Quick Takes

Ken Burns, defending PBS in USA Today, pits Reagan’s words against Romney’s

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PBS documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, whose extensive credits include The Civil War, Baseball and the upcoming The Dust Bowl, authored an editorial in Tuesday’s USA Today in which he said that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney “knows the price of things, but he clearly doesn’t know their value.” Romney has attracted the ire of the pubcasting community for frequently stating throughout his campaign that he would cut funding to CPB, and he reiterated his intent to do so during last week’s presidential debate. Burns recalled filming The Civil War in the late 1980s, during which time he visited then-President Ronald Reagan in the White House. At the time, according to Burns, Reagan expressed his support and admiration for both the National Endowment for the Humanities and CPB, two government-funded entities that backed the film. “Reagan put both hands on my shoulder and said, ‘That’s it!

Quick Takes

Madeleine Brand jumps to TV, joins KCET’s SoCal Connected

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Veteran public radio broadcaster Madeleine Brand has joined the staff of SoCal Connected, KCET’s award-winning news magazine that is moving from weekly to daily programs for its fifth season on the independent Los Angeles pubTV station. Brand left local KPCC in September after The Madeleine Brand Show was revamped into Brand & Martinez with a new co-host, local sportscaster A Martinez, joined the program. (See Current’s story on those changes.)

This is Brand’s first foray into television. Before KPCC, she spent 13 years at NPR, including as host of the national newsmag Day to Day. Bret Marcus, KCET’s chief content officer and SoCal Connected’s executive producer, called Brand “a terrific broadcaster who has developed a loyal following among both listeners and newsmakers.”

Quick Takes

Sesame Workshop asks Obama campaign to drop Big Bird ad

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Sesame Workshop has asked the Obama for America campaign to remove an online ad that contains a cameo appearance from its Big Bird character. The 31-second video plays off GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s statement during the recent debates that he would end funding to PBS. The spot says Romney implies that “it’s not Wall Street you have to worry about, it’s Sesame Street,” comparing Big Bird to disgraced financiers including Bernie Madoff. In response, Sesame Workshop, nonprofit home to Sesame Street, posted that it is a “nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down.”

People

KQED’s AIDS at 30 series wins award for excellence in radio

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The series covered the 30th anniversary of the year the Centers for Disease Control reported that five previously healthy young men in Los Angeles had come down with a rare lung disease, later identified as HIV. For The California Report series, Scott Shafer interviewed medical researchers and activists involved in the early days of the epidemic. Established in 1993 to recognize excellence in journalism about issues related to the LGBT community, the NLGJA’s Excellence in Journalism Awards were presented at the UNITY 2012 Convention and NLGJA Awards Reception Aug. 3 in Las Vegas. The UNITY: Journalists, Inc. coalition consists of the NLGJA, the Asian American Journalists Association, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Native American Journalists Association.

People

Minnesota Public Radio’s Chris Worthington receives diversity award

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Presented by AAJA Minnesota, the Leadership in Diversity Award honors someone who has made great strides in promoting and demonstrating diversity in the news industry. Worthington, managing director of MPR News since 2006, received the honor based on his commitment to developing the next generation of journalists, his efforts to bring more diverse voices to MPR News and his support for groups such as AAJA, even during challenging economic times. “In my mind, a commitment to newsroom diversity and accurate coverage always starts at the top,” said Tom Horgen, AAJA Minnesota chapter president, “and Chris has shown time and again that he has a thoughtful and unwavering passion for these issues.”

The award was presented Sept. 27.

Development

Hawaii Public Radio overcomes challenges to win prize for outstanding fundraising

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DEI gives its Benchmarks Award each year to a consistently top-performing station in terms of net revenue per hour of listening. While the median station raises .95 cents in underwriting revenue per listener-hour, HPR last year sold 2.25 cents per listener-hour — all handled by HPR’s single underwriting salesperson. In presenting the award, Robin Turnau, president and c.e.o. of Vermont Public Radio and DEI treasurer, cited HPR’s peculiar challenges. “Their location is one of the top vacation destinations in the world. They deal daily with the challenges of serving a transient population, while raising funds from a permanent listenership where the local median income is only modest, while the cost of living is extraordinarily high,” said Turnau, noting that HPR’s net-revenue-per-listener-hour stat put it in the top 10 percent of DEI surveys for both membership and mid-level giving.

