Tech

Authorities probe for arson in Little Rock transmitter fire

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Federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are investigating an April 2 transmitter fire at KUAR in Little Rock, Ark., as possible arson. [Two weeks later, the station said it was still operating at 75 percent of its usual power.]

The fire, which crippled the station’s signal right before its spring pledge drive, was started by an intruder who stripped copper wiring at the transmitter site, used accelerant to start a blaze, and then put a new padlock on the building to prohibit anyone from entering. Copper wire theft is “a huge problem for radio stations,” according to Ben Fry, g.m.

Fry said he finds it hard to believe that the perpetrator specifically targeted KUAR. The station has not received any threatening voicemails or emails, Fry said. The transmitter and its tower are part of the Shinall Mountain tower farm along with facilities of Little Rock’s major broadcasters, he said.

Development

STING: The Right jabs pubradio with NPR fundraiser’s words

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Neither Ron Schiller nor Betsy Liley had eaten before at Café Milano, the upscale see-and-be-seen restaurant in Georgetown, before Feb. 22, when they stepped into an elaborate trap that had been set for them there. The two NPR fundraisers didn’t get the $5 million donation that was discussed by their lunch partners, and the president of NPR didn’t pose for a photo accepting a phony check, but those were the better results of the lunch meeting. They couldn’t have expected that a hidden-camera recording of their talk with two prospective donors would cost Schiller his next job, put Liley on administrative leave, trigger the ouster of NPR’s president and severely undercut support for federal aid to public broadcasting. Two weeks later, March 8, the consequences began tumbling into sight as right-wing activist James O’Keefe’s video of their lunch meeting spread virally on the Web.

People

NPR loses c.e.o., its third exec swept away by political tornado

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One day after denouncing her top fundraiser and nine weeks after asking her news chief to resign, NPR President Vivian Schiller stepped down today at the request of the NPR Board. She fell victim to a series of executive mistakes and mishaps that muddied NPR’s reputation in a poisonously partisan runup to key federal budget votes affecting public broadcasting. Schiller, who made extraordinary progress in crafting a digital service strategy for NPR and its local stations since arriving in January 2009, ultimately took the fall for her management team’s political errors during an unaccustomed moment of scrutiny. After the controversial firing of former news analyst Juan Williams last fall, Schiller seemed to recover from the missteps that put public radio in the crosshairs of Republicans who went on to take the House majority in November. She and other public radio leaders may not have seen the Williams firing fiasco as a warm-up for a protracted, no-holds-barred fight.

Programs/Content

Wits: Writers banter, tweeters tap in new MPR variety show

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After a four-show trial run last spring, Minnesota Public Radio is mounting another season of Wits, its concept for a next-generation stage-show broadcast pairing smart, literary humor with contemporary music and powered in part by social media. For the season’s opener, March 25, host John Moe welcomes comedian Patton Oswald and musician Grant Lee Phillips to the stage of MPR’s F. Scott Fitzgerald Theatre, the St. Paul home of A Prairie Home Companion. That performance of Wits will be live-tweeted, webcast with video on Ustream.net, and recorded for statewide radio broadcast. Lineups for subsequent shows, monthly through June 24, will feature pop culture critic Chuck Klosterman, comedian Sandra Bernhard and graphic novelist Neil Gaiman.

Broadband

Broadband rising on Native agenda

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Native Public Media, a minority consortium incubated within the National Federation of Community Broadcasters for seven years, is striking out on its own, establishing itself as an independent nonprofit and pursuing big new opportunities to expand media access for Native Tribes through broadband and mobile technologies. With the realignment, announced early this month, the Native group strengthens its ties with the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., its partner for the last several years in research, policy analysis and advocacy to redress huge and historic shortcomings in access to new and older means of communication for Native tribes. Among the collaboration’s most significant achievements so far is last year’s FCC ruling giving tribes higher priority in competitions for radio channels near Indian lands (Current, Oct. 18, 2010) —  a policy that the FCC looks to expand on broadband and wireless platforms.

The commission intends to unveil new initiatives during its meeting on March 3, which it designated “Native Nations Day.” According to a tentative agenda, the FCC will discuss options for lowering barriers to communications services and expanding wireless Internet on Native lands, and expanding Native radio under the new tribal priority. By aligning with New America Foundation as its fiscal agent, NPM gains access to a “remarkable think tank and brain trust that’s able to provide the kind of research and data that can make a small company like NPM more effective,” said Loris Taylor, executive director.

System/Policy

In Pittsburgh, a broker turns operator

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News/jazz WDUQ-FM will be sold to a joint partnership between another Pittsburgh pubradio station, WYEP, and a new local nonprofit established by Public Radio Capital. Left out of the sale are Scott Hanley, g.m. of WDUQ, and his staff and supporters, who mounted a bid to preserve jazz music programming. Their aspirations conflicted with those of local funders who pushed for greater emphasis on news. The $6 million deal, announced Jan. 14, opens a new chapter for WDUQ, established by Duquesne University in 1937 and put up for sale a year ago.

Programs/Content

For LPFMers, radio act brings ‘a ton of joy’

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Low-power FM advocates are celebrating a hard-won victory with enactment of the Local Community Radio Act, approved in the last days of the 111th Congress and signed Jan. 4 by President Obama. The law clears the way for expansion of low-power FM stations, a noncommercial licensing category established by the FCC a decade ago but confined to small markets and rural communities by interference-protection rules demanded by full-power broadcasters. Their transmitter power is limited to 100 watts, reaching from three to five miles. Approved with bipartisan support in both houses of Congress, the law gives the FCC more flexibility in assigning channels to LPFMs and resolving interference problems with full-power FMs and their translators.

