Current (https://current.org/author/andrew-lapin/page/12/)
A PBS Digital Studios program is dealing with blowback from online viewers and the PBS ombudsman for using bobblehead dolls to caricature sexual harassment of scientist Marie Curie.
Apple has signed PBS to create an app for its Apple TV set-top box service, AllThingsD reported Nov. 19. The app will allow Apple TV users who sign in through Facebook, Google+ or PBS’s own registration system to access the pubTV network’s digital library of on-demand programs.
Previous seasons of Downton Abbey will be largely unavailable due to Amazon’s acquiring of exclusive on-demand rights to the program in June. But Apple TV users will be able to watch recent episodes of the show within a short window of their airing on PBS, including station reairings of the second and third seasons between now and December, a PBS spokesperson told AllThingsD. The Apple app is PBS’s latest expansion into set-top content streaming.
Nonprofit news organizations have made significant progress in developing healthy and sustainable revenue streams, according to a recent study by the Knight Foundation.
Samuel James English III, host of Aviation Weather, a series produced and distributed by Maryland Public Television in the 1970s, died Nov. 3 of respiratory failure at his home in Pikesville, Md. He was 79. Known as “Jim” on the air, English delivered twice-weekly weather reports for private airplane pilots, and flew in his own spare time. The program was produced live, in partnership with the National Weather Service.
Raul Ramirez, executive director of news and public affairs at San Francisco’s KQED, died Nov. 15 in Berkeley. He was 67 and had been fighting esophageal cancer since his July diagnosis. Born in Cuba, Ramirez began his career in the 1960s as a print journalist, working at major dailies such as the Miami Herald, the Washington Post and the San Francisco Examiner. He joined KQED in 1991, signing on as news director.
Maurice Bernstein, producer and host of one of NPR’s first nationally distributed music programs, Folk Music and Bernstein, died Nov. 9 at his home in Minneapolis. He was 74.
PBS has renewed its commitment to Tavis Smiley for another two years, keeping the talk show on public TV through 2015. “The highlight for me is surviving” as a late-night talk show, Smiley told the Associated Press. The program, which tapes in Los Angeles, will face less competition in booking guests once NBC’s The Tonight Show moves to New York in February, he noted.
This item has been updated and reposted with additional information. Boston’s WGBH and the Library of Congress will host and preserve the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, a permanent collection of more than 50 years of public broadcasting history. More than 40,000 hours of content dating back to the 1950s will be digitized, stored and made available for on-site access at both WGBH’s Boston headquarters and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., according to a Nov. 14 announcement from CPB, WGBH and the Library. Development of a permanent pubcasting archive began in 2007 through a CPB initiative.
NPR’s news applications and multimedia operations are merging into a single unit to be headed by current News Applications Editor Brian Boyer. “We were already sitting right next to each other,” Boyer said. “When we moved into the new building, it was already obvious that we would be working closely together.”
The departments have already collaborated on several projects, including a web presentation of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s family photos and a Tumblr, Cook Your Cupboard, which advises home cooks about how to use odds and ends from their pantries. Other desks have often approached Boyer’s team about attempting projects with multimedia components, he said, forcing him to redirect such requests to the Multimedia desk. The new arrangement will make collaboration smoother, he said.
Dana Davis Rehm, a former NPR senior v.p. and public radio station manager, is joining the American Geophysical Union as its director of marketing. Rehm left NPR in February after 13 years in various roles within the organization’s executive ranks. Her departure was part of a restructuring within the marketing and communications division under former NPR chief Gary Knell. Rehm began at NPR as v.p. of member and program services, a job that involved leading NPR’s 2005–06 New Realities initiative. After a promotion to senior v.p. of strategy and partnerships, she helped manage its acquisition of Public Interactive from Public Radio International.
