Current (https://current.org/2012/09/page/4/)
PBS’s yearlong effort to build more audience flow in its primetime schedule moves into new territory with the Sept. 30 U.S. broadcast premiere of Call the Midwife, a limited-run BBC drama that will attempt to draw in Masterpiece fans and keep them watching an hour longer on Sunday nights.
In August 2005, PBS’s $120 million Next Generation Interconnection System was hailed as a major advance for the public broadcasting system. Its target completion date was late 2006. Seven years, several generations of technology and a change of management later, the main components of NGIS are finally moving toward full implementation.
With national producers offering new programs and the Magliozzi Brothers retiring from Car Talk, program directors at public radio stations may have an opportune moment to update strategies for weekend programming. Yet with no surefire hits available beyond the familiar warhorses, there’s no easy formula for success when Saturday rolls around.
An infusion of CPB funding is allowing the Independent Television Service to add more features to OVEE, the online engagement tool that ITVS calls “the world’s first fully functional social screening platform.”
Once thought to have been left for dead after the vaudeville era, variety shows have re-entered the public radio reinvention conversation — and it doesn’t take Guy Noir to find out why.
America By The Numbers, a PBS election special produced by Maria Hinojosa, looks at the demographic shifts found in U.S. Census data, focusing on people whose engagement in community life exemplifies the increased diversity of American civic life.
With their new website up, KPLU journalists scrutinized usage and found clues pointing to stories that work online.
A new agreement between Southern Oregon University and Jefferson Public Radio settles the months-long dispute between the two parties over control of the 22-station radio network and related real-estate projects that had caused concern among university auditors. The mediated settlement, announced Aug. 27, splits JPR’s radio activities from the theater restoration projects that a related nonprofit, the Jefferson Public Radio Foundation, had undertaken in recent years. Southern Oregon University will assume control of all 22 stations in the JPR network, seven of which are now owned by the foundation. Meanwhile, the foundation’s theater properties will be controlled by Jefferson Live!, a new limited-liability corporation to be established as a subsidiary of the JPR Foundation.
Chicago’s WTTW said today (Sept. 7) that it has signed on as a founding member of the Digital Convergence Alliance, the multi-station master control centralcast facility lead by WJCT in Jacksonville, Fla., and has been actively involved in its design. “WTTW has a long history of quality content creation,” said Dan Schmidt, WTTW president, “and combining our master control operation frees up resources to create more.” The station plans to put all savings into content; no jobs will be eliminated. The alliance, the second hub operation in pubcasting after Centralcast LLC in New York, is funded by a $7 million grant from CPB.
SoCal Connected, KCET’s investigative news program, is moving to a weeknight format for its fifth season, beginning Oct. 29. “We will continue to investigate the inner workings of Los Angeles and surrounding communities, while offering a daily recap of local headlines,” said Bret Marcus, executive producer, in the Sept. 6 announcement. Last season, SoCal Connected won 16 Los Angeles Press Club Awards, more than any other TV station, including its Public Service Award for exposing lavish spending at the Housing Authority of Los Angeles — only the second news organization to receive the honor. KCET was forced to shut down production of new episodes a few weeks earlier than usual last year, after losing U.S. Bank as a corporate sponsor.
Chicago’s WBEZ is revamping its flagship newsmagazine, Eight Forty-Eight, into The Morning Shift with Tony Sarabia, reports Time Out Chicago media critic Robert Feder. It’ll also start 10 minutes earlier, at 8:50 a.m. weekdays. “The move is an opportunity to dive in earlier to news and stories that are relevant to our listener community,” Torey Malatia, president and CEO of Chicago Public Media, told staffers Thursday. The program’s original name honored the station’s Navy Pier address, 848 E. Grand Ave. The station has been mulling changes to the show since last November.
