Quick Takes

South Dakota governor criticizes NPR investigation on Native foster children

By |

The governor of South Dakota is criticizing an NPR investigative report on foster care for Native American children in the state, according to the Daily Republic in Mitchell. The yearlong project, “Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families” ran as a three-part series by NPR investigative correspondent Laura Sullivan on Morning Edition and All Things Considered in October 2011. Sullivan found that nearly 700 Native American children in South Dakota are removed from their homes every year, and that the vast majority of those children are placed into nonnative homes or group homes. According to the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, Native children must be placed with their relatives or tribes.Gov. Dennis Daugaard told the newspaper’s editorial board on Monday (Jan. 16), “I can’t identify any legitimate criticisms that identified an area where we could take action.

Quick Takes

“Downton” and “Freedom Riders” score Eddie Award nods

By |

Nominees for the 62nd annual American Cinema Editors’ Eddie Awards include several public TV include Downton Abbey from Masterpiece Classic and Freedom Riders from American Experience. The Eddies honor excellence in film editing. Here’s a full list of nominees.

Tech

NPR app for motorists gets radio from the Web as well as stations

By |

Some new Ford cars will let their drivers shout “hourly news!” or “topics!” and choose public radio programming either on their local stations or through a smartphone streaming audio from the Internet. Bringing in webcasts and on-demand streaming gives drivers a vastly greater range of listening options and could make it even easier for them to hear public radio without help from their local stations. That ability is already within reach for drivers who have a smartphone and a cable or adapter to connect it to a car stereo. But coupling a smartphone with the new NPR app to Ford’s SYNC AppLink system may help popularize web audio listening, a scenario that dismays some pubradio station leaders. Regardless, some station execs are also praising NPR for taking the lead as the first news organization to develop a dedicated in-car app that showcases its programming.

Quick Takes

“Independent Lens” schedule includes two possible Oscar nominees

By |

Independent Lens has unveiled its winter/spring 2012 season, which includes two films on the “short-list” for Academy Award nominations: Hell and Back Again, about the human costs of war, and We Were Here, a look at the early days of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco. Here’s a full rundown of the 2012 offerings, to be hosted by actress Mary Louise Parker. This season, the program moves to Thursday nights on most PBS member stations.

Quick Takes

“Downton” wins Golden Globe for best mini-series

By |

Downton Abbey, the PBS hit from Masterpiece Classic, received the Golden Globe for best mini-series or motion picture made for television in ceremonies Sunday night (Jan. 15) in Hollywood. Downton had received four nominations. A complete list of winners and nominees is here.

People
Daniel Faulkner and Mumia Abu-Jamal

State drops death penalty for commentator Mumia Abu-Jamal

By |

Mumia Abu-Jamal, the onetime radio journalist, activist and convicted killer whose planned jailhouse commentaries were dropped by NPR after an outcry 17 years ago, is off of death row. However, he’s likely to stay in prison the rest of his life, without the possibility of parole.  Abu-Jamal is now jailed at State Correctional Institution Mahanoy, west of Allentown in eastern Pennsylvania. Philadelphia’s district attorney, Seth Williams, said Dec. 7 [2011] the death penalty was a just punishment for killing a city policeman 30 years ago, but he wouldn’t prolong the legal struggle by asking again for execution. Twice the courts had ordered execution, and appeals saved him — to the relief of his partisans and to the outrage of those of Officer Daniel Faulkner.

People

Judy Jankowski, 61, managed prominent jazz stations

By |

Judy Jankowski, who held top management positions at several public broadcasting stations, died Dec. 17 [2011] at Kindred Hospital in Westminster, Calif. She was 61. She started her long pubcasting career as a traffic manager at WOUB in Athens, Ohio, worked as g.m. of Pittsburgh’s WDUQ from the mid-1980s until 1994, and then managed another leading jazz station — KLON, now KKJZ in Long Beach, Calif. — until retiring in 2005.

