Current (https://current.org/2010/12/page/3/)
Diverse Voices Project IV, offering up to $100,000 in co-production funding per documentary project, is accepting applications. The fund, a P.O.V. initiative backed by by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, fosters emerging and diverse doc filmmakers with production support and mentoring. Deadline is Jan. 14.
NPR’s use of an outside blog comment moderation firm has come in handy — particularly in the days after the Juan Williams firing in October, when “we had tens of thousands of comments coming in that week,” NPR Senior Strategist Andy Carvin tells the American Journalism Review. ICUC Moderation Services now monitors all blog posts. “NPR was forced to take defensive action after barrages of inflammatory posts by trolls and spammers polluted its discussion boards and threatened to become a persistent problem,” as AJR reports. Previously, interns and NPR staffers deleted offensive posts. But the online comments have become so plentiful that they simply couldn’t keep up.
NPR’s Senior National Correspondent Linda Wertheimer has decided to move to to half-time status in 2011. She will continue as a substitute host of Morning Edition and other NPR news programs and as an anchor for special events, including Congressional hearings. A memo to stations noted that “Ms. Wertheimer emphasizes she does not expect to spend more time with her family.” (Image: NPR)
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced today (Dec. 15) $2 million in grants to fund mobile DTV work at stations in 20 markets by the end of 2011. The funding will help stations pay for equipment and installation to broadcast pubTV content to mobile and handheld devices. Public television and commercial broadcasters are all working toward a national mobile video service. The deadline for a second round of grants is June 30, 2011.
Juan Williams, the news analyst who landed a $2 million contract with Fox News after his dismissal from NPR, has signed a two-book deal with Crown Publishing, the New York Times reports. His first book, to be released next summer, will “focus on free speech and the growing difficulty in America of speaking out on sensitive topics.” The second book doesn’t have a publication date, but will “examine the changing face of America since the time of the Founding Fathers,” as seen by “noteworthy individuals who have helped to expand on and transform our ideas of what it means to be an American.” Terms of the book contract have not been disclosed.
Big Bird visited Beijing today (Dec. 14) to help kick off a new outreach to produce and distribute emergency response and preparedness content for children and their families in China. “A flood came through Sesame Street and destroyed my nest,” Big Bird said. “It was really scary. But the good thing is that it didn’t hurt any of my friends and they all helped me make a new home.
Jennifer Lawson has returned to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, this time as senior vice president of television and digital video content. Lawson, currently g.m. of WHUT/Howard University Television in Washington, D.C., will work with PBS, pubTV stations and independent producers to develop content. She recently ended her term as vice chair of the PBS board of directors.Lawson originally was hired by CPB in 1980, working as associate director of the fund’s drama and arts program and later television program fund director. She left for PBS in 1989 as executive vice president for national programming and promotion (Current, October 1989), back when Congress ordered CPB to work more closely with PBS to determine how to improve the national production funding process.
Movie critic Roger Ebert has Tweeted that his new show, Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies is being picked up in 192 markets and the Armed Forces Network. Debut is January.
Two public radio stations are receiving their first Community Service Grants from CPB. KCNP-FM in Ada, Okla., licensed to the Chickasaw Nation, gets $104,813. It began broadcasting in 2009. It covers the central and southeastern regions of the state with tribal, local and national news and issues; cultural programs; and music and talk shows. WSGE-FM, in Dallas, N.C., signed on in 1980.
The first general manager of Hawaii Public Radio, Cliff Elben, died Dec. 11 in Honolulu. He was 86.Eblen arrived in Hawaii in January 1966 as program manager for ETV, Hawaii’s first public television station, which launched that April. That ultimately became KHET-TV, now PBS Hawaii. Eblen and ETV colleague Bob Miller often discussed Hawaii’s need for a pubradio station, so Elben quit KHET-TV in 1980 to give that a go. KHPR-FM, with a startup budget of $7,000, signed on in November 1981.Eblen also was active with Hawaii theater groups and played a recurring role as an FBI agent in early episodes of the original Hawaii Five-0.
