Quick Takes

PBS announces fall lineup, no sign of early Downton Abbey release

By |

It’s official, Downton Abbey fans will have to wait until winter 2014 for their next Edwardian drama fix. PBS announced its fall lineup today, with nary a mention of the Masterpiece megahit. In January PBS President Paula Kerger hinted that PBS was considering changing the premiere to the fall, when it hits the airwaves in Great Britain. Jennifer Byrne, PBS spokesperson, told Current that series Executive Producer Rebecca Eaton will announce the Downton Season 4 premiere date at the PBS annual meeting next week in Miami. Highlights of fall premieres on PBS include an interactive reality series, Genealogy Roadshow, “which uses history and science to connect participants nationwide to their individual and family histories,” PBS said in the announcement; “The Hollow Crown,” a four-part miniseries from Great Performances that combines Shakespeare’s “Richard II,” “Henry IV” (Parts I and II) and “Henry V” into a chronological narrative; and a four-hour, two-part special from American Experience on President John F. Kennedy’s life and death, running on the eve of the 50-year anniversary of his assassination.

People

Merrill Brockway, Emmy-winning Dance in America producer, dead at 90

By |

Merrill Brockway, a producer and director of several PBS arts programs who was best known for his work on the Great Performances spinoff Dance in America, died May 3 in Santa Fe, N.M. He was 90. Brockway was born in Indiana and began a career as a piano teacher and accompanist before entering TV at the age of 30. He wrote and directed for CBS affiliates in Philadelphia and New York before leaving commercial TV for PBS in 1975, when Dance in America launched. He worked on the program, produced by New York’s Thirteen/WNET, from 1975–88, capturing some of America’s most renowned dancers and choreographers on film. Dance in America spotlighted the work of Martha Graham, Thyla Tharp, and the New York City Ballet as choreographed by George Ballanchine, among many others.

Quick Takes

PBS orders pilot script for Latino period drama

By |

Variety is reporting that PBS has ordered a pilot script for a drama series, Alta California, from Dennis Leoni, e.p. and writer of Resurrection Blvd., which ran on Showtime 2000-02. The entertainment mag notes that the program was “the first and longest-running Latino dramatic skein in the history of American television.” Alta California will be set in the mid- to late 1800s and focus on an arranged marriage between two families, one Mexican-Californian and the other European American. Carrie Johnson, PBS spokesperson, declined to provide further details to Current, as PBS is still in contract negotiations for the project. Gregory Nava’s Latino drama American Family concluded in 2004 after two seasons on PBS.

People

Blazing her own path as a pubTV broadcast engineer

By |

The first television broadcast in China was transmitted in 1958. The first time that Ling Ling Sun watched a television program was 20 years later, when she was 18. Now she is engineering manager for television broadcast services at WOSU in Columbus, Ohio, and was recently appointed vice chair of the PBS Engineering Technology Advisory Committee.

Programs/Content

WFMT unveils new streaming archive of Exploring Music

By |

The WFMT Radio Network has unveiled a premium subscription service that provides access to hundreds of hours of archived programs from Exploring Music with Bill McGlaughlin. The internationally syndicated classical music series airs on 55 stations and draws a weekly audience of more than 400,000 listeners. “It’s a unique show and Bill is a great host,” said Steve Robinson, g.m. of the Chicago-based WFMT Radio Network and WFMT-FM. “Since the show started we’ve gotten something like 10,000 emails and this has been one of the things people have repeatedly asked us to do.”

At launch, the new streaming service offers 500 hours of content selected from the show’s 10-year archive. More programs will be added weekly until all 850 hours of Exploring Music are available.

People

George Walker, ATC anchor for West Virginia network, dies at 60

By |

George Walker, the host of local broadcasts of All Things Considered on West Virginia Public Radio for nearly 12 years, was found dead in his Charleston home over the weekend, local authorities announced May 6. Details of his death are awaiting an autopsy. He was 60. Walker joined WVPR in 2002 as a part-time announcer. In addition to  hosting ATC, he produced the station’s weekly program Music from the Mountains until host Joe Dobbs retired in 2008.

Programs/Content

APT, PBS partner to offer Moyers & Company for viewing on COVE

By |

Moyers & Company has become the first American Public Television-distributed program to be presented on the PBS COVE online video player and PBS mobile apps. The weekly public affairs show, hosted by veteran public TV journalist and independent producer Bill Moyers, has been offered on COVE on a test basis for several weeks, according to spokesperson Joel Schwartzberg. With today’s announcement, PBS and APT signaled their intention to collaborate to bring more APT titles to PBS’s online video player. The arrangement helps to make Moyers & Company more easily accessible for public TV viewers. The series, which launched in August 2010, is the first from Moyers to be distributed by APT.

Programs/Content

All-Star Orchestra to bring classical masterworks to WNET, APT

By |

The All-Star Orchestra, made up of top professional musicians from across the country, will produce eight pubTV programs of classical masterworks. The one-hour shows, titled All-Star Orchestra and set for broadcast on New York’s WNET over eight Sundays this fall, will feature performances of classics by American composers as well as guest interviews and commentary by the group’s Music Director Gerard Schwarz. American Public Television will distribute the programs nationally. In last month’s announcement, WNET programming exec Stephen Segaller said the project is “in the tradition of Leonard Bernstein’s celebrated programs that popularized classical music on television,” such as the critically acclaimed Omnibus, 1952–61, and Young People’s Concerts, which Bernstein led from 1958–72, the first series televised from Lincoln Center. The All-Star Orchestra’s performances were filmed in HD with 19 cameras last August at New York’s historic Grand Ballroom at Manhattan Center.