People

Bob O’Rourke, 72, developed pubcasting science shows

By |

Bob O’Rourke, a former v.p. for public relations at the California Institute of Technology who helped develop several pubcasting science features, died Dec. 27 [2011] of complications following a lung transplant several years ago. He was 72. O’Rourke conceived AirTalk: The Caltech Edition, a collaboration with local NPR member station KPCC in Pasadena, Calif., as well as The Loh Down on Science, designed to be “the fun way to get your daily dose of science in less than two minutes” and hosted by comedian/Caltech physics major Sandra Tsing Loh. He also was a driving force behind Curious, a four-part pubTV series from WNET that focused on the work of scientists at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

People

Dave Creagh, 60, producer and station exec ‘in vanguard of public radio pioneers’

By |

Dave Creagh, an early All Things Considered executive producer who went on to lead other programs and major-market stations throughout his influential 22-year pubradio career, died Dec. 16 at his home in Blowing Rock, N.C., following a short illness associated with treatment of a cancer diagnosed in November. He was 60. “Dave was in the vanguard of public radio pioneers who laid the foundations for a vital communications network,” said John Dimsdale, Washington bureau chief for American Public Media’s Marketplace and a former colleague at NPR. “Over his career, he established high standards for engineering, journalism, production and station management.

People

Jim Fellows: diplomat at center of pubTV

By |

James A. Fellows, 77, an advocate of high ideals, strategic planning and executive training for public television, died in his sleep Friday, Jan. 6, at a nursing home in Millville, N.J.

He had been besieged by Parkinson’s disease and the lasting effects of a nearly fatal car accident in 2003 and a stroke in 2004. Jim represented stations on the national scene for 40 years, serving as the last president of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, a forerunner and parent of PBS and NPR. Recognizing that few station leaders had ever been trained as managers and budgeters, he arranged for development of intensive short courses taught at business schools. He founded Current as one of NAEB’s last projects in 1980 and remained its publisher, in effect, for more than 20 years — advising its editors, never interfering, inspiring them with his sense of purpose.

Programs/Content

As NBC partners, pubmedia may expand reporting, visibility

By |

NBC will share stories, resources and content distribution with two public broadcasters, ProPublica and two local nonprofit newsrooms under the FCC agreement clearing Comcast’s 2011 takeover of NBC Universal. If the preexisting, five-year collaboration between NBC-owned KNSD in San Diego and the nonprofit Voice of San Diego news site is anything to go by, news consumers may see real benefits. Boosting NBC Universal stations’ local content through partnerships with nonprofit news organizations was one of the conditions placed on the network to complete its deal with Comcast. ProPublica, the Pulitzer-winning investigative enterprise that frequently partners with other top news outlets, will work with WNBC-TV in New York, as well as with all 10 NBC-owned stations in the country. In other metro areas, WCAU in Philadelphia will work with pubcaster WHYY, and KNBC in Los Angeles with team up with public radio station KPCC, operated by a sister organization to American Public Media.

Tech

WGBH puts listings on an iPad

By |

WGBH has begun distributing its monthly program guide, Explore!, in a package that brings video and audio promos along with it to iPad tablets. It can also use Wi-Fi to pull in updated “live listings” from the Web even after it’s in the viewers’ hands.

Quick Takes

Bill Kling, seen as aloof? “Probably accurate,” he tells the New York Times

By |

Bill Kling, former c.e.o. of American Public Media Group, admitted to the New York Times that during his time at the Minnesota-based pubradio network he realizes that he was “generally perceived as aloof.””That’s probably accurate,” he said. “But not for the reasons you would think. It’s difficult for someone who has grown up with the company and who knows the veteran employees so well, to then find that there are so many other employees whom you don’t know well. And if you don’t know them well, you feel bad about it.””You may feel awkward when you don’t know enough about some people to make them feel as much a part of the company as you want them to feel or know enough about what they have to offer the company,” he said. “And so you kind of avoid interactions with them.

Quick Takes

WAMU buys two translators to stretch its bluegrass reach

By |

WAMU 88.5 in Washington, D.C., has purchased two FM translators to extend its bluegrass format, reports Inside Radio. The station is paying $100,000 to religious broadcaster Family Radio for W228AM, Frederick, Md. (93.5) and W228AB, Paramount, Md. (93.5), which will be the second and third translators for WAMU’s HD2 subchannel, also airing at 105.5 FM from a Bethesda, Md., translator. [Disclaimer: WAMU and Current are both affiliated with American University.]

