Quick Takes

KUAC-TV in Fairbanks to leave AlaskaOne partnership after 16 years

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A proposed merger of Alaska pubcasting stations not only fell apart over the summer, but also has now created a larger rift: KUAC-TV in Fairbanks, which participated in the AlaskaOne consortium with Juneau and Bethel stations since 1995, will withdraw from that as of July 1, 2012, according to a press release from KUAC licensee University of Alaska Fairbanks. “Interior Alaska’s public television station is returning to its roots,” the statement said.The Alaska Public Broadcasting Service, corporate entity for AlaskaOne, last month approved a motion to merge its centralized feed with Anchorage-based KAKM, run by Alaska Public Telecommunications Inc. Keith Martin, KUAC g.m., cast the dissenting vote. “Our priority has always been to meet the needs of our constituents through our broadcasting mission. Becoming independent from AlaskaOne allows for a new future for KUAC TV,” Martin said in the statement. “We need to get back to that local connection.””Since AlaskaOne was established in 1995, financial and manpower responsibilities have slowly shifted to KUAC,” the statement said.Recent merger discussions prompted development of a new centralcasting entity based in Anchorage, which KUAC will not participate in “due to its potential to cause financial harm to KUAC,” the statement said.

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KCSM-TV in San Mateo, Calif., goes up for sale

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As expected, the San Mateo (Calif.) Community College announced today (Dec. 7) it is seeking a buyer for public broadcaster KCSM-TV. In June, the board said the sale was due to the station’s projected $800,000 structural deficit. Independent Public Media, a nonprofit consortium headed by WYBE founder John Schwarz and Ken Devine, former WNET executive, has already signaled its interest (Current, Oct. 17).

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PBS to produce public TV track at 2012 PMDMC

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Next year’s Public Media Development and Marketing Conference, the annual event organized by pubradio’s Development Exchange, will include a new track for pubTV professionals, produced by PBS, on pledge practices, fundraising and community engagement around children’s programming, and television-specific research. DEI and PBS announced the collaboration in a statement today (Dec. 6). “For the first time, the whole public media family will have the opportunity to focus together on the very best fundraising ideas and practices,” said DEI President Doug Eichten. The partnership “demonstrates the spirit of institutional collaboration that is critical at the national and station levels,” said PBS President Paula Kerger.

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CPB supports more Latino-focused programming in Los Angeles

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CPB announced today that it has awarded Southern California Public Radio in Los Angeles $1.8 million to support the One Nation Media Project, which will focus on reporting and programming for and about Latinos and other people of color in the Los Angeles area.As one element of the project, SCPR will expand The Madeleine Brand Show, its locally produced morning newsmagazine, into a national two-hour show “with a focus on the Latino and other ethnic communities/interests/issues,” according to an SCPR job listing. In addition, SCPR will launch “three distinct online channels,” says the CPB release, each hosted by a dedicated journalist. The channels will cover emerging communities, public education and criminal justice.The grant will also support a series of live events that will explore issues affecting Los Angeles. SCPR is holding the first event tonight. All in the Familia: L.A. Latino Business in the 21st Century will feature a conversation about how the involvement of younger generations is changing the city’s Latino-owned mom-and-pop businesses.SCPR, a sister organization to Minnesota’s American Public Media, has explored expanding service to Latinos with CPB backing in the past.

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WHYY and KPCC new journalism partners with NBC

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Pubcasting stations WHYY and KPCC are two new noncom partners with NBC, effective immediately. The network is making good on its promise to join forces with nonprofit news organizations, made as part of NBC Universal’s merger with Comcast approved by the Federal Communications Commission in January. The New York Times is reporting that NBC stations in Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles will partner with noncom outlets in those cities, and all 10 NBC stations will collaborate with ProPublica, the investigative journalism organization.NBC in Chicago will work with The Chicago Reporter blog and magazine. In Philadelphia, NBC is partnering with with NPR station WHYY and its community site NewsWorks. In Los Angeles, the collaboration is with pubradio KPCC.In selecting partners, “we cast a wide net,” Valari Staab, president of the NBC-owned television stations, told the Times.