Quick Takes

Oh, those NPR names

By |

The “particularly mellifluous” names of NPR correspondents have inspired songs as well as namesakes including a turtle, chihuahua, goat, cow — even a restaurant in Salem, Ore. The Atlantic takes a look at NPR’s interesting on-air nomenclature, and whether their names are more unusual than most. The answer: Not really. “It’s simply that you don’t hear the staff at Kinko’s saying their names over and over again, out loud,” says the ordinarily named Robert Smith of Planet Money. “Kinko’s was founded by Paul Orfalea.

System/Policy

Appropriation cuts lead to layoffs and furloughs throughout CPB

By |

CPB has laid off 12 employees and eliminated three vacant positions in a downsizing prompted by the federal budget sequestration and other cuts to its appropriation. The job cuts, announced today, extend across all departments and range from administrative to vice president levels, said Michael Levy, executive v.p. of corporate and public affairs. Taken together, the downsizing reduces CPB’s workforce by 11 percent. CPB will also trim its payroll by requiring all senior vice presidents and executive officers to take one-week furloughs before Sept. 30, the end of CPB’s fiscal year.

People

WMFE-FM hires WEAA’s LaFontaine Oliver as new president

By |

Orlando pubcaster WMFE-FM has hired LaFontaine Oliver as its new president and g.m., replacing José Fajardo who left in December 2012. Oliver comes to the station from WEAA-FM in Baltimore, a jazz and NPR news station licensed to Morgan State University. He joined WEAA in 2007 and, while there, created the nationally syndicated Michael Eric Dyson Show. Oliver has also held management positions with SiriusXM in Washington, D.C., and Radio One, an urban-oriented, multimedia company based in Silver Spring, Md. “We are very excited to bring LaFontaine into this very important role,” said Derek Blakeslee, chair of the Board of Trustees of Community Communications Inc. , WMFE’s license holder.

System/Policy

Deadlines to relocate, raise money weigh on Pacifica stations

By |

The Pacifica radio network rarely enjoys a drama-free moment, but with two of its five stations on a tight schedule to find new studios, tensions among network leaders and local volunteers are even higher than usual. Last week Summer Reese, interim executive director of Pacifica, took a redeye from the West Coast, where Pacifica is headquartered, to appear in court in Washington, D.C. The landlord of WPFW, Pacifica’s Washington station, is selling the building that houses the station’s studios to a developer who has plans for a new hotel on the site and needs WPFW to move out of the way. Reese and WPFW leaders have been searching for a new location for months, but the site on which the station had already paid rent has prompted a backlash among station volunteers: The studios are located outside the District of Columbia and shared with a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications. Some WPFW volunteers have gone to court to block that move, and Reese is sympathetic to their cause. Meanwhile, Pacifica’s debt-burdened New York station, WBAI, is also on the hunt for a new home and faces an equally pressing deadline to find one.

System/Policy

Friendly takeover of Spokane’s KSPS

By |

When the Spokane Public School District was considering selling its PBS station, KSPS, it did not have to look far to find an interested party. On April 10, the school board voted to sell the station for $1 million to the Friends of KSPS, its partner in raising funds for the station since its founding in 1972. The transaction is expected to close in September pending FCC approval. The two groups had been discussing a possible license transfer for about six years, said Mark Anderson, assistant superintendent for the school district. Dwindling state support over the past year expedited a final decision, he said.

People

KUOW’s Wayne Roth, co-founder of SRG, to retire in September

By |

Wayne Roth, longtime station chief at Seattle’s KUOW-FM and a past recipient of CPB’s Murrow Award honoring outstanding contributions to public radio, plans to retire in September. Roth’s influential pubradio career spans 45 years. During nine years on the NPR Board in the 1980s,  Roth “played a critical role in reinventing NPR, moving it from reliance on federal funding and directing those funds to the stations instead,” according the announcement released by the University of Washington, KUOW’s licensee.  His long service on the NPR board included two years as chair from 1988-90. Roth joined KUOW in 1983. During his tenure, the station — which serves Puget Sound, western Washington and Southern British Columbia — has become a pubradio powerhouse.

Programs/Content

PRI stations to experiment with locally customized news

By |

The competition for midday timeslots on public radio stations is heating up, as Public Radio International and producers of its news programs unveiled plans to experiment with new approaches for combining national and local content to give stations more control over what their local listeners hear during the middle of each weekday.

Quick Takes

Blog by FCC nominee suggests Wheeler may favor wireless over broadcast

By |

Is Tom Wheeler, President Obama’s nominee to head the FCC, “a wireless guy” who looks down on over-the-air broadcasting? TVNewsCheck perused Wheeler’s blog, titled Mobile Musings, and found some evidence to that effect. Wheeler, a former lay member of the PBS Board, is the president’s nominee to replace outgoing FCC Chair Julius Genachowski. In one blog entry, Wheeler writes: “When only 10% of households rely exclusively on over-the-air signals (for TV reception) and digital technology can cram most market’s existing signals into a single license allocation, the question gets asked whether there might be a higher and better use for those airwaves.” In another: ““Broadcast spectrum is being kept out of the hands of rapid-paced innovators, while those who hold the spectrum appear to be taking their time embracing the opportunities digital presents.”

People

NET selects Leonard to replace longtime station head Bates

By |

Mark Leonard, g.m. for Illinois Public Media in Urbana, takes over as g.m. and c.e.o. of NET in Lincoln, Neb., Aug. 1. He will step into the spot vacated by current G.M. Rod Bates, who is retiring June 30 after 30 years in pubcasting and 18 years of leadership at the station. Leonard’s appointment was announced today by Ken Bird, chair of the Nebraska Educational Telecommunications Commission, who said Leonard “is the right fit for Nebraska and NET.” Leonard has worked at six pubcasting stations over 32 years.