Quick Takes

City leaders look for new financial lifeline for Salt Lake’s KCPW

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There’s been another setback for KCPW in Salt Lake City, the NPR News station that’s struggling to pay off a $250,000 private loan from National Cooperative Bank by Oct. 31.The Salt Lake City Council authorized the city’s redevelopment agency last week to provide a six-month loan to help the station meet the payment, but the loan offer has been withdrawn, according to the City Weekly. “Lawyers for the RDA say they did not have the authority to make the loan as they originally had thought, and the city is now pursuing other avenues to help the station,” reports Bryan Schott, former KCPW news director. The City Council is considering making a direct loan to the station, but has a very short time frame to do so.Last week the City Council overruled the recommendation of the RDA’s loan committee to approve the $250,000 loan that was to be KCPW’s financial lifeline. The decision drew scrutiny of the station’s ties to city government.Councilman Carlton Christensen told City Weekly that the station deserves special consideration.

People

Los Angeles Press Club Awards, 2011

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KPCC’s Susan Valot and KCRW’s Kim Masters were recognized among best journalists in Los Angeles. Valot, a reporter who covers Orange County for Pasadena’s KPCC, was lauded by Press Club judges for producing “well-rounded reports with an authoritative, informed tone” and making great use of sound. Masters, a former NPR correspondent who now covers Hollywood for KCRW in Santa Monica, was named top entertainment journalist. Judges cited her voicing and thorough, substantive reporting on L.A.’s entertainment business. KPCC’s newsroom won top recognition in four categories of the radio division: for feature reporting by Madeleine Brand and Kristen Muller; entertainment reporting/criticism by Larry Mantle; use of sound by Kevin Ferguson; and the talk/public affairs program Airtalk with Larry Mantle.

People

Knight-Batten Award, 2011

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NPR social media specialist Andy Carvin received a Knight-Batten Award for innovation in journalism. Carvin, whose job as the network’s senior social media strategist this year evolved into round-the-clock tweeting of Arab Spring protests, received a Knight Batten Award of Special Distinction honoring his pioneering use of Twitter in newsgathering. The Knight-Batten awards panel chose Storify as this year’s Grand Prize winner and honored three other innovators with Special Distinction Awards. The panel selects winners for innovative uses of new technologies in newsgathering and civic engagement. Carvin and his “Twitter community” were both cited for the award.

People
Shelia Rue

PRPD/ARA Don Otto Award, 2011

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Programmer Shelia Rue received the Don Otto Award at PRPD. The veteran programmer and workshop instructor for Public Radio Program Directors was honored for career contributions to the field at a presentation during the association’s conference last month in Baltimore. Rue, p.d. at Tampa’s WUSF since 2008 (and lately its classical sister station, WSMR), previously directed programming at KUSC in Los Angeles and WUNC in Chapel Hill, N.C. She also ran her own consultancy, SR Sound Programming, and shared her expertise with other programmers by running PRPD’s training workshops. The award honors the legacy of an influential mentor to the founders of PRPD, the late Don Otto — a “proactive, innovative and creative thinker,” said Steve Olson of Audience Research Analysis, announcing the award Sept. 22 [2011].

People

DEI Benchmarks Award, 2011

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New Hampshire Public Radio was cited for outstanding performance in fundraising. NHPR, based in Concord, ranks among the most efficient public radio outlets in converting listeners into givers, and it raises more net underwriting revenue per listener-hour than peer stations, according to DEI’s Benchmarks analysis, which evaluates fundraising performance across the public radio system. The New Hampshire network’s achievements in major-gift fundraising are especially impressive, according to Joan Kobayashi, g.m. of KMFA in Austin, Texas, who announced the award this summer during DEI’s Public Media Development and Marketing Conference in Pittsburgh. NHPR’s program for soliciting donations of $1,000 and higher has increased its revenues 60 percent over the past five years. The gains are especially notable because New Hampshire ranks near the bottom of all 50 states in charitable giving, she said.