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NET starting classical radio programming partnership with KVNO soon

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NET (Nebraska Educational Telecommunications) is exploring a partnership with KVNO/Classical 90.7 at University of Nebraska at Omaha, reports the Lincoln Journal-Star. “This is not a wholesale swap or merger here,” NET General Manager Rod Bates told the paper. “That would be too dramatic. We’re trying to build a relationship.”First up is a programming collaboration. Afternoon Concerts and Classics by Request, both hosted by NET Radio personality Lora Black, will be simulcast on NET Radio and KVNO beginning early next year.

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Acorn TV gives subscribers their Brit fix

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Acorn Media, a leading U.S. distributor of British programming on DVD, now is offering a streaming video Web site of classic British shows — a genre once considered just PBS’s territory. For $24.99 a year, subscribers to Acorn TV get full seasons of 10 shows at a time, rotating every week, reports the Washington Post. “Acorn TV is similar to Netflix streaming,” the paper notes, “but with more-plentiful pleasing accents and less rage from customers about confusing practices.” The service launched in July and expanded in September.Acorn Media Group started in 1984 as Atlas Video in the suburban Washington, D.C., basement of founder Peter Edwards, a communications consultant who had also worked at NBC News. John Lorenz, a former longtime director of program business affairs at PBS, joined Atlas in 1994 as executive vice president; that year, the firm changed its name to Acorn.

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Keillor un-retires from “Prairie Home Companion” yet again

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Well, American Public Media’s former president Bill Kling was right — Garrison Keillor wasn’t serious about retiring in spring 2013, as Keillor had announced earlier this year. Keillor told the Sioux City Journal on Dec. 1 that he “thought about” leaving his hosting duties at A Prairie Home Companion, “and then it panicked me . . .

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Iowa Public Television’s Mike Newell dies at 66

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Mike Newell, a longtime producer at Iowa Public Television, died Thursday night (Dec. 1) at Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines, after suffering a heart attack the previous week and undergoing surgery on Nov. 29, reports the Des Moines Register. He was 66.”Iowa Public Television’s public affairs series Iowa Press lost its leader this week when longtime coordinating producer Mike Newell passed away,” the station said on its website. “For the past 20 years, Mike’s hands were at the helm of this program, steering a steady course through the sometimes murky waters of public policy and politics.

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Watchdogs themselves are moving into the sunshine

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Nonprofit newsrooms, often critical of lobbies and political players that hide their funding sources, increasingly are open about their own fiscal support. Of 60 nonprofit news orgs, surveyed last year and again this year, the number disclosing their major donors grew from 47 to 53 (from 78 percent to 88 percent), American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop said this week. The IRW survey doesn’t include public broadcasters.Its authors speculated that the gain may be related to the adoption in January of formal membership standards, including donor transparency, by the Investigative News Network, a consortium of news orgs. INN requires member news orgs to disclose donations above $1,000. The INN Board adopted its disclosure policy weeks after IRW raised the issue in its first News Ecosystem survey last fall.The new survey, published Nov.

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OPB terminates longtime “Oregon Art Beat” host and producer

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Oregon Public Broadcasting has fired KC Cowan from Oregon Art Beat. She was the original host of the show and worked on it for 10 years, according to Portland’s Willamette Week, most recently as a producer and writer for the web. “I’m deeply saddened that my relationship with OPB has come to an end,” Cowan told WW in an email. Dave Davis, OPB’s v.p. for television production, told the publication, “She no longer works here, we wish her well, and we thank her for the great work she did on Oregon Art Beat. Beyond that, we can’t say anything else.