On average every month, 170 million Americans go to television, radio, online services and in-person events offered by public media. That crowd amounts to more than half of the country’s population.Surprised? That’s just what the slogan writers are hoping for.The line “170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting,” debuting today (Dec. 13) on a new website — 170MillionAmericans.org — is intended to help defend public broadcasting from potentially dire funding cuts looming in the new year.The site is sponsored by nine national public TV and radio organizations and co-managed by two of them, the Association for Public Television Stations and Minnesota-based American Public Media.And the big audience statistic reveals for the first time a comprehensive estimate of public media users across all platforms. Public radio’s Station Resource Group spent months, long before this campaign was devised, gathering the data and subtracting people in overlapping audiences who could be counted more than once.See this week’s Current for the story of how one big number grew into an even bigger advocacy campaign.
Some 140 projects are listed in Current’s annual Pipeline survey, including its one-time addendum in December. Among the programs are noninstructional public TV projects one hour or longer in various stages of planning, fundraising and production that will debut nationally in January 2010 and beyond. For space reasons we excluded sequels and episodes of ongoing series that are 60 minutes or shorter. Winter ’11
After the Hunt with Chef John Folse
Producing organization: Louisiana Public Broadcasting. Distributor: APT.
In June 2007, when conservative publisher Rupert Murdoch purchased the venerable Wall Street Journal, actor and philanthropist Paul Newman was upset. Wary of Murdoch’s reputation for buying up and sensationalizing news outlets, Newman sensed trouble ahead for American newspapers. Soon after, Newman called his local PBS member station, Connecticut Public Television. He had a positive relationship with CPTV: President Jerry Franklin says the station once received a donation check written on Newman’s personal account for $300,000. But this time, Newman had a programming idea — and with it, a stunning offer.
Idaho Public Television has hired Megan Griffin as its new director of development.She will manage a team of 10, including director of membership, director of major giving and director of corporate sponsorship.From 2005 to ’09 she was a program director and director of development at the Children’s Home Society of Idaho, where she created a program that raised more than $3 million.
KPCC President Bill Davis will chair a task force of public radio programmers, researchers and news execs analyzing programming opportunities and economics for NPR, Board Chair Dave Edwards announced today. “[T]here are some dayparts that have traditionally underachieved in their ability to attract an audience,” Edwards wrote in his Dec. 13 memo to NPR member stations. “The economics of new program development also remain a challenge.” Another role for the task force will be to articulate “the role that NPR and stations can play” in programming opportunities.”This work will be very helpful in guiding the NPR Board on future investments in programming,” Edwards wrote.
The controversial online TV provider ivi, which sells worldwide access to broadcast signals, announced today (Dec. 13) that it has added Chicago channels to its lineup. A rep for ivi told Current that the new stations include pubcaster WTTW/Channel 11. ivi, which launched in September, captures and encrypts TV stations’ signals and distributes them through a web app to subscribers. It says stations are paid for the content through the U.S. Copyright Office.
Should NPR have accepted a $1.8 million reporting grant from the Open Society Foundations, given the antagonism that political conservatives and Fox News has for their founder, philanthropist and financier George Soros? “In retrospect, knowing what I now know, would I rather that the first money had come from somewhere else? Probably yes,” says Oregon Public Broadcasting President and NPR Board member Steve Bass in Politico’s lengthy Dec. 12 report on how the grant exacerbated the controversy over NPR’s dismissal of news analyst Juan Williams. Politico’s Keach Hagey reveals that the grant, which backs start-up of an NPR news initiative to strengthen enterprise reporting in state capitols, was approved in mid-August after months of discussions. “The Open Society grant came to NPR at a time when Soros was trying to cement his role as the definitive bogeyman of the right,” Hagey writes.
Current is likely to have a new publisher in January — the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C.
Details of the contract transferring the print/web publication remain in negotiation, but the governing boards of the university and of Current’s longtime publisher, New York’s WNET, have approved the deal in principle. Approval by the WNET Board, Dec. 9 [2010], prompted coverage in a New York Times blog Dec. 12. WNET accepted responsibility for publishing Current in 1983, after the collapse of the paper’s founding parent, the National Association of Educational Broadcasters.
The big audience statistic reveals for the first time a comprehensive estimate of public media users across all platforms.
Current is likely to have a new publisher in January — the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C.
Details of the contract to transfer the print/web publication remain in negotiation, but the governing boards of the university and Current’s longtime publisher, New York’s WNET, have approved the deal in principle. The unanimous approval by the WNET Board, Dec. 9, prompted a story in a New York Times blog Dec. 12. WNET has published Current since 1983, for most of its 30 years.