Current (https://current.org/2011/01/page/3/)
Conservative House Republicans today (Jan. 20) presented a proposal to cut $2.5 trillion in federal funding over the next 10 years. The “Spending Reduction Act of 2011” would slash money to 55 agencies and programs, including zeroing out CPB, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. “House leaders are unlikely to adopt such radical cuts,” according to the Washington Post.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) has come to public broadcasting’s defense in a piece on the Hill’s Congress Blog today (Jan. 20). “National public broadcasting is very cost effective and an excellent example of a public-private partnership maximizing value for the taxpayer,” he writes. “The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) annually receives around .0001% of the federal budget. Cutting CPB’s funding would save Americans less than half a cent a day,” and would result in the loss of of PBS, “considered by the public to be the second-best use of taxpayer dollars, outranked only by defense spending.”
Here’s the next best thing to being there: NETA has posted videos of many of the sessions.
Details are out on the new Masterpiece Trust, a funding initiative to mark the 40th anniversary of the PBS icon series. For $25,000, donors receive on-screen recognition on at least three programs, and part of their gift goes to their local PBS station. That part of the donation “would be determined jointly between the station and WGBH,” Masterpiece spokesperson Ellen Dockser told Current, “by considering the station’s involvement, the donor’s intent, and the goal of generating additional support for Masterpiece content.” More than $200,000 has been raised so far. The program is aiming for 40 donors, one for each year.
The Ford Foundation today (Jan. 19) announced a five-year, $50 million project to help fund social-issue filmmakers. JustFilms will invest $10 million a year over the next five years to back movie makers who often lack funding, the foundation said in a release. Heading up JustFilms will be respected documentarian Orlando Bagwell. Partnering are the CPB-backed ITVS and the Sundance Institute.
WNKU, a Triple A public radio station broadcasting into Cincinnati on 89.7 FM, will triple its potential audience with the purchase of two commercial country stations in Ohio, WPFB in Middletown and WPAY, Portsmouth. The $6.75 million deal was signed today, according to Public Radio Capital’s Erik Langner, who brokered the deal for WNKU. The sale will be financed through tax-exempt bonds to be issued by WNKU licensee Northern Kentucky University. “Year after year, the number one complaint we hear is in regards to signal strength and reach,” said Chuck Miller, g.m. “WNKU will no longer be Greater Cincinnati’s best kept secret.” While FCC approval of the license transfer is pending, WNKU will begin programming the stations on Feb.
Classical Public Radio Network, based at KUSC in Los Angeles, has organized a new pubradio nonprofit to operate San Francisco’s 60-year-old classical stalwart, formerly commercial KDFC. In the multistation deal announced yesterday, KDFC maintains its air personalities and relationships with the San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Opera. It moves to two new frequencies, while its former owner, Entercom Communications, redeploys its old 102.1 MHz signal to simulcast its classic rock station, KUFX in San Jose, which will move to S.F.The Los Angeles station acquired two frequencies for the new nonprofit — 90.3 MHz, formerly college station KUSF at the private University of San Francisco, and 89.9 MHz, formerly Christian music outlet KNDL, from Howell Mountain Broadcasting Co. After FCC approval of the deals, the classical station’s top priority will be to extend the reach of its new signals, which will be weaker, especially in the South Bay, Program Director Bill Lueth told the San Francisco Chronicle.Volunteers and staffers working at KUSF were surprised to learn of the sale yesterday. Edna Barron, a board operator, told Current the university had not offered student groups an opportunity to buy the channel.
The “massive cuts” proposed to Kansas public broadcasting will hit Smoky Hills Public TV and High Plains Public Radio the worst, reports the Hays Daily News. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback proposed the reductions when in his 2012 budget last week. The state is facing a $550 million revenue shortfall. He wants to eliminate some $1.6 million in state aid typically budgeted pubcasting. The two stations in western Kansas receive a total of $750,000.
It’s official: As part of the Comcast-NBC merger approved yesterday (Jan. 18), some NBC stations will enter into cooperative arrangements with locally focused nonprofit news organizations, as Comcast had promised in December. By next January, at least five of the 10 owned-and-operated NBC stations will have inked cooperative arrangements with locally focused nonprofit news orgs, to be known as Online News Partners, that will provide reporting on issues of concern to each station’s market or region . On Jim Romenesko’s Poynter blog today, several heads of nonprof journalism ventures say this will validate their efforts, and, they hope, prompt more funding. The FCC said in a release that Comcast has voluntarily agreed to “safeguard the continued accessibility and signal quality of PEG [public, educational and governmental] channels on its cable television systems and introduce new on demand and online platforms for PEG content.”