Development

Wisconsin Public Radio’s Dopart was hailed as PRADO development professional of the year

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Since becoming WPR’s director of membership director in 2005, Rebecca Dopart has upped membership revenue by 30 percent — from $5 million to $6.5 million — and increased the number of donors from 40,000 to almost 49,000. Since she assumed the additional title of director of corporate support two years ago, sales have risen nearly 30 percent, to around $1.8 million. “She turned a team that suffered from low morale into one that has sold so many spots that their underwriting rates had to be increased and new avails created,” said Gordon Bayliss, v.p. of sales and marketing at WBFO-FM/WNED-FM/WNED-TV in Buffalo, N.Y., and PRADO’s immediate past president, in presenting the award. “She achieved those results by providing the team with training retreats, instituting new contact management software, creating a copy review team and a new media kit, and by simply applying her own can-do attitude and moral support of each team member.”

This is the 16th year for the PRADO award, which honors the station-based fundraising professional who has demonstrated excellence at his or her public radio station. Dopart received the award at the Public Media Development and Marketing Conference (PMDMC) July 13 in Seattle.

People

Hinojosa wins John Chancellor Award for a lifetime of broadcasting achievement

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Maria Hinojosa, reporter and anchor for PBS, NPR and CNN, was selected by a panel of eight judges who cited “the courage and independence she has shown over the course of her career reporting on those whose stories might not otherwise make it into the mainstream media.”

The anchor/executive producer of NPR’s long-running Latino USA and anchor of Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One from WGBH/La Plaza was hailed for more than 25 years of reporting on the marginalized and powerless in the U.S. and overseas. In 2010 Hinojosa launched the nonprofit Futuro Media Group, which produces multiplatform, community-based journalism. And in 2011, she became the first Latina to anchor a PBS Frontline report, “Lost in Detention,” which probed the issues of deportation and immigrant detention and abuse. “From chronicling the Latino experience in America to investigating abuse in immigrant detention facilities and profiling child brides in India, Hinojosa has shown resilience and integrity by consistently covering critical issues that impact our society,” said Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism and chair of the selection committee. Hinojosa will receive $25,000 for the award, which honors longtime NBC News anchor John Chancellor.

People

PRPD honors a co-founder and presents a special award to a key provider of audience data

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The Public Radio Program Directors Association gave its 2012 Don Otto Award to audience researcher Peter Dominowski, who co-founded PRPD in 1987. PRPD bestowed the award Sept. 13 in Las Vegas, where it observed its 25th anniversary as an organization. Dominowski is president of Market Trends Research, a market-research company based in Matheson, Colo. In presenting the award, Jeff Hansen, p.d. at Seattle’s KUOW, cited Dominowski’s many focus groups and research studies, and his work with the Morning Edition Grad School training sessions for stations and as a member of the Strategic Programming Partners consultancy.

People

POV captures five of PBS’s nine news and documentary Emmys

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PBS topped all the other broadcast networks, as runners-up ABC and CBS each won seven. POV’s “Last Train Home,” a film about Chinese migrant workers who go home to celebrate New Year’s, won in two categories — best documentary and outstanding business and economic reporting (long form) — while “Armadillo,” which tracked Danish soldiers in Afghanistan, was cited for editing in the documentary and long form category. Also in the long-form category, “Enemies of the People,” which examined Cambodia’s killing fields, won for outstanding investigative journalism; and “Where Soldiers Come From,” about National Guard recruits from northern Michigan, was cited for its continuing coverage of a news story. All films aired during 2011, POV’s 25th season. “Many of the filmmakers honored tonight have taken tremendous risks to tell these stories of common people caught up in extraordinary circumstances,” said Cynthia López, co-executive producer of POV.