Quick Takes

Hentoff: Romney cuts in pubcasting funding would “create a dark hole in our lives”

By |

Civil libertarian and writer Nat Hentoff is taking on GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s comments on the campaign trail that PBS needs to run commercials instead of take federal funding. In a piece on the website of the libertarian Cato Institute, where Hentoff is a senior fellow, he writes, “If Mitt Romney and his defunding colleagues have their way and commercialize Sesame Street, Big Bird and the other puppets are going to be cajoling their young audience to keep bugging their parents to buy what Big Bird is selling.” “If Mitt Romney makes these cuts,” Hentoff adds, “he will create a dark hole in our lives that will defy James Madison’s warning — which becomes more contemporary every day: ‘A people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives . . .

Quick Takes

Portia Clark, who worked on early Fred Rogers show at WQED, dies at 91

By |

Portia Clark, a longtime personality in New York City publishing circles who began her career in public broadcasting, died Jan. 1, according to Publishers Weekly. She was 91.She started her professional life at WQED in Pittsburgh in the early days of public television. One of the shows she worked on was The Children’s Corner, where Fred Rogers developed puppets that turned into characters in Mister Rogers Neighborhood. [Editor’s Note: The Publishers Weekly obituary originally identified that program as The Children’s Hour.] She also produced TV shows at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism’s Office of Radio and Television.Clark went on to positions at at Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Oxford University Press, where “she helped define the field of book promotion to libraries,” PW said.

Quick Takes

N.J. legislators demand overhaul of NJTV network

By |

Two New Jersey Assemblymen who had attempted to stop the sale of the state’s public broadcasting rights to WNET are now calling for an overhaul of the NJTV network, reports NJ.com, saying it fails to provide residents with state news coverage. Patrick Diegnan Jr. and John Burzichelli gave examples: When the governor was announcing his presidential plans, the network aired Angelina Ballerina; and during coverage of the death of an elder statesman in the Assembly, it ran Thomas the Train. “Given the gravity of the situation, NJTV has become the ultimate ‘Jersey Joke,'” Diegnan said.UPDATE: NJTV issued a statement, saying in part that “upon the death of Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce, the network made the editorial decision to cover the day’s eulogy remarks as breaking news. NJTV aired a one-hour live broadcast from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. anchored by NJ Today’s Managing Editor Mike Schneider, and included eulogy remarks from legislators and the governor. Chief Political Correspondent Michael Aron was present in the Assembly chamber, covering reaction to the Minority Leader’s death.”

Quick Takes

Possible KCSM-TV buyers include pubcasters, entrepreneurs, Daystar

By |

Potential bidders for pubcaster KCSM-TV in San Mateo, Calif., include names well known within the pubcasting system, as well as some new ones. The attendance list for a “pre-bid meeting” Tuesday (Jan. 10) includes former WNET exec Ken Devine of Independent Public Media (background: Current, Oct. 17, 2011); Ken Ikeda and Marc Hand of Boulder, Colo.-based Public Media Company;  Booker Wade, of the Minority Television Project/KMTP in San Francisco; and a rep for Stewart Cheifet Productions, which created Computer Chronicles, a personal computing show that ran on public TV for 20 years, ending in 2002. Other interested parties on the list: Ravi Potherlanka and Bill Dekay, two California wireless industry entrepreneurs; Ravi Kapur, vice president of KAXT in Santa Clara, Calif., a low-power affiliate of Spanish-language Christian television Tiempos Finales TV; Brian Stephens, c.e.o. of Pixel-Flick Entertainment, a website for independent producers; and two reps from religious broadcaster Daystar.Here’s a PDF of questions covered at the meeting.

Quick Takes

Basin PBS could be puttin’ on the Ritz

By |

Looks like Basin PBS in Midland, Texas, may be moving downtown. According to MyWestTexas.com, the Downtown Midland Management District board has voted to provide the station with a $100,000 grant over the next four years if it purchases the Ritz Theater on Main Street. General Manager Daphne Dowdy Jackson told the board the station would need public support because the theater requires renovation work. Basin PBS anticipates needing to raise between $3.5 and $4 million, some of which it already has, to make the move. The station will operate from the Ritz Theater, as well as open the theater for public meetings and other community uses.