Current (https://current.org/2011/06/page/5/)
The websites for PBS and NPR took home several Webbys from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences at ceremonies Monday night (June 13) in New York City. PBS.org won a People’s Voice for charitable/nonprofit orgs, and NPR.org scored both People’s Voice and Webby for news. NPR News’ “Election 2010: It’s All Politics” received a People’s Voice for politics. And in podcasts, NPR was a double winner again. Here’s a full list.
Media analyst Jessica Clark says that consensus on the “Information Needs of Communities” report from the Federal Communications Commission seems to be, the diagnosis is sound but remedies are lacking. Clark writes on MediaShift that the report makes a clear case that local reporting is dying — “yet, bafflingly … stops short of offering bold solutions.” She notes that in a statement in reaction to the report, Commissioner Michael Copps also observed that “the policy recommendations … don’t track the diagnosis.”
For 40 years New Jersey has justified having its own public broadcasting network by pointing to the limited reporting on its area by the Philadelphia and New York media. Now the state is moving to dismantle the New Jersey Network and entrust that reporting and its broadcast channels to public TV and radio stations in those two adjoining cities. The state has notified the NJN staff of about 120 that their jobs will disappear at the end of June, and observers doubt that a majority of the legislature will stop the process for more discussion as it did last summer. Republican Gov. Chris Christie, an emphatic budget-cutting former prosecutor, announced the new operators of NJN’s channels June 6, four months after the state asked for proposals:
NJN’s four full-power TV stations and three lower-power translators will be operated by Manhattan-based WNET under a five-year contract, with the state retaining ownership. Four NJN radio channels in northern and central areas, including one in coastal Toms River, will be sold to New York Public Radio (WNYC/WQXR).
Ira Glass didn’t know what he was in for when he walked into the post office in the seaside burg of Brunswick, Ga., and asked the first person he met to name the most interesting character in town. Glass and his This American Life production team had given themselves a special assignment: to collect the best stories they could stumble upon far off the beaten path of their day-to-day reporting routines. They followed the standard operating procedure of the Atlanta Journal’s “Georgia Rambler” columnist Charles Salter, who researched more than 500 columns in the late 1970s by roving around small towns of the Peach State in a company car. Nine of the radio show’s producers and reporters adopted Salter’s technique for an episode that aired last summer. They drew the names of their assigned Georgia locales from a baseball cap, went in-country with mikes and recording equipment and, on fast turnaround, collected a trove of human-interest material.
Software vulnerabilities, including an outdated operating system used by PBS.org, allowed the pirate band of hackers LulzSec to sail deep into the innards of the network’s main website over Memorial Day weekend. The marauders were retaliating for a Frontline documentary about WikiLeaks broadcast five days earlier. The hackers gave their assault a playful air, invading PBS NewsHour’s site and briefly posting a false report that the late rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were actually hanging out in New Zealand. Techs at PBS.org and at the NewsHour spent hours regaining control as the cyberattack exposed contact information for hundreds of staffers, stations, producers and press, as well as several internal PBS databases. Site managers “were playing cat and mouse” with LulzSec, said Travis Daub, NewsHour creative director.
The board of trustees at Daytona State College could vote to drop PBS programming from affiliate WDSC at its Thursday (June 16) meeting. Interim president Frank Lombardo told the Daytona Beach, Fla., News-Journal that the school contributes about $700,000 to the overall operation of the station, including non-PBS programming. “We just can’t afford to do it,” he said. “There is limited money. We have to make sure the academic side, the classrooms and teaching and learning functions at the college are supported.”
The licensee for KCSM-TV is preparing to sell the California public broadcasting station. The board of the San Mateo County Community College District on Wednesday (June 8) “directed staff to prepare putting KCSM on the market,” according to the San Jose Mercury News. The board cited the station’s projected $800,000 structural deficit. “I’m disappointed,” KCSM General Manager Marilyn Lawrence said. “The station has been a legacy to the college.
Tom and Ray Magliozzi of Car Talk got out of the garage and headed for the Charles River for WBUR’s annual Spring Festival at the Community Rowing Inc. boathouse in Boston on June 5. The two, known on the air as Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers, turned up as boat captains; above, Capt. (Ray) Clack signs autographs. Some 1,000 fans turned out to meet the Car Talk guys and other WBUR celebs such as On Point’s Tom Ashbrook. The boathouse set a record for the day, teaching more than 500 persons how to row. (Image: WBUR)
Orlando’s WMFE-TV this week said in comments to the Federal Communications Commission that a delay in its sale to religious broadcaster Daystar “would be devastating,” and that its “cash reserves are limited and most have already been consumed” to keep the pubTV station running over the past few months, reports the Orlando Sentinel. The FCC has received 525 objections to the impending sale. Read WMFE-TV’s “Opposition to Informal Objections” here (PDF).
Maine Public Broadcasting Network got very good news late Thursday (June 9) when the state legislature’s Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee voted unanimously to provide the pubcasters with $1.95 million for fiscal 2012, which Gov. Paul LePage (R) proposed eliminating. The committee also recommended a slightly reduced total, $1.75 million, for FY13. “It has been truly gratifying to see the support from so many of you who believe in MPBN’s contribution to the very fabric of all of Maine,” said Jim Dowe, network president, in a letter to supporters on MPBN’s website. “Your many and diverse voices were heard loud and clear in Augusta! Thank you!”
