Current (https://current.org/2014/03/page/3/)
President Obama has maintained level CPB funding in his fiscal 2015 federal budget request, but recommends eliminating the Rural Digital program and consolidating Ready to Learn funding into other programs within the U.S. Department of Education, in a mixed blessing for pubcasters.
Former NPR newscaster Carl Kasell, whose “voice on your home answering machine” has been the ultimate prize on Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me! for 16 years, is retiring, he announced today.
It’s a question that parents and teachers struggle to answer at home and in the classroom: how do we make math fun for kids? The creative minds at PBS Kids have spent the last few years devising a solution to that problem. With Ready to Learn funding provided through the Department of Education in 2010, PBS staff set their sights on creating two math-focused children’s shows. Their answer for the 3- to 5-year-old crowd was PEG + CAT, an animated series that debuted last fall. Produced by Fred Rogers Company, PEG + CAT teaches measurement, shapes and patterns, skills that help the characters solve their real-life problems.
Odd Squad, a live-action math series geared toward children ages 5 to 8, is the latest addition to PBS’s slate of math-based kids’ programming.
Colorado Public Radio launches its as-of-yet unnamed weekly arts show today, premiering with an unlikely pairing of mediums — radio and dance. The inaugural episode leads with the first in a special series, Radio Dances, which explores how the medium of dance translates to radio. Producers in CPR’s multimedia arts bureau worked with dance companies, students and members of the public to create 30- to 60-second dance pieces that were choreographed with a radio audience in mind. The segment will be accompanied by an interview with This American Life’s Ira Glass, whose own treatment of live storytelling and dance served as the inspiration for Radio Dances. “Our weekly arts show is intended to shine a light on our state’s cultural diversity and richness, while also raising the level of critical discourse around Colorado culture,” said CPR Arts Editor Chloe Veltman, in a prepared statement.
A new frontier for the Public Insight Network.