Tucson-based NPR correspondent Ted Robbins and Scott Simon, host of Weekend Edition Saturday, recall their reactions to erroneous NPR newscasts reporting the death of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on Jan. 8. Both NPR journalists heard directly from friends and family members of the Arizona lawmaker, they tell Ombudsman Alicia Shepard, and had to explain on what basis NPR was reporting her death. The newscasts were based on inadequate sourcing; both Robbins and Simon testify to the “real, excruciating pain” caused by the mistake. When he learned the report was wrong, Simon called the Giffords family member who reached out to him.
New Hampshire Public Television’s funding will be debated Wednesday (Jan. 19) in a legislative hearing, the Foster’s Daily Democrat reports. A bill has been introduced that would ban the state’s university system from using state money to fund public TV. NHPTV President Peter Frid said 31 percent of its $8.8 million budget comes to it via that funding. Without that state support, Frid said, it would be impossible for the channel to function.
The impact of digital tools on charitable giving and the outlook for future mobile giving will be studied by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, it announced today (Jan. 18). The research, the first of its kind, will survey persons who gave to Haiti earthquake relief efforts to determine how mobile donors differ from general donors. It also will examine how social media spread the mobile-giving campaigns. Partners in the study are the mGive Foundation and the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project; it’s supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Public access channels nationwide are intensifying their ongoing fight to stay on the air with today’s (Jan. 18) launch of a new website from the Public Television Industry Corporation. The channels across the country are being threatened with shutdowns as longtime funding contracts expire. The site links to a 10-minute video that says public access TV is “being murdered by a cabal of cable and telecom industries.”
Here are some cool photos from the NETA convention, and a little wrapup, from the Marmalade Gypsy blogger. One of the pics captures two Current staffers, reporter Dru Sefton (on the right, with the scarf) and Kathleen Unwin, marketing director, at Lucky Table 13. Give yourself extra points if you can figure out the identity of the writer, an anonymous pubcaster. (Hints: Jeanie in Michigan.)
David Brauer, local media reporter for MinnPost, complains in a column today (Jan. 17) that Twin Cities Public Television viewers weren’t given the opportunity to see the Jan. 12 memorial service for the recent Tucson shootings.TPT spokesperson Lorena Duarte said the station was told that commercial networks would cover the entire service – which they didn’t, opting instead to only run President Obama’s remarks. “We also received word from PBS that they would not be providing coverage of the memorial event,” Duarte said. “This changed late in the afternoon, which would have made it very difficult for us to put it on [main channel] TPT 2 (and at that point we still thought the networks would be carrying it).”
WAMU-FM will not renew its contract with Capitol News Connection when it expires April 30, the Washington Post is reporting today (Jan. 17). The Post had written last fall (Current, Sept. 9, 2010) that CNC is owned by the wife of one of the station’s top managers, which presented a potential conflict of interest at the pubradio station. CNC’s Power Breakfast and This Week in Congress have aired on WAMU since late 2007, and the production company also provides spot news coverage of Capitol Hill activities.In a Jan.
In an interview in today’s (Jan. 17) Broadcasting & Cable, KCET Board Chairman Gordon Bava insists the station has not “terminated” its relationship with PBS, but “we have suspended it indefinitely. We aren’t sure PBS is willing to accept that distinction, but that is our express intention. So that when the dust settles and we see maybe in a couple of years what the future of PBS holds and its role will be, we certainly would be open to returning on a reasonable and sustainable basis.”He also calls the system of PBS member stations “vulnerable” since it has been losing money for years. Also, if government funding dried up, “I think that the system would be reduced by at least half.
The newly convened New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority last Friday (Jan. 14) okayed a three-month budget of $3.4 million to preserve New Jersey Network, according to the Star-Ledger. That figure includes $2.1 million in new state aid and $1.3 million in lottery revenue and current leases. Authority Chairman and State Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff said he expects the state to have a partner secured by April 1 to run the network, which the governor is attempting to wean from state support (Current, July 6, 2010). The Treasurer’s office has hired Public Radio Capital to help draft a request for proposals for the operation of the network’s television and radio stations.
Public broadcasters in Kansas are the latest in the crosshairs for state budget cuts. In his budget proposal, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback wants to end all state money to public television and radio, amounting to $1.6 million. According to the Kansas City Star, “Federal stimulus funds totaling $450 million helped the state limp through the recession, but the money is set to expire later this year. And that’s ripping big holes in the state’s budget as it struggles to recover from years of slumping revenue and budget cuts.”
In an unprecedented move, the San Francisco School Board voted unanimously to extend a line of credit up to $200,000 to KALW, “even as the district faces its own financial woes and major cutbacks,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle today (Jan. 15). The 70-year-old NPR affiliate is licensed to the district but operates independently.The station has been losing money for three years and currently is some $120,000 in debt, said KALW general manager Matt Martin. “We have not taken cash (from the district) for nearly 20 years,” he said. “That’s not what we want here.