Quick Takes

WGBH modifying Roadshow web contact info, participation agreement after complaint

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After receiving and investigating an 11-page complaint from a former Antiques Roadshow appraiser (Current, Dec. 12, 2011), producing station WGBH is revising how it handles contact information for experts on the Roadshow website, and making changes in its Appraisal Event Participation Agreement. In a letter to Gary Sohmers, who had raised concerns over what he saw as “illogically restrictive” clauses in the contract signed by all the experts — who are not compensated for their work — WGBH Corporate Counsel Eric Brass said the station, as part of an ongoing review process of production-related practices, would make contact information available online for past appraisers, and change the participation agreement “to focus more clearly any restrictions on an appraiser’s activities and statements regarding Antiques Roadshow to those that WGBH believes are important for protecting the series’ trademark and other legal rights, and its image.””WGBH has been fair and responsible in reviewing the matter and considering your comments and suggestions,” Brass said in the letter.

Quick Takes

Shapiro: Accelerator’s challenge is using for-profit energy for nonprofit mission

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Here’s more from Jake Shapiro, founding c.e.o. of Public Radio Exchange, on why PRX and the Knight Foundation created the Public Media Accelerator, which was announced in December 2011. First, the concept: “Accelerators are organizations focused on early stage investment in technology startups, providing a mix of financing, mentorship and other support to help launch new companies with the potential for explosive growth,” he writes on MediaShift. “It’s clear that public media needs its own accelerator — attuned to the needs and assets of the industry and connected to the talent and energy in the broader technology and media world.”One challenge, he notes, is to “harness the for-profit energy that attracts top talent and aligns incentives in the standard accelerator model, while advancing the mission-driven principles at the core of the venture.”  If that’s possible, one outcome would be to “overcome the inherent weaknesses of the grant-driven, project-based funding that has been the means of innovation funding in the industry to date,” he writes. “These efforts tend to be incremental, short-lived, and at best result in ‘sustaining’ rather than ‘disruptive’ innovation (using Clayton Christensen’s well-known construct). It’s not hard to see why disruptive innovations tend to come from outside successful organizations and industries rather than from within.

Quick Takes

MPTV to premiere documentary on conservative talk radio in Wisconsin

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A two-hour documentary examining the impact that conservative talk radio has had on the political climate in Wisconsin — a state currently roiled by an impending gubernatorial recall — will premiere on Milwaukee Public Television on Jan. 30. Conservative Talk Radio: Liberty or Lies was produced, written and directed by Brien Farley, a Waukesha County radio, video production, marketing and public relations professional, as a graduate-level independent study project through Marquette University’s College of Political Science, and began as a six-part series based on 17 hours of interviews. “There’s little question that conservative talk radio has had a significant impact on political conversation and results in Wisconsin over the past few years,” said Ellis Bromberg, general manager of MPTV, in a press release. “We think this documentary does a good job of explaining, in a balanced way, why that has been the case.”

Quick Takes

NewsHour gets CPB grant to caption and translate its election coverage

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The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is giving PBS NewsHour a $420,000 grant to enable volunteers to translate its 2012 election coverage into dozens of languages, as well as caption it for viewers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. NewsHour Open Election 2012 will use crowd-sourcing technologies developed by the nonprofit Participatory Culture Foundation and open-source Web tools creator Mozilla. “These technologies will make election news, speeches and debates more accessible for diverse audiences, helping to increase their understanding of, and engagement in, the political process,” CPB said in a press release Thursday (Jan. 19).NewsHour has used the technology twice before. The first was a translation of the president’s 2011 State of the Union Address, which was converted via open-sourced captions into seven languages and partially translated into 16 more.

Quick Takes

Blackbaud acquires Convio

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Blackbaud, a software provider for nonprofit organizations including public broadcasters, has agreed to purchase Convio, another firm that helps pubcasters with fundraising. Both boards of directors have unanimously approved the transaction, structured as a cash tender offer followed by a merger, according to an announcement on NASDAQ.com.”Blackbaud noted that the acquisition of Convio will combine both companies’ strengths to provide a comprehensive and compelling set of multi-channel supporter engagement solutions to nonprofit organizations of all sizes,” the announcement said. Blackbaud had acquired Target Analytics, another public broadcasting station vendor, in 2007.

