Current (https://current.org/2011/09/page/4/)
WJCT/89.9 FM in Jacksonville, Fla., is dropping A Prairie Home Companion along with two other shows due to the loss of state funding, according to the St. Augustine Record. It’s the station’s most expensive weekly show, at $26,682 for 2011, station President Michael Boylan told the paper. As of Oct. 1, the show will be replaced with Bob Edwards Weekend at a cost of $1,871 a year.Also on Oct.
Former WHYY executive Nessa Forman died Saturday night (Sept. 10) of complications from pancreatic cancer at Penn Hospice at Rittenhouse in Philadelphia. She was 68.She retired in 2007 from the station as vice president of corporate communications and public affairs. She had worked at WHYY since 1983.”Nessa has managed her illness the way that she managed her life,” Bill Marrazzo, president of WHYY, said in an interview on Sept. 9 with the Philadelphia Inquirer, “always with considerable grace, good humor and fully engaged in a broad palette of current events.”Marrazzo said that at WHYY, “she set the highest standards for professionalism, loyalty to the principles of public media …
WNET’s Need to Know will have several temporary hosts, including an NPR veteran, reports the New York Times, in the wake of Alison Stewart’s departure. Scott Simon, host of Weekend Edition Saturday, will fill the chair this week. Coming soon will be Maria Hinojosa of Now on PBS, Ray Suarez of PBS NewsHour and Jeff Greenfield, a network news vet who also hosted WTTW’s national production CEO Exchange on PBS. WNET programmer Stephen Segaller called it an “interim arrangement” to provide the program “some breathing room” as the station ponders its future.Also, NTK Executive Producer Shelley Lewis is being replaced by Marc Rosenwasser, whose background includes work on ABC and NBC newsmagazines as well as executive producing WNET’s Worldfocus, which was canceled just before NTK premiered last year.
A portion of the main antenna mast recovered from the rubble of the North Tower of the World Trade Center will go on display next year in the National September 11 Memorial & Museum to honor broadcast engineers killed in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. WNET was on the tower, and the station lost engineer Gerard “Rod” Copolla on that day.After the 9/11 attacks, the charitable arm of the Society of Broadcast Engineers created the Broadcast Engineer Relief Fund to help the families of the six engineers who died. “With donations from many members of SBE, and vendors and industry foundations, we were pleased to send checks of $42,500 each to every family… without any strings attached,” SBE President Vinny Lopez told Radio World. “Every penny [raised] went directly to the families.”
PBS won 10 statuettes at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards Saturday night (Sept. 10) in Los Angeles, including Outstanding Nonfiction Series for American Masters. The American Experience presentation of “Freedom Riders” won three. The Creative Arts Emmys honor technical disciplines and behind-the-scenes crafts essential to television production — art direction, cinematography, hairstyling, makeup, music, picture editing, sound editing and mixing, special visual effects, stunts and more. Here’s a full list of winners (PDF).
Ohio State University trustees on Friday (Sept. 9) approved the $2 million sale of WOSU Public Media’s AM frequency and transmitting equipment to a Roman Catholic station, Gabriel Radio Inc., according to Columbus Business First. The deal completes WOSU’s transition to all-FM broadcasts, which began last year. The station had paid Fun With Radio LLC $5.7 million for the 101.1 FM signal and tower to create Classical 101. WOSU converted its 89.7 FM frequency to an all news-talk format, and has been dual broadcasting on 820 AM since then.“We invest a lot in our local news,” Tom Rieland, g.m. of WOSU told Current in August 2010.
Regulatory wrangling over the FCC’s proposed rule-making for low-power FM stations is heating up.A bipartisan group of House lawmakers on Sept. 7 urged the commission to license as many LPFMs as possible as it implements the Local Community Radio Act, according to The Hill. Meanwhile, formal comments from competing broadcasting interest groups are rolling into the FCC.NPR is among the broadcasters objecting to the commission’s proposal for opening FM frequencies in urban areas. Rather than dismissing some 1,800 pending translator applications from full-power broadcasters to make way for new LPFMs, as the FCC has proposed, NPR urges the commission to wade through its massive backlog of applications from 2003 and approve those that would not obstruct new LPFM service.WCLK-FM, an African-American public station that broadcasts NPR News and jazz in Atlanta, is among the translator applicants that would benefit from the approach proposed by NPR’s policy team.In its comments to the FCC, filed Sept. 6, NPR also urges the commission to adopt rules prohibiting spectrum trafficking by translator applicants and barring AM broadcasters from retransmitting their signals on FM translators.
Bohdan Zachary, broadcasting and program development v.p. at KCET in Los Angeles, recently got the chance to visit the set of Doc Martin, the station’s highest-rated show, in the picturesque fishing village of Port Isaac, North Cornwall, U.K. “One of the great joys of my visit was the chance to interview each one of the series’ actors,” Zachary reports. “As busy as they were with filming, they were eager to talk about how many American tourists are suddenly popping up in Port Isaac — a sign of the series’ success on public television.”Star Martin Clunes told Zachary that several Hollywood producers are negotiating for an American version of the show, similar to the new version of the Helen Mirren-led BBC classic Prime Suspect premiering on NBC this fall. Doc Martin already plays in Germany and Spain with native casts.
YouTube is in discussions with the Center for Investigative Reporting to form a video-based reporting service, reports the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. YouTube wants the center to curate material for what it plans to call YouTube Investigative. “There’s a revolution around information and technology,” said center Executive Director Robert Rosenthal, with social media platforms eager to get involved in a type of journalism once dominated by traditional press outlets. The Berkeley, Calif.-based center also is in discussions with Apple and Google about collaborations.