In The Life, the first and only nationally broadcast lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) newsmagazine, is going off the air in December, after 20 years. The announcement came Wednesday (Sept. 5) from In The Life Media Co-Chairs Henry van Ameringen, who had contributed $1 million to the show in March, and Jayne B. Sherman. “Creating high quality, in-depth journalism is expensive,” their announcement said. “However, we are committed to using our available resources to reach the broadest possible audience.
Rebecca Eaton, executive producer of Masterpiece, is a new entry to Vanity Fair’s annual “The Powers That Be” list, squeaking in at No. 24 on the roll of 25. Just below her, actor Alec Baldwin; above, Matt Blank and David Nevins of Showtime. Vanity Fair said of Eaton, “Great reviews and solid ratings have been the norm during Eaton’s 27-year tenure at the helm of both Mystery! and Masterpiece, but with Downton Abbey she has given the newly glamorous PBS its most talked-about show since the early 1990s.”
NPR is teaming up with New York’s WNYC to make its trivia and quiz show Ask Me Another into a weekly offering, starting in January. The show’s 13-episode pilot season has aired on 150 stations since its launch in May. As a new co-producer, WNYC will contribute to shaping the show’s creative direction. Taping of 25 new episodes will start in November at the Bell House in Brooklyn, where the first season was recorded in front of sold-out audiences. Ask Me Another will also travel to five cities yet to be determined for additional tapings.
Twenty local news projects backed by foundations were awarded $3.67 million in matching funds today (Sept. 5) as winners of the Knight Community Information Challenge. Initiatives include the New Jersey News Collaborative, with partners Montclair State University and New Jersey Public Radio, backed by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation; New Orleans pubradio station WWNO and the Greater New Orleans Foundation; and TheNewsOutlet.org, a multimedia investigative journalism site run by college students and professional editors supported by the Raymond John Wean Foundation. “These foundations join the 80-plus community and place-based foundations who are leading by informing and engaging the public on issues they care about,” said Trabian Shorters, vice president/communities for Knight Foundation.
Israel “Izzi” Smith will be the new director of programming at NPR, starting in November. He replaces Eric Nuzum, now vice president of programming, who announced the hire in a memo to NPR staffers today (Sept. 5). Smith has worked as a pubmedia consultant for almost 15 years, helping to introduce and manage projects including Radiolab, PRX’s The Moth Radio Hour, State of the Re:Union with Al Letson, and the Public Radio Talent Quest with PRX and CPB. “Izzi is a true ‘connector,’ always trying to link good ideas, people, and stations to serve audiences in bigger, more inclusive ways,” Nuzum said.
The St. Joseph County (Ind.) Board of Commissioners has approved financing a public access television station, to be operated and managed by local public TV station WNIT, reports the South Bend Tribune. The board authorized spending $155,000, or about 30 percent of the total necessary, over the next five years on the project. South Bend will provide $280,000 and Mishawaka, $75,000. The station will broadcast public meetings and other content related to government and education on channel 99.
Steve Edwards is leaving WBEZ-FM in Chicago after 14 years to become deputy director, programming, at the University of Chicago’s new nonpartisan Institute of Politics, an organization for students interested in public-service careers that is led by Democratic political consultant David Axelrod. Edwards’s last day is Sept. 21, reports Time Out Chicago media critic Robert Feder, noting that with Edwards’s resignation, “Chicago radio lost one of its most brilliant and talented stars.” Last February Edwards premiered The Afternoon Shift, a live, two-hour weekday call-in program. Previously he had anchored the Eight Forty-Eight weekday news show, as well as served as director of content development and program director.
WNET in New York City is offering an arts and culture content management sharing system for video and web content, mainly among Major Market Group (MMG) stations. The first package of programming is being delivered to stations today (Sept. 4). Content will cover performing and visual arts and feature interviews with a geographically diverse and creatively broad group of artists, writers, composers and performers, “allowing local arts and culture institutions and local funders to get their stories out to a national audience,” the station said in an Aug. 27 announcement.