Quick Takes

Vanity Fair examines NPR’s “annus horribilis of 2011”

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“NPR has always been a curiously insular institution,” according to a long look at the network in the latest Vanity Fair, “a place where people with common backgrounds congregate, stay around forever, live near and sometimes marry one another (at one point Susan Stamberg actually kept track of how many such matches there had been).”“It’s a self-involved and self-defining culture,” an NPR insider told writer David Margolick. “I suppose it’s only a matter of time before an NPR couple produces the first NPR baby who becomes an NPR reporter.”As an outsider, new NPR President Gary Knell, former head of Sesame Workshop, “seems well suited to pop NPR out of its Beltway bubble,” Margolick writes. “In the process, he could help it to develop the maturity and competence, confidence and toughness, to match its steadily growing influence and reach.”The story explores at length the Juan Williams firing scandal. There’s also a related piece focusing on Williams himself,  including allegations of harassment of women staffers during his tenure at the Washington Post — accusations Williams has previously described as “totally false.”

Quick Takes

Could “Downton” be headed for Hollywood?

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The Sun newspaper in Britain is reporting that the Masterpiece Classic hit Downton Abbey could be in for a movie treatment. After Downton’s win for best mini-series at the Golden Globes on Sunday (Jan. 15), creator Julian Fellowes “was virtually mobbed at the event’s after-party at the Beverly Hilton, with actors and movie bosses wanting to know whether there was a film on the cards.””Julian was explaining he would have to give the idea a lot of thought and that lots of people have already asked him about film rights,” the paper reports. “Insiders suggested any film is likely to deal with a single event that engulfs the Abbey and its characters that won’t detract from the ongoing TV narrative.”Fellowes won a screenplay Oscar for the 2001 British film Gosford Park, which starred Downton’s Maggie Smith.Meanwhile, writing in Newsweek, Simon Schama, Columbia University history professor, calls Downton “cultural necrophilia.” Well.

People

Lynn Samuels, 69; began talk career at Pacifica’s WBAI

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Progressive radio talk-show host Lynn Samuels, 69, who began her career on public radio, was found dead in her Queens, N.Y., apartment on Christmas Eve, the New York Daily News reported. When Samuels didn’t show up for her Sirius XM show Dec. 24, reps for the satellite radio company had asked the police to investigate. Samuels began her radio career in 1979 at Pacifica Radio’s WBAI in New York City. In the 1980s she moved to WABC Radio.

Programs/Content
Photo illustration of the Abbey and its inhabitants illuminated by the fiery light of battle

Unusual rights delay: hint of budget strife?

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PBS’s ongoing negotiations to curb per-hour costs of producing programs and to assert more control over content are increasing friction with its largest producer, Boston’s powerhouse WGBH, according to sources at other stations with knowledge of the situation.

For a period until just four days before the second-season premiere of the gem of this season’s PBS schedule, Downton Abbey from Masterpiece Classic, the approval of PBS broadcast rights for the series hung in the balance as WGBH protested the network’s contract demands….

People

Robert A. Woods, 80, attorney for public stations, NAEB

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Robert A. Woods, 80, a retired founding partner in the communications law firm of Schwartz, Woods & Miller, died Dec. 22 [2011] following a long illness. The firm handled FCC and other matters for numerous public broadcasting stations as well as for common carriers and commercial broadcasters. Woods served as outside general counsel for the National Association of Educational Broadcasters in its later years. In cities where there were no suitable TV channels reserved for noncommercial use, Woods went into battle.

AIR

NPR increases pay rates for outside producers

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NPR and the Association of Independents in Radio unveiled a new payment structure for news reports Jan. 1, raising rates 7.5 percent for station-based and indie radio producers, effective immediately. NPR adopted a three-tiered compensation system and established standard rates for tape syncs. “NPR’s decision to increase rates, which comes at a time of tight budgets, is intended to reflect our commitment to the vital network of station-based and independent reporters whose contributions enhance our programming every day,” NPR interim news chief Margaret Low Smith said in an email. Reaching agreement took nearly a year of negotiations with AIR and internal consultations at NPR, according to AIR President Sue Schardt.

System/Policy

Pubcasters, Daystar and others are eyeing KCSM bids

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Potential bidders for pubcaster KCSM-TV in San Mateo, Calif., put up for auction by its college licensee, include both religious broadcasters and names well known in public media. Daystar Television, a growing religious network that has bought pubTV channels in Dallas and Waco, Texas, and bid for them in Orlando, Fla., and Orange County, Calif., was on the attendance list for the San Mateo Community College District’s pre-bid meeting Jan. 10. Also on the list were former WNET exec Ken Devine of Independent Public Media, a nonprofit that aims to preserve spectrum for public media (Current, Oct. 17);  Ken Ikeda and Marc Hand of Public Media Company, an affiliate of Public Radio Capital; Booker Wade, head of the Minority Television Project and non-PBS pubTV station KMTP in San Francisco; and a rep for Stewart Cheifet Productions, which created Computer Chronicles, a show that ran on public TV for 20 years, ending in 2002.

