, the board’s new chair, announced that Weil, Gotshal & Manges, a 20-office multinational law practice, is leading the internal review initiated last month. Weil is “highly regarded with considerable expertise in governance issues,” Edwards said, shortly after the board unanimously elected him as its new leader.Security guards with metal detectors checked the unusually large number of onlookers at the Nov. 11 meeting at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C. A public session preceded nearly a full day of closed-door board meetings. Just two weeks earlier, after NPR’s dismissal of Williams prompted a display of outrage at Fox News, the network received a bomb-threat letter and turned it over to law enforcement (Current, Nov. 1).

Public Media Policybase

Schiller discusses Juan Williams affair in remarks to NPR Board

By |

NPR President Vivian Schiller’s remarks near the end of NPR Board meeting, Nov. 12, 2010. Over the last three weeks, I’ve heard from a lot of people — we all have — challenging what NPR is, what it does, and why we’re here. We’ve heard assaults on our programming, and on our objectivity. We’ve read some critical listener letters  and comments posted on NPR.org and elsewhere.

Quick Takes

NewsWorks from WHYY finds a fan in run-up to launch

By |

Here’s early praise for WHYY’s NewsWorks from J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism at American University. “I love the whole idea of it,” writes J-Lab Executive Director Jan Schaffer on her blog. “The site has more targeted entry points for community involvement than any site that has crossed my radar.” There’s Snarl, where visitors can complain; Sleuth, for digging into local mysteries; and Sixes, a challenge to sum up news stories in six words or fewer. She also likes its Flickr photostream “Eye on …

Quick Takes

Mitchell will head NFCB AfAm Radio services

By |

Doug Mitchell, the news producer who staffed NPR’s Next Generation Radio internship and training programs for years, will be project manager for the National Federation of Community Broadcasters’ CPB-funded African American Public Radio Station Services, NFCB President Maxie Jackson announced Wednesday.  After Mitchell lost his job in NPR’s mass layoff in 2009, Public Radio News Directors gave Mitchell its Leo C. Lee Award, recognizing his work encouraging young people, particularly those of color, to get into public radio. CPB documents originally named 28 stations eligible for services under the grant, but the corporation later redefined eligible grantees to comply with recent federal court rulings.

Quick Takes

NPR retains outside firm to lead review of Williams dismissal

By |

After the mediasphere firestorm and political attack over last month’s firing of news analyst Juan Williams, critics of the controversial decision by NPR management were no-shows at this morning’s public session of the NPR Board at the network’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.NPR, which received a bomb threat after Fox News host Bill O’Reilly denounced the Williams firing and declared that he was taking NPR down, had security guards checking visitors with a metal detector and inspecting their bags. Those who wished to address the board were asked to sign-in, but no one did. In his last remarks as NPR Board chair, lay director Howard Stevenson said: “Nobody is thankful for where we are, but the past is prologue, and now we have to look to the future. I tend to wish my term had ended two weeks ago.”Milwaukee Public Radio’s Dave Edwards succeeded Stevenson as chair in a unanimous vote of the board. “I am very proud to sit as chair of this board at this table,” Edwards said, after taking the gavel.

Quick Takes

NPR finally “useful” to conservatives, columnist writes

By |

In his column today (Nov. 11), Washington Post columnist George Will says that “NPR’s self-immolation” in firing Juan Williams for his public comments on Muslims is “icing on conservatism’s 2010 cake.”He goes on: “From its inception in 1967, as a filigree on Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which in 1970 begat NPR, has been a solution in search of a problem. Forty-three years later, in the context of today’s information cornucopia, ‘public’ broadcasting — its advocates flinch from candidly calling it government broadcasting — is even sillier than would be a Corporation for Public Newspapers.””But in 2010,” Will added, “NPR became useful. It became a conservative answer to the liberals’ challenge, ‘Where precisely would you begin cutting government?'”

Quick Takes

Obama’s deficit commissioners advise ending all CPB, PTFP support by 2015

By |

The co-chairmen of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, created by President Obama in February to help balance the budget, are recommending an end to CPB funding as of 2015, according to a draft report released today (Nov. 10). The report also advises zeroing out the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program (PTFP) and the Agriculture Department’s pubcasting grant program. “The current CPB funding level is the highest it has ever been,” the draft says, and cutting it would save nearly $500 million in 2015.The 50-page explanation of proposals insists that “everything must be on the table” for cuts or elimination.Commission co-chairs are Erskine Bowles, former President Clinton’s chief of staff, and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming. Bowles, University of North Carolina president, was recently involved in the controversial decision by UNC-TV, licensed to the state university system, to turn over reporting documents to the state legislature (Current, July 26, 2010).The commission’s final report, due Dec.

Quick Takes

Science journalism awards for pubcasting

By |

Pubcasters topped three of four electronic journalism categories in the 2010 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards announced today. NPR won for its reporting on the Gulf Oil spill; Nova ScienceNow, a series produced at WGBH in Boston, for a segment on memory research; and Chedd-Angier-Lewis Productions for their PBS series The Human Spark, produced in association with New York’s WNET. Certificates of Merit were awarded to Oregon Public Broadcasting and Chicago’s WBEZ. The awards, presented annually by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, honor professional journalists for distinguished reporting for a general audience.