Quick Takes

BBC World America, Masterpiece announce two co-productions

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Masterpiece has signed a co-production deal with BBC World America for two titles. The eight-episode, hourlong Victorian-era series The Paradise finds a young shop girl navigating her way through the power struggles behind the scenes in Britain’s first department store. And The Lady Vanishes, a 90-minute film, is an adaptation of the 1930’s thriller about a woman aboard a train who unwittingly becomes embroiled in a dangerous plot. In the Oct. 9 announcement, Masterpiece Executive Producer Rebecca Eaton said the two are “the latest in a long line of beautifully-made, award-winning co-productions.

People

Great Expectations exceeds expectations by winning four of PBS’s 11 Creative Arts Primetime Emmys

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As a Masterpiece production competing against other miniseries, movies and specials, Great Expectations received Emmys for outstanding achievement in costume design (Annie Symons, Yvonne Duckett), art direction (David Roger, Paul Ghirardani, Jo Kornstein), main title design (Nic Benns, Rodi Kaya, Tom Browich) and cinematography (Florian Hoffmeister). In addition, the Masterpiece production Page Eight won an Emmy for original main title theme music (Paul Englishby). Other PBS winners included the Independent Lens production Have You Heard From Johannesburg, a seven-part series about the global anti-apartheid movement that received a juried award for exceptional merit in documentary filmmaking. Cited were Connie Field, producer; Lois Vossen, series senior producer; and Sally Jo Fifer, executive producer. Geoffrey Ward received the Emmy for nonfiction writing for scripting Ken Burns’s Prohibition: A Nation of Hypocrites.

Programs/Content

Pipeline 2013

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This year’s Pipeline survey lists 120 television projects planned, underway, or completed for future seasons on public TV, beginning with Winter 2013.

CPB

Co-host pairing prompts Brand to exit KPCC

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KPCC’s ambitious three-year, $10 million project to fortify its newsroom and serve more people of color has created an unintended casualty: The Los Angeles station lost the popular namesake of its top-rated morning news magazine, The Madeleine Brand Show, after changes that included a new co-host.

Quick Takes

Planet Money reporters talk about team’s approach to news

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In the first of a two-part interview on the NetNewsCheck website, Planet Money reporters Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg talk to writer Michael Depp about what he calls the “curious, humane, approachable style” of the multimedia team covering the global economy for pubradio. Exactly what the program is continues to evolve, Blumburg said. “We’ve been searching for the one word answer. We’re an economics reporting unit, a project. What is the core thing that we do?

Programs/Content

KERA gets $1M donation to bolster regional news coverage

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The Lyda Hill Foundation has donated $1 million to Dallas pubcaster KERA to expand regional news coverage. The donation comes on the heels of the foundation’s 2011 support for KERA’s reporting on health and science issues that included sponsorship of the station’s weekly “Health Checkup” segment. The Lyda Hill Foundation focuses on funding organizations “that make game-changing advances in nature and science research.”

“As a KERA viewer, listener and donor, I recognized the importance of funding such a vital community resource,” Hill said in a prepared statement. “This gift is also meant to inspire others to support the kind of local news stories and reporting not found anywhere else in North Texas.”

The foundation listed total assets of $5.3 million according to its IRS Form 990 for the year ending Nov. 20, 2011.

Quick Takes

ITVS kicks off effort to pull Independent Lens fans from Thursdays to Mondays

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The Independent Television Service has launched a social-media campaign to steer viewers from Thursdays to Monday nights, as Independent Lens prepares to take its new spot in the PBS lineup, with POV. ITVS is urging fans to fans to download an “I stand with independents” sign, take a photo, tweet the picture to #StandWithMe, add it to a Facebook page and submit it to the ITVS Tumblr. “We need your help in the long haul to drive audiences to Monday nights,” ITVS President Sally Jo Fifer said on the organization’s website.