People

Public Radio News Directors Inc. Awards, 2011

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KJZZ, WBEZ, WBGO and KLCC led the annual contest among local pubradio newsrooms.
Each took three or more first-place PRNDI awards in a competition among peer-group stations. PRNDI groups stations into tiers based on the number of full-time news staffers they employ. In division A, comprising stations with the largest newsrooms, KJZZ in Phoenix and Chicago’s WBEZ each received three top prizes. All three PRNDI awards to WBEZ recognized Inside and Out, a special series on juvenile justice that aired across a six-month period in 2010. WGBO, a news and jazz station in Newark, N.J., won six first-place awards in division B, including stations with three or four full-time journalists.

People

Primetime Emmy Awards, 2011

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Masterpiece Classic’s Downton Abbey led PBS’s Emmy winners. Among six Primetime Emmys presented in September [2011] to the British costume drama was the highly coveted statuette for best miniseries. Producers of documentary and performance series brought PBS’s Emmy total up to 14 while earning recognition for exceptional merit in filmmaking, nonfiction programming and Creative Arts specialties. The American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences presented its Primetime Emmys in two ceremonies last month: a Sept. 10 [2011] event recognizing achievements in TV’s Creative Arts, and a Sept.

People

News and Documentary Emmys, 2011

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It’s been a very good Emmy season for indie documentaries on PBS. POV received four of the six statuettes credited to PBS in the National Academy of Television Arts and Science’s Sept. 26 Emmy announcement. Two went to Food Inc., putting it at the top of the documentary and long-form informational programming categories. In a likely first for a Web-based service run by a radio network, NPR Music was honored by the Television Academy for the Project Song video “Moby” as one of two News & Doc Emmy winners for innovation in arts, lifestyle and culture coverage.

CPB

Preschoolers get 40-plus (count ’em!) new PBS Kids math games

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PBS Kids unveiled last week its largest offering of math-skill games for preschoolers — a cache of 40 games that can be played on computers, mobile devices and interactive whiteboards. “As the nation’s children continue to fall behind, we need to embrace new technology to help them learn,” said Lesli Rotenberg, PBS’s senior v.p., children’s media. Games include Monkey Jump from Curious George, which has kids hop along with George and count as they fill a toy-store bin with bouncing balls; Hermit Shell Crab Game from The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!, in which players help the Cat, Nick and Sally fit hermit crabs into shells of corresponding sizes and patterns; and Carnival Count-off from Fizzy’s Lunch Lab, which teaches children how to estimate added sums and count by fives and tens. PBS partnered with CPB on the project, which is supported by a U.S. Department of Education Ready to Learn grant.

System/Policy

Party backs GOP nomination debate at OPB in March

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Oregon Public Broadcasting will produce and provide to NPR and PBS stations exclusive coverage of a Republican presidential debate from its Portland studios March 19, 2012. The 90-minute debate “will come at a critical time in the campaign” before anyone sews up the GOP nomination, OPB President Steve Bass predicted in a memo to stations. “Super Tuesday is on March 6, but delegate counts indicate that it will not be possible for the nomination to be won by any candidate by then. Political observers believe that the nomination contest could very likely go into the late spring.”

The Republican National Committee has officially sanctioned the debate, which “virtually assures the participation of the front-running candidates,” Bass said. OPB is partnering with the Oregon GOP and The Washington Times to present the debate.

Programs/Content

Democracy Now! claims vindication in arrests settlement

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Producers of the progressive pubradio/TV news program Democracy Now! are receiving $100,000 to settle their federal lawsuit against police authorities over their arrests while reporting on demonstrations outside the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. Host Amy Goodman and producers Nicole Salazar and Sharif Abdel Kouddous sued the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and the U.S. Secret Service for violating their constitutional rights to gather news independently and to be protected from unlawful search and seizure.

Programs/Content

Correction: More than five in Hidden World of Girls

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In producing The Hidden World of Girls, the new documentary specials offered during NPR newsmags this month, producers Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva — the Kitchen Sisters — didn’t limit themselves to following the lives of five girls, as indicated erroneously in a Current brief Oct. 3. Comic writer/performer Tina Fey hosts the specials, which expand on dozens of stories “about the lives of girls all around the world and the women they become.”