System/Policy

Rochester indie-movie venue now operated by WXXI

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WXXI in Rochester, N.Y., has acquired a downtown movie house, The Little Theatre, it announced Dec. 19. The art-deco theater, founded in 1929 as part of a “little theatre” movement promoting alternatives to Hollywood’s mass-audience movies, still specializes in indie and foreign films, including anime and docs. In recent decades it was expanded from one to five screens, and to 940 seats, and it became a nonprofit. “The Little,” as it’s known locally, screens more than 100 films a year and hosts several annual community film festivals.

Programs/Content

Next, PBS Tuesday schedule goes for the flow

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If this is Tuesday, it must be history. At least, that’s what PBS hopes viewers think as the service moves forward with plans to identify specific program genres with days of the week. “People have had difficulty navigating through our schedule,” Kerger told TV critics gathered in Pasadena, Calif., for the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour, where PBS previewed content Jan. 4 and 5. “Being able to build destination nights and really build programs that link well together on a single night seems to be working out quite well.”

PBS says its move of Nova from Tuesday to Wednesday, its new science destination, has encouraged it to create more theme nights.

System/Policy

State aid to Virginia stations again in jeopardy

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Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has proposed zeroing out the state’s $7.2 million in state funding for Virginia’s public television and radio stations and their educational telecommunications services for the next two years. Pubcasters hope to convince McDonnell to restore some funds by arguing for the value of the educational services they provide. The state’s system does more for public schools than pubTV in many states. WHRO in Norfolk/Hampton Roads, for example, has created 22 online high-school courses that are available to schools for much lower annual fees than the roughly $5,000 per-student charges of commercial vendors, according to Bert Schmidt, WHRO’s president. The governor’s office denied pubcasters’ request for a meeting, but Schmidt and his colleagues are still pursuing “creative solutions,” he says, such as channeling money through appropriate entities to assure politicians that it’s used solely for educational purposes.

Programs/Content

Oregonians introduce Occupy populists to the Tea Party kind

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A unique local-national hybrid talk show on Southern Oregon Public TV proves that a passion for bridging philosophical divides and a (sometimes shaky) Skype connection can lead to Immense Possibilities. The Jan. 10 [2012] episode of the half-hour weekly roundtable introduced four local activists, two from the Tea Party on the right and two from the Occupy movement on the left. They found common ground on the air and are now working together on the ground. Funders, too, have pitched in.

Quick Takes

Kellogg, NPR national correspondent, departs after 14 months

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NPR National Correspondent Alex P. Kellogg has left the network after 14 months on the job, he told the Journal-isms blog on Monday (Jan. 16). “We’re parting ways amicably,” Kellogg said. The blog noted that Kellogg is “one of NPR’s two black male on-air journalists.” The Harvard-educated Kellogg had previously reported for the Wall Street Journal and Detroit Free Press.

Quick Takes

Ratings for new format WESA-FM down 50 percent from WDUQ days

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Audience numbers for news WESA-FM, the former WDUQ jazz/news station in Pittsburgh, have dropped 50 percent since June 2011, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, from a 1.6 Arbitron share that June to a .8 share in December. “It’s not surprising there’s some audience loss because of the jazz loss,” pubradio consultant John Sutton told the paper. “What is surprising: Usually when you streamline your format, you see an increase in listening among the remaining listeners. And that hasn’t happened yet.”Tammy Terwelp, WESA director of content and programming, said she considers the downturn typical for a new format, and the low December number doesn’t concern her. “Holiday listening patterns of people are so unlike their normal listening patterns,” she said.

Frontline

NewsHour picks up Bellantoni, WBEZ personnel changes, and more…

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Bellantoni to oversee all <em>NewsHour</em> political coverage
PBS NewsHour has a new political editor as of Jan. 2. Christina Bellantoni of CQ Roll Call oversees the newsroom’s political coverage on-air and online, including political analysis, elections and personalities. Her predecessor, David Chalain, departed in November to lead the Washington bureau of Yahoo News. Bellantoni has spent more than a decade covering national political and business news in Washington, D.C., and California.