Quick Takes

Fight over NPR funding: is it a “culture war,” or principled debate?

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What’s really at stake in the battle over federal funding to NPR, and how can the field’s advocates make the best case for continued support? Public broadcasters began speaking out last week in friendly venues, testing their message points and strategizing about whether and how to mount a more aggressive campaign to enlist broad public support. At yesterday’s Public Media Camp in Washington, D.C., attendees discussed the political attack with Jay Rosen, press critic and j-school professor at New York University, who participated via Skype in a session on the response to the “culture war.” Rosen, who described himself as sympathetic to the fight to preserve federal funding, called for a blogger — one who works independently and outside of NPR and PBS — to report on the debate, critique press coverage of it, and call out the “most outrageous statements” from the field’s partisan critics. “A blogger’s job is to intervene in public debate and make it smarter,” Rosen said.

Programs/Content

NPR Board hires counsel to probe what went wrong

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Reacting to NPR’s abrupt image makeover — from ascendant news organization to partisan punching bag  — the network’s board last week hired an outside firm to investigate the decisions that invited the comedown, the dismissal of news analyst Juan Williams.Dave Edwards, the board’s new chair, announced that Weil, Gotshal & Manges, a 20-office multinational law practice, is leading the internal review initiated last month. Weil is “highly regarded with considerable expertise in governance issues,” Edwards said, shortly after the board unanimously elected him as its new leader.Security guards with metal detectors checked the unusually large number of onlookers at the Nov. 11 meeting at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C. A public session preceded nearly a full day of closed-door board meetings. Just two weeks earlier, after NPR’s dismissal of Williams prompted a display of outrage at Fox News, the network received a bomb-threat letter and turned it over to law enforcement (Current, Nov. 1).

Programs/Content

NPR sets a goal: add 100 reporters to statehouse beats

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A multiyear initiative led by NPR, Impact of Government, eventually will put two additional state-level reporters to work in each of the 50 states, along with a small team of editors and data analysts at the network. Pilot coverage in eight states will begin in March [NPR request for proposals]. The $1.8 million kickoff grant from the Open Society Foundations, founded and chaired by financier George Soros, will cover planning and part of pilot costs, but launching the full project will require $17 million, and sustaining it will cost $18 million a year, according to Ron Schiller, NPR senior v.p. of fundraising and president of the NPR Foundation. The project, developed during strategic planning talks over the past 18 months, is public radio’s first major effort to make a fundraising case for a combined local/national project. NPR will join stations in asking funders to back their aspiration to take up enterprise and long-form reporting on a beat once dominated by daily newspapers — state government and public affairs — that public radio most often covers as daily spot news.

Programs/Content
O'Reilly and Williams on O'Reilly's Fox News program

Under-explained firing makes NPR an issue just in time for election

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Top NPR officials may have thought their Oct. 20 decision to dismiss veteran journalist Juan Williams was about journalistic objectivity, but to many outsiders it sounded more like a story of arrogant lefty political correctness. That narrative opened up public radio — and all of public broadcasting — to a political attack that may help the candidates of Fox News and the Republican Party rally their conservative base for the midterm elections Nov. 2. Criticism of the firing was not limited to the partisan right.

Quick Takes

NPR fires news analyst Juan Williams

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NPR fired news analyst Juan Williams late yesterday over comments he made about Muslims during an Oct. 18 appearance on Fox News. Williams, a news pundit and commentator who had contracts with both networks, was reacting to remarks by Fox News host Bill O’Reilly when he said: “I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried.

Quick Takes

Misspending seen, but IG doesn’t hit board diversity

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KABF, the Arkansas community radio station audited by CPB’s Office of the Inspector General last year after a whistleblower complaint, may be subject to financial penalties of nearly $53,000 for mishandling CPB grant monies and over-reporting underwriting income in fiscal 2007. KABF didn’t comply with requirements for open meetings and open financial records, for example, nor did it maintain an active community advisory board, according to the IG. It also failed to provide public information required by the Communications Act, such as Equal Employment Opportunity disclosures and donor lists. The Little Rock station, long controlled by the left-leaning, grassroots organizing group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), lacked internal controls to verify the accuracy of its financial records and track how CPB aid was spent during the fiscal year examined by auditors, according to an IG report that described KABF as “materially noncompliant” with CPB requirements. Station managers and the board of its licensee, the Arkansas Broadcasting Foundation Inc., didn’t establish policies to follow statutory requirements of the Communications Act and CPB eligibility rules for openness and transparency in KABF governance and financial records, yet they certified to CPB that the station was in compliance, the IG found.

Quick Takes

Houston’s KUHF pursuing dual-service strategy with purchase of KTRU

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Houston’s KUHF-FM plans to buy KTRU 91.7 FM, a 50,000-watt student radio station owned by Rice University, and convert it to a full-time classical music service under the new call letters KUHC, the Houston Chronicle reports. KUHF, a broadcast service of the University of Houston that now airs classical music and NPR News on 88.7, will become an all-news station. The $9.5 million deal, approved this morning by UH’s Board of Regents, is to be financed by enhanced underwriting and major gifts fundraising. “The acquisition of a second public radio station delivers on our promise to keep the University of Houston at the forefront of creating strong cultural, educational and artistic opportunities that benefit students and the city of Houston,” said Renu Khator, chancellor of the UH System and president of the University of Houston, in a news release. Rice University students campaigned to save the station, which has long been an outlet for underground and local music, according to the Houston Press.