As in Houston, a student station in Nashville will move from broadcast to the Web, and the local pubradio station has doubled its over-the-air capacity, moving to separate news and classical channels. Vanderbilt University’s campus media group, majority-controlled by students, opted to receive $3.35 million, selling its 91.1 MHz channel to Nashville Public Radio, the Tennessean reported. The buyer will be able to go all-news with WPLN and play music on the acquired frequency, resolving a conflict that has pained the mixed-format station, General Manager Rob Gordon told the Tennesseean: “We’d have people call in and say, ‘It’s Saturday afternoon, I was wondering if Mubarak had resigned, and I turn on WPLN and you’re playing opera.’” The student station, WRVU, will be heard online. At Vanderbilt, as elsewhere, some decision-makers assume that young people wanting music will go to the Internet, not to radio. The sale of WRVU, expected by observers, is part of a gradual sell-off of stations long operated by universities.
Applications are now being accepted for the 2011 Producers Workshop at WGBH, part of the CPB/PBS Producers Academy. It’s open to producers who want to create content for pubcasting, either through a station or independently. Application deadline is July 8 for the October workshop in Boston. Want to know more? Check out what alums are doing on the Producers Workshop Online.
WHYY overcame a deficit of $3.9 million to end the last fiscal year with a $1.7 million surplus, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. WHYY’s new audited financial statement shows that the station received $8.9 million in program contracts and other project revenue in fiscal year 2010, $4.9 million more than the previous year. Meanwhile, personnel and fund-raising costs dropped — including station President William Marrazzo’s base compensation, which fell from $506,157 in FY09 to $448,161 in FY10.
In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, longtime PBS newsman Bill Moyers sounds a warning. “Public broadcasting, which remains a place that treats you as a citizen and not a consumer, is … threatened,” he said. “We must defend it. We must call it back to its heights.
“Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age,” a report on the future of media in America from the Federal Communications Commission, was released today (June 9). Here (PDF) is the section on public broadcasting.It notes that while PBS “airs some of the best journalistic documentaries on TV,” public television “has placed a much smaller emphasis on local news.” An FCC analysis of Tribune Media Services Data shows that 94 percent of noncom stations air less than 30 minutes of local news daily. It also said there are “significant financial obstacles standing in the way of more local public TV news and information programming.” More detail on local news coverage from the Associated Press.Early reaction is mixed.
WLRN in Miami is dropping use of the Florida Public Radio Network in protest of Gov. Rick Scott’s decision to end all funding to public broadcasters in the state — except to WFSU, which will still receive $1.8 million for the legislative-focused Florida Channel. John LaBonia, g.m. of WLRN, says the station will instead report on the state government by joining the combined bureau in Tallahassee created by the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald.”The governor zeroed out public broadcasting because he’s calling it a special interest,” LaBonia told the Times. “When you single out one station and give to it but nobody else, that’s the definition of a special interest.”
The Senate Commerce Committee voted 21 to 4 today (June 8) to authorize incentive auctions to compensate broadcasters that give up spectrum for wireless broadband. It’s part of a larger effort to fund an emergency communications network. If it becomes law, the legislation will also compensate broadcasters who retain their spectrum but are “repacked” to make larger, contiguous swaths of vacated spectrum available for wireless (Current, “Spectrum talk at NETA: One ominous session,” Jan. 24, 2011; also Feb. 8, 2010).
According to research out this week from Knowledge Networks, the number of Americans exclusively using over-the-air (OTA) television broadcasting in their home increased from 42 million to 46 million over the last year. The demographics of broadcast-only households skew towards younger adults, minorities and lower-income families, the report finds.The “2011 Ownership Survey and Trend Report” shows that 15 percent of all U.S. households with TVs use just over-the-air signals; that compares with 14 percent of homes reported as broadcast-only for the previous three years. Knowledge Networks estimates that more than 17 million households, or about 45.6 million consumers, receive television exclusively through broadcast signals.The research also showed that minorities make up 40 percent of all broadcast-only homes; 20 percent of homes with a head of household age 18-34 are broadcast only; and 23 percent of homes with an annual income under $30,000 receive TV signals solely over-the-air.The survey of 3,343 households was conducted in March and April with a standard error range of plus/minus 2 percent.
U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), a longtime pubcasting champion on Capitol Hill, underwent a successful laparoscopic appendectomy at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., on Tuesday (June 7), according to a statement from her office. There were no complications and she is making a full recovery. “Rep. Eshoo will be working from home for the rest of the week,” the statement said.
PBS NewsHour and WTTW just received a $250,000, one-year grant from the Joyce Foundation to collaborate on coverage of Great Lakes region news. The partners will produce segments for the national PBS NewsHour audience; expand local reporting on Chicago Tonight and its digital platforms; and create national arts reports for NewsHour and related arts and culture content for the Online NewsHour. “Public affairs programs such as Chicago Tonight are important, credible platforms for informing the public on policy issues that most local television news programs would not cover,” said Joyce Foundation President Ellen Alberding in a statement. “And by partnering with PBS NewsHour, we know these regional issues will receive national attention.”