After nine years of work, a new 50,000-watt public radio station debuted Wednesday (Sept. 7) on the Fond du Lac Reservation in Minnesota, reports The Pine Journal in Carlton County, along the central-eastern edge of the state. Giizis, the Ojibwe word for moon, inspired call letters WGZS at 89.1 FM. Dan Huculak, operations manager for the station and a member of the tribe, told the newspaper that the station will broadcast music, local news and events, public service announcements, and Ojibwe language and cultural programming. The initial broadcast day will run 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays, with weekend hours coming soon.
The archives of Riverwalk Jazz, the critically acclaimed PRI show hosted by musician Jim Cullum, are heading to Stanford University. Included are 400 radio programs and a 700-page website for the show, which debuted in 1989. And in January 2013, Stanford’s Archive of Recorded Sound will offer a continuous web stream of all Riverwalk programs, including documentaries on the history of jazz from its earliest roots. “Nothing like this is available anywhere else,” said Margaret Moos Pick, the program’s executive producer.
The FCC bestowed a rare gift upon the northwestern Montana town of Kalispell today — a construction permit for a new public TV station, licensed to Montana State University. As with many other full-power pubTV stations serving rural areas, the commission permitted the licensee to share programs from out of town — in this case, the Montana PBS programming originated at the university’s KUSM in Bozeman, which also airs on KUFM in Missoula and other repeaters in the state. The signal from Kalispell, 120 miles north of Missoula near Glacier National Park, will cover a population of just 98,700 spread across 7,500 square miles.The new station will broadcast on Channel 46 with maximum effective radiated power of 23,400 watts. A church group, Flathead Adventist Radio Inc., filed a competing application for the channel, but it reached a settlement with the university two years ago, according to FCC documents.
KPBS in San Diego is launching a new weeknight local news and analysis show, KPBS Evening Edition, beginning Sept. 26. “We’ve spent a lot of time preparing and planning for this program,” Tom Karlo, KPBS g.m., said in a statement. “We saw a tremendous opportunity on television to provide our community with intelligent, objective, and accurate news on global and local issues.” The program will feature local headlines as well as analysis, newsmaker interviews and video reports from the field. Topics will differ by night: Monday, business and technology; Tuesdays, health; Wednesdays, reports from the Fronteras local journalism center; Thursdays, community news; and Fridays, culture.
MacNeil/Lehrer Productions President Simon Marks is leaving his post at the end of this month, he told Current in an email today (Sept. 6). “I’ve realized over the past year that I greatly miss my daily dose of newsroom adrenalin,” he said. Marks is returning to his own company, Feature Story News, in both on-air and production roles. He has spent several weeks devising a management structure for the transition, and his predecessor Les Crystal will expand his ongoing advisory and consultative work during that time.Marks was associate executive producer for PBS NewsHour before his promotion last July.
NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday was originally conceived as the Sunday newspaper, but new host Audie Cornish wants it to be more like Sunday brunch, she tells Ad Week. “The kind of brunch I go to usually involves some alcohol, usually involves people telling stories and talking about what happened the week before, and what’s going to happen, and did you see this movie? I want that kind of energy.” Cornish also describes her approach for combating NPR’s stereotype for wide-eyed earnestness: “One of the things to think about is, if you find yourself saying ‘This is something our audience would like,’ you should just back away from the table, because you’re doing something that you think NPR sounds like.” After being appointed to succeed longtime host Liane Hansen in May, Cornish’s first broadcast at the helm aired Sept.
The Daystar religious network is purchasing KDYW, the former PBS affiliate KWBU in Waco, Texas, according to a filing with the Federal Communications Commission seeking approval for the deal. Licensee Baylor University is getting $250,000 for the station. Facing a $400,000 budget shortfall, KWBU went dark at the end of May 2010. The local nonprofit entity that will own the station is Community Television Educators of Waco, headed by Daystar’s Marcus and Joni Lamb. Its call letters were changed in May.
CPB is compiling an online list of 9/11-related pubcasting programming airing during the next several weeks. Spokesperson Nicole Mezlo told Current that the list is being updated as information comes in from stations and organizations around the country. Content includes two live presentations: A City Reimagined: Voices of 9/11 in Poetry and Performance, an evening of spoken-word performances of first-hand accounts of the day the terrorists struck the World Trade Center, and On Being’s panel discussion, a collaboration with the Trinity Wall Street Church St. Paul’s Chapel at Ground Zero. The list also highlights local activities at stations.
WVPT in Harrisonburg, Va., is hoping an online talent contest helps them raise money to restore state cuts to their budget, reports the Augusta Free Press in Waynesboro, Va. Viewers can post videos showcasing their unique abilities at TALENT WAR$ @wvpt. Visitors view the films, select their favorite and “vote” for it by making a donation to WVPT on the site. Every dollar donated equals one vote for the video. The three participants with the most $1 votes by Jan.
A new memoir by Bob Edwards, the NPR personality whose 2004 ouster as Morning Edition anchor roiled public radio, is being offered as a free e-book download through Sept. 9, a week before the print edition’s release. “A Voice in the Box,” published by the University Press of Kentucky, recounts Edwards’s radio career, including his collaborations with NPR colleagues and sportscaster Red Barber, whose weekly appearances on Morning Edition were a keystone of Edwards’s 25 years as host. “You can think of this as the ultimate pledge drive premium considering most public radio supporters already have plenty of coffee mugs and tote bags,” says Edwards. He now helms The Bob Edwards Show for Sirius/XM and Public Radio International’s Bob Edwards Weekend.