DecodeDC, the political podcast and public radio show created by former NPR correspondent Andrea Seabrook, has been acquired by the E.W. Scripps commercial newswire service. Scripps bought the independently produced podcast as part of a strategic restructuring and expansion of its Washington-based coverage under Ellen Weiss, former NPR News chief. Weiss joined Scripps in February as its Washington bureau chief and developed plans to focus the bureau on enterprise and investigative reporting for Scripps-owned TV, digital and print properties. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Seabrook will join the Scripps bureau staff, which is beefing up its multimedia production capacity and folding its newspaper wire service, according to a Nov. 11 release announcing the purchase.
Twin Cities Public Television has adopted the name ReWire for the statewide network’s youth programming and engagement initiative. TPT settled on the name after its previous branding, Open Air, attracted a trademark infringement and violation suit from Colorado Public Radio. “Our vision is to rewire public media’s relationship to the world, and your relationship with public media,” Andi McDaniel, ReWire’s project manager, wrote in a re-introductory blog post Oct. 25. “[ReWire is] about connecting with our audience in new ways — through digital content, through collaborative approaches to storytelling, through interactive events, fresh takes on classic and new programming and much more.”
Pat Fitzgerald, g.m. of WBGU-TV in Bowling Green, Ohio, for more than two decades, died Oct. 30 of a stroke in his home. He was 69. Fitzgerald was known among colleagues as a strong advocate for educational television and community service. “He was in essence my mentor, my education,” said Tony Short, g.m. of production, engineering and educational services at WBGU and one of two managers who took over Fitzgerald’s duties at the station after his 2010 retirement.
WNYC is among the media outlets that are working to extend that domain to include members of their audiences, tapping into communities of independent gadget builders who are part of the so-called “maker movement.”
The Association of Independents in Radio and Public Radio News Directors Inc. are collaborating on a set of guidelines for local pubradio stations to consult when setting freelancer rates. To lead the initiative, AIR recruited Susanna Capelouto, former news director at Georgia Public Broadcasting. Over the next month, Capelouto will survey news directors and station managers across the country to inform the guidelines, which she hopes to publish by Dec. 1. AIR will draw from a pay guide that it developed for NPR in 2002 and updated last year and from a guide that it created for American Public Media’s Marketplace in 2012.
Elaine Rivera, a reporter for New York’s WNYC from 2006–09, died Oct. 26. She was 54. The cause of death has not been released, but Rivera had previously battled liver disease. Raised in Cleveland, Rivera came to radio from print journalism, having previously worked for the Washington Post, Time and Newsday.
Walter Sheppard, a veteran public radio general manager who worked for the federal government’s Public Telecommunications Facilities Program for more than two decades as a federal program officer, died Oct. 19 at the age of 82. Over the course of Sheppard’s career, which began in 1947, he held roles at several public radio stations across the country, including WITF in Harrisburg, Penn.; Boston’s WBUR; and the West Virginia Educational Broadcasting Authority (today known as West Virginia Public Broadcasting), where he served as deputy director in the 1980s and added more radio stations to the network. He joined the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in 1990 to manage grant portfolios as part of PTFP. Sheppard managed several different regions of the program during his 21 years there, including the South and Northeast.
To promote its online local news platform NewsWorks, Philadelphia’s WHYY developed an unconventional campaign mimicking over-the-top advertising techniques and the limitations of news published in print. A team of designers and editors created a “print edition” of the online news site and used various tactics to distribute more than 36,000 copies to Philadelphia residents. Beginning Oct. 22 commuters could pick up copies as a handout offered at public transit stations and temporary newsstands. In addition, residents of some neighborhoods received copies that were delivered to their doorsteps.
After plumbing the global repercussions of America’s war against terrorism, documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras helped expose how that war has stripped away the privacy of U.S. citizens.
Editorial employees at Chicago Public Media filed a petition to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board Oct 18 after earlier efforts to gain recognition from management were rebuffed. Nearly 80 percent of the 54 employees who work at CPM as on-air talent, producers, web staff, reporters, editors and production assistants support the petition, according to a statement provided by the employees. The group initially notified interim CEO Alison Scholly of their request for union recognition Sept. 25. That request was rejected Oct.