Programs/Content

QED Cooks celebrates 20th anniversary with ‘Return of the Zucchinis’

By |

Commemorating the accidental abundance of zucchinis in 1993 that spawned the creation of WQED’s hit series QED Cooks with Chris Fennimore, the Pittsburgh pubcaster will honor the prolific late-summer veggie for the program’s 20th anniversary. Back then, Fennimore, WQED-TV p.d. and an enthusiastic cook, was helping tend a community garden plot that exploded with the green squash. “So I asked Nancy Polinsky, director of continuity at the time, if she’d make a promo asking people for zucchini recipes,” Fennimore said. He had no idea that first recipe for zucchini cheesecake would be the beginning of more than 50 live cooking marathons ranging from “A is for Appetizers” to “S is for Seafood,” a growing line of cookbooks that proved to be popular pledge premiums and a hit show that passed its 100th-episode milestone in March 2012. Polinsky also became his co-host.

Quick Takes

Pacifica Radio Archives gets $128,000 grant to preserve voices of American feminists

By |

Pacifica Radio will dedicate Tuesday’s broadcasting day to raising funds for its “American Women Making History and Culture, 1963-1982” preservation and access project. Pacifica Radio Archives just received a $128,000 matching grant for the initiative from  the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives — the largest grant ever made to pubradio for preservation of historic recordings, Pacifica said. The collection includes recordings from Pacifica stations pertaining to the period known as second-wave feminism. Interviews feature activists Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Angela Davis; members of Congress Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug; and authors Rita Mae Brown and Anaïs Nin, among many other voices. “It is gratifying to know these fragile reel-to-reel tapes, silent [for] decades, will be rescued from deterioration and treated with the highest standards our National Archives demands,” said Brian DeShazor, Pacifica Radio Archives director.

Quick Takes

Gary Knell leaving NPR to become CEO of National Geographic

By |

This item has been updated and reposted with additional information. NPR President Gary Knell has taken a new job as the chief executive of the National Geographic Society. Knell will succeed the society’s current president, John Fahey, when his term at NPR ends in late fall. Knell has served as CEO of NPR since December 2011. He came to the position after heading Sesame Workshop.

Quick Takes

Fourth season of Downton brings influx of themed merchandise

By |

Downton Abbey merchandise will accompany the Edwardian drama’s fourth-season premiere on British television next month and on PBS in January 2014, reports The Associated Press. There’ll be a board game, housewares, clothes, beauty products and even Downton wine. The Downton beauty line includes soap, nail polish, lip gloss, lotion and scented candles, “whimsically packaged and adorned with quotations from the series,” according to AP. Knockout Licensing in New York City, handling Downton merchandising for the United States and Canada, has deals for jewelry from Danbury Mint and Christmas ornaments from Kurt Adler, both going on sale later this year. “We are businesspeople,” Gareth Neame, e.p., told AP.

Development

Donors call for measurements that go beyond audience ratings

By |

Foundations and major donors are increasingly asking public broadcasters to demonstrate the impact of their work on their communities, prompting pubcasters to consider new metrics that go beyond traditional audience measurement. The new emphasis by funders has prompted a flurry of activity and discussion as some pubcasters work to identify best practices and standardize measurements, and others debate whether the impact of nonprofit journalism should be quantified at all. “We do have to talk about these things and think about them in our role as public broadcasters in the 21st century,” said Jack Galmiche, c.e.o. of the Nine Network of Public Media in St. Louis. “It’s a conversation we need to have in public media about the service we provide to the community.

Programs/Content

Nashville-based radio music show heads to public television

By |

Music City Roots: Live from The Loveless Cafe, a weekly radio show and HD webcast featuring roots, alt-country and Americana music from Nashville, is heading to public television as a 13-episode series showcasing performances from its 2012 season. The show will be released for pubTV broadcast Sept. 5, presented by Nashville Public Television and distributed by American Public Television. Carriage commitments from 75 stations so far includes major markets such as WNET in New York and WGBH in Boston. In each episode, emcee Keith Bilbrey — a former Grand Ole Opry announcer — welcomes musicians to a 600-seat barn at the Loveless Cafe, built in 1951 and locally famous for its homemade fried chicken and biscuits.

Quick Takes

New Orleans’ WYES cancels auctions, lays off eight employees

By |

WYES in New Orleans has laid off eight staffers and canceled its decades-old tradition of on-air auctions, reports the Times-Picayune. Station President Allan Pizzato told the newspaper that revenue from the annual auctions of art, merchandise, travel tickets and wine “is not significant enough for us to be even doing it.”

