System/Policy

NPR lays off 10, creates five new roles in restructuring of two divisions

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NPR is laying off 10 staffers in its member partnership and digital services divisions while creating five new positions as part of an internal restructuring. The decisions were made “after consultation with NPR and member station stakeholders” to “more closely align both divisions’ resources,” according to Member Partnership VP Gemma Hooley and Digital Services GM Bob Kempf, who outlined the changes in a memo sent Wednesday to member station A-Reps. The member partnership division will absorb seven of the layoffs. Director Marguerite Nutter’s position will be eliminated, along with those of senior managers Si Sikes, Patricia Cervini and Marc Pultuskier and associates Kristen Hartmann, Jeff Cabiness and Emily Dagger. Another senior manager, Jeff Nemic, has accepted NPR’s voluntary buyout package and will leave next month.

People

John Henson, Muppets puppeteer, dies at 48

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John Henson, the son of Muppets creator Jim Henson and a Muppet performer himself, died Friday of a heart attack. He was 48. Henson played the giant ogre Sweetums for decades beginning in 1987, when he took over puppeteering duties for the character from Richard Hunt, according to the Muppet Wiki. He appeared as the character in several commercial Muppets films and television shows and at Walt Disney World. As a child, Henson appeared in short films his father made for PBS’s Sesame Street.

Quick Takes

Kickstarter hacked; users advised to change passwords

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Hackers breached the crowdfunding website Kickstarter Feb. 12 and made off with user data including passwords and email addresses, the company announced Saturday. The hackers did not obtain credit card data, according to Kickstarter CEO Yancey Strickler, who advised site users to change their account passwords and those of any other site accounts with the same password. “We’re incredibly sorry that this happened,” Strickler wrote in the post. “We set a very high bar for how we serve our community, and this incident is frustrating and upsetting.”

Programs/Content

KLRU beefs up BBQ With Franklin

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After letting their BBQ grillmaster marinate on YouTube, Austin’s KLRU is taking him to TV. The station will produce the 10-episode series BBQ With Franklin for national pubTV distribution in early 2015, based on a popular series of YouTube videos featuring Austin BBQ legend Aaron Franklin. The YouTube series, launched in 2012 with support in part from crowdfunding and PBS Digital Studios, has racked up more than one million viewers. While the YouTube series is mostly instructional in nature, the TV show will follow Franklin as he travels around central Texas learning about BBQ history and culture. KLRU will continue to produce new web-exclusive episodes concurrently with the broadcast series.

Quick Takes

Morning roundup: SCOTUS sets Aereo date, Burns gets GIF’d

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• The U.S. Supreme Court has set a date for ABC TV v. Aereo, a challenge to the startup service that allows subscribers to watch TV programs over the Internet via miniature antennae. Oral arguments are scheduled for April 21. Though ABC brought the lawsuit, filed in New York and Boston, PBS and New York’s WNET are also among the parties claiming Aereo violates copyright law. • Ken Burns participated in his first Reddit Ask Me Anything session Tuesday as part of the promotion for his new app. He laid out the planned release schedule for his next decade of films: The Roosevelts in September, A History of Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies and Jackie Robinson  in 2015, Vietnam in 2016, Country Music in 2018 and Ernest Hemingway in 2019.