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NPR and Minnesota Public Radio win EPPY Awards for websites

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NPR took four honors, and Minnesota Public Radio received one, in the 16th annual EPPY Awards, announced Wednesday (Nov. 30) by Editor & Publisher. The international awards recognize the best media-affilated websites in 43 categories. NPR.org won for journalism website with more than 1 million unique monthly visitors. NPR’s “Wanna Live Forever?

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An end to federal aid would undermine pubradio journalism, Cochran advises

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In an op-ed pegged to Gary Knell’s first day on the job as president of NPR, journalist and author Barbara Cochran urges the veteran pubcasting exec to ignore those who say public radio should shield itself from political pressures by giving up federal funding.Such a move would make a small dent in NPR’s budget — the news organization derives only 2 percent of its revenues from the congressional appropriations provided to CPB — but would do “tremendous damage” to local stations, writes Cochran, former president of the Radio and Television Digital News Association, for Huffington Post. Nearly all of the $100 million in federal funding distributed to public radio goes to 400 stations, and outlets in small markets and rural areas depend on this aid to continue operating.”[L]ocal public radio stations are an important part of the nation’s journalism ecosystem and could play an even bigger role,” Cochran writes. “Their success is built on their partnership with NPR, especially its most popular news programs. Morning Edition and All Things Considered, which have powered NPR’s phenomenal audience growth to 30 million listeners each week, contain breaks for local station material. This has allowed local public radio stations to build a strong news identity without requiring a large staff. Now is the time to build on that strength, not undermine it.”Cochran, a former NPR News v.p. who holds an endowed chair for the University of Missouri’s Journalism School, wrote the December 2010 Aspen Institute white paper on pubcasting’s potential to fill the gap in local news and information, Rethinking Public Media: More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive.

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“Ebert Presents” goes on hiatus due to funding challenges

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Roger Ebert has pulled the plug on his movie review show, for now. “At the end of December, our public television program Ebert Presents At The Movies will go on hiatus,” he wrote Wednesday (Nov. 30) on his blog, “while we find necessary funding. This move is necessary to allow the public television stations that carry our show to plan their programs for the beginning of the new year. We held off as long as possible but we had to give notice today.”

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PBS SoCal to challenge KCET in Los Angeles programming

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The Los Angeles Business Journal (no link available) is reporting that KOCE soon will begin programming for Los Angeles audiences, taking on KCET, which went independent from PBS in January. “We need to convince people in L.A. and surrounding regions that we’re not just concerned about Orange County,” PBS SoCal/KOCE President Mel Rogers told the publication. The station is renaming its public affairs show Inside OC as SoCal Insider for the new season in January. “The move will allow KOCE to grow its audience without incurring the production costs of an entirely new program,” the Journal notes.

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BBC may be “the only news organization I would leave NPR for,” Meyer says

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In an interview with the Washington Post, Dick Meyer downplayed the management turmoil at NPR this year as a factor in his decision to leave his job as executive news editor. The offer to lead U.S. news operations for the BBC was too good to turn down, he explains. “I couldn’t ever think of saying no to an opportunity like this,” Meyer told the Post’s Paul Farhi. “The BBC is the world’s dominant news organization. It has the same news values as NPR and a global footprint.

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Pubmedia films score Sundance Film Fest spots

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Six films funded by the Independent Television Service (ITVS) have been selected to screen at the  Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 19-29, 2012, in Park City, Utah. ITVS domestic co-productions claimed four of the 16 spots in the U.S. Documentary competition and two of the 12 spots in the World Documentary competition. The films are: DETROPIA by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, The House I Live In by Eugene Jarecki, The Invisible War by Kirby Dick, Love Free or Die: How the Bishop of New Hampshire is Changing the World by Macky Alston, 5 Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, and Putin’s Kiss by Lise Birk Pedersen.UPDATE: Another pubmedia film of note that has been accepted at Sundance is Slavery by Another Name, produced and directed by Sam Pollard in partnership with tpt National Productions, which received funding through the CPB/PBS Diversity and Innovation Fund.