“This is an effort to basically reorganize our resources,” Pizzato said, “so we can move in a direction that will help us raise more dollars to help WYES, and use those resources in a fashion we know will work.”

People

Jack Germond, McLaughlin Group panelist, dies at 85

By |

Jack Germond, a longtime political pundit on WTTW’s nationally syndicated public affairs program The McLaughlin Group, died Aug. 14 at his Charles Town, W.Va. home, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to the Associated Press.

Programs/Content

First-ever indigenous people’s channel launches with limited distribution

By |

The United States’ first 24/7 television channel for indigenous people has begun airing on a handful of public television stations across the country. The channel’s launch was limited, as producing station KVCR in San Bernardino, Calif., seeks a national distribution deal and additional funding. In addition to KVCR, FNX: First Nations Experience is carried by KEET in Eureka, Calif., LPTV in Bemidji, Minn., and Navajo Nation TV-5, which covers parts of New Mexico and Arizona. Chicago’s WYCC and Oklahoma’s CATV-47 plan to begin airing the channel soon. Meanwhile, technical difficulties with FNX equipment have delayed its launch on Wyoming PBS.

Quick Takes

NPR unveils streamlined new homepage

By |

NPR rolled out Wednesday a leaner redesigned home page designed to scale easily to screens of all sizes. The change to the home page on NPR.org is the first redesign in four years and recognizes the growth in use of phones, tablets and other devices for consuming media. Gone are the previous design’s boxes, which divided up links to dozens of pages. The site now features a flowing main feed of top stories, accompanied by a second column with more links to news and multimedia elements. The top of the page highlights member stations, with the home station being co-branded with the option to change stations as well. The current program airing on the home station is shown with a play button allowing the visitor to stream the content.

Programs/Content

PubTV commits to weekend news show

By |

Public TV stations are backing PBS’s first foray into weekend news by committing airtime to PBS NewsHour Weekend, which debuts next month, although several program directors question PBS’s decision to invest in the broadcast when its flagship weekday program is struggling financially.

Quick Takes

Greater Public scholarship to honor founder Shaw

By |

Public radio’s biggest fundraising group is offering an annual scholarship in honor of its recently deceased founder. Greater Public, formerly DEI, announced the Nate Shaw Scholarship during the 2013 Public Media Development and Marketing Conference (PMDMC) in July. The scholarship will be administered by YPpubmedia, the organization for young professionals in public media, and cover the cost for one individual to attend the annual conference. Shaw died May 29 at the age of 76. Throughout a career in public broadcasting, he helped develop new fundraising strategies for stations.

Programs/Content

KCPT special examines gun violence as health-care epidemic

By |

KCPT in Kansas City, Mo., is examining gun violence as a health-care epidemic in a live hourlong call-in show this week. “It’s one of those nagging issues that simply won’t go away,” Nick Haines, executive producer, said in a press release. “Why do we accept such an unacceptably high death toll in our inner city? It would be easy for us to ignore the problem as unfixable. But we feel obligated as a public TV station to spotlight the problem and make a concerted effort to seek answers.”

Special Correspondent Sam Zeff will report on the city’s Aim4Peace program, which tracks violence, predicts where it may spread and then takes steps to prevent it.

System/Policy

Kentucky public radio stations evaluate advantages of working together

By |

Leaders of Kentucky’s public radio stations are considering how they might collaborate and consolidate operations, with a goal of cutting costs and boosting reporting on local and regional issues. Six of Kentucky’s seven public radio stations have enlisted Public Radio Capital to assess benefits of closer collaboration and to help advance the process if all agree to move ahead. Universities hold licenses to five of the stations and may need to join future negotiations as well. The state has some history of successful station mergers. In 1993, WUOL, licensed to the University of Louisville, and two stations operated by libraries merged under the auspices of the Public Radio Partnership, a newly formed community licensee.

Quick Takes

Florida-based centralcast hub for pubTV stations eyes December launch

By |

The Digital Convergence Alliance, a master control centralcast hub in Jacksonville, Fla., that will serve more than 11 pubTV stations, should begin broadcasting in December, reports the Florida Times-Union. By the end of March 2014, all station streams should be up and running, WJCT President Michael Boylan told the newspaper. In June, CPB gave the alliance $7 million for the project.