Programs/Content

Opening doors to region’s inner policy circles

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The Great Lakes, formed by melting glaciers 10,000 years ago, were ready last week for their close-up. Detroit Public Television, seizing an opportunity that comes about as often as a planetary alignment, televised 25 hours of speeches, conferences, workshops and meetings about the future of the massive lakes that nearly surround Michigan. Great Lakes Now, a three-day event organized by a regional group and two government agencies, was documented by DPTV’s live streaming and on-demand video of speakers, nightly half-hour wrap-up broadcasts and satellite feeds that extended the speakers’ reach south to Houston, east to New York and west to Phoenix. DPTV clearly demonstrated how a midsized public television operation could give people unprecedented access to those who make policy on local and regional issues. “Look at the role we can play in our community and communities throughout the country,” said Rich Homberg, DPTV president.

Programs/Content

Knell: familiar with dynamics

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NPR’s next president already knows how a strong production house can continue to work with pubcasting stations — and also expand its reach with non-broadcast distribution partners. For nearly 12 years Gary Knell has managed one of PBS’s prize program providers, Sesame Workshop, which made cable deals and vastly enlarged its audience on the Web while keeping the first play of its primo content on PBS. Knell, like his NPR predecessor, Vivian Schiller, as well as recent PBS leaders, wants to play the major original productions in as many venues as possible, though with the member stations continuing to hold an exclusive broadcast window. “It’s radio-first distribution,” Knell told Current, “Then it should be made available more broadly, tweeted and smeeted,” he said, coining a word for additional varieties of social media. “We’ve got to make sure that we’re all over all that stuff.”

Under David Britt, Knell’s predecessor as president of the Manhattan-based production institution, the Workshop negotiated an end to PBS’s exclusive rights to its flagship program, Sesame Street, and in 1999 released older episodes to a cable venture — Noggin, a cable net co-owned with Viacom’s Nickelodeon.

Independent Public Media

With microwave proceeds, Schwartz nonprofits offer to buy and revive pubTV channels

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Should preserving noncommercial television licenses be the top priority for public broadcasters, or should financially unstable public TV stations be sold, become unstaffed repeaters or allowed to die off to right-size an extensive system of stations? Independent Public Media says: Save those licenses. And it’s volunteering to take over failing pubTV stations to do just that. IPM, founded by John Schwartz, a public media activist in Colorado and founder of several stations, announced Oct. 5 that it would draw on a pot of some $40 million to save stations at risk of going dark or being sold to station operators outside of pubcasting.

Quick Takes

Board asks Pacifica’s WBAI-FM to reduce fundraising days by 40 percent

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The board of WBAI-FM/Pacifica Radio in New York City has passed a resolution that the station must drop the number of on-air fundraising days by 40 percent over the next three years and expand its membership “quickly by 35 percent,” reports Matthew Lasar on the Radio Survivor blog. The Local Station Board (LSB) said in a resolution, “WBAI’s on-air fundraising is based on repetitive recorded half-hour and hour-long pitches for premiums. The LSB is concerned that so much valuable air-time is being spent on pitching premiums, such that the station is in danger of becoming another version of the home shopping network.” WBAI was planning more than 120 days of on-air fundraising for next year.

Quick Takes

WNYC content now available on Clear Channel’s iHeartRadio app

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Clear Channel Radio today (Oct. 17) announced the launch of WNYC News & Conversation on the revamped iHeartRadio, its free digital radio app. The new channel will feature WNYC programming including news-talk programs The Brian Lehrer Show, The Leonard Lopate Show, and The Takeaway, a co-production of WNYC and Public Radio International (PRI).

Quick Takes

Kerger says PBS UK channel will air 1,000 unique hours of content next year

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PBS UK “promises to be one of the most interesting channel launches for some time,” according to the Guardian, “as long as the programming can deliver on the public service promise.” In an interview with the British paper, PBS President Kerger says the channel, which launches Nov. 1, will present 500 unique hours of content this year and 1,000 hours next year. Very little will be children’s programming; Kerger notes that a survey showed the market is already “well served” for that content. Kerger also hopes the channel will “give people here in the UK a sense of how news is reported in the United States”— although PBS NewsHour will air one day later there.