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.

CPB

‘Snap Judgment’: latest in harvest from ’07 Talent Quest

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Snap Judgment, one of three new shows conceived from the CPB-backed Public Radio Talent Quest, has become a whirlwind of multimedia production with the launch of its weekly radio programs in July, live stage shows, and television piloting. “We kind of just go-go-go all the time,” says Mark Ristich, co-executive producer with Glynn Washington, a Talent Quest winner who is host and creator of the series. “We’re going to try to keep the content as fresh as possible, because we’ll lose people if we don’t.”

The small production team is busy creating 26 weekly radio episodes and a series of live storytelling performances, the first of which was recorded in June at San Francisco’s Brava Theater. The performances will be adapted for radio and television programs.

Public TV’s World multicast channel, now in redevelopment at Boston’s WGBH, is considering picking up the TV pilots, which mix segments from the live shows with short films and animations. “We’re going to rock the small screen with the same intensity as we’re rocking the radio,” says Washington, who was one of three contestants who won pilot funding and a shot at public media stardom through Public Radio Exchange’s online talent contest in 2007.

Tech

Schedule: web platform model by year’s end

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An NPR-led project this month officially launched planning for a joint Public Media Platform to put public radio and TV content on the Web and mobile devices. By year’s end it aims to create a “proof of concept” prototype. The six-month, $1 million planning initiative will build on NPR’s experience with its open Application Programming Interface, experimenting with ways to make public media content available for noncommercial public service, not only on comprehensive on-demand platforms and station websites but also through specialized widgets yet to dreamed up by creative hackers. Project participants — most of the major program distributors in public broadcasting — will work out terms of use and technical systems for sharing content among local stations, indie producers and others. The talks will also deal with organizational structure and business plans for operating the platform once it’s built.

While NPR is managing the PMP planning (Current, March 1), most of pubcasting’s other big content providers have committed staff and resources to the effort.

Development

Gov’t officials critical of nonprofit Friends units

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Nonprofit fundraising arms of the state-owned network in West Virginia and the school-board-operated stations in Miami are under fire as public officials scrutinize longstanding financial relationships that underpin their operations. West Virginia Public Broadcasting and Miami’s WLRN-FM/TV, like many other public radio and TV operations owned by state and local governments, rely on sister nonprofits, often called Friends groups, to raise as much as 40 percent of their annual budgets. These private 501(c)(3) nonprofits around the country differ in many details but typically have separate governing boards and sometimes their own staffs.  

A major reason for their existence is also cause for the complaints: They give pubcasters more flexibility and speed in purchasing and contracting than government procedures usually permit and they can pay for programming or other mission-related activities that the stations couldn’t otherwise afford. Friends of WLRN, for example, was able to contribute funding to continue the station’s editorial partnership with the Miami Herald when the newspaper’s new owners were cutting costs in 2008, according to Janet Altman, chair of the friends group.

Quick Takes

Foundations withdraw their option on WDUQ

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The Pittsburgh foundations that bought a 60-day option on the sale of WDUQ last month have withdrawn their nascent bid for the public radio station. The group sought to recast the NPR News and jazz station as a public media news service for the Pittsburgh region, but recently decided that there wasn’t enough time to complete its analysis and solicit community feedback before the July 2 deadline. The Heinz Endowments, one of four community foundations involved in the planning, announced the decision yesterday. Duquesne University wants at least $10 million for WDUQ, the city’s most-listened-to public radio outlet. It’s unclear whether any bidders are willing to pay that amount.

Foundations

Funders buy time for rethinking in WDUQ sale talks

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When Duquesne University declined to accept bids for WDUQ-FM by its staff and supporters, an alliance of Pittsburgh foundations stepped in to put the sale on hold May 4. Adding an unusual time-out to the high-stakes playbook of colleges divesting broadcast properties, the foundations acquired a 60-day option to develop plans recasting the station with a stronger focus on news and information. “The foundations’ goal is to give the community time to put forward the best possible bid” and not to purchase the station, said Grant Oliphant, president of the Pittsburgh Foundation. Local foundation leaders want to explore possibilities for a “much more aggressive news and information focus” for WDUQ, he said. “We are trying to gather intelligence on where public media seems to be going and how Pittsburgh could become an example of the very best of the breed.”

The foundations hired Charlie Humphrey, executive director of Pittsburgh Filmmakers and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, to plan a news-focused service and lay the groundwork for a new bid.

Tech

Radio nets and PBS propose ‘public media platform’ based on API

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Remember when policymakers referred to the Internet as the “information superhighway?”

The analogy is being adapted to describe an NPR-proposed “public media platform” feeding stations’ websites and other online outlets with web-friendly content from both public TV and public radio, including NPR and three other major pubradio program distributors, stations and other producers. In this case, however, it’s not just highways but a complex, flexible road system, said Bruce Theriault, CPB’s senior v.p. for radio. “It allows us to move things around, has all the rules of a highway, with merges, exits, speed limits and business rules. Everybody — no matter what kind of vehicles they own — can drive on it.” Content — audio, video, text and pictures — could enter the highway anywhere and travel under agreed-upon “rules of the road.”

National Public Radio requested CPB aid to begin technical and business planning of a shared web platform with American Public Media, Public Radio International, Public Radio Exchange and PBS. The proposal grew out of talks among pubradio’s major players about creating a more efficient way of distributing digital content and expanded to include PBS, said Kinsey Wilson, senior v.p. of NPR Digital.

Collaboration

Shared reporting planned for Ohio Basin ecosystem

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If any news subject lends itself to coverage by multistation collaborations, it’s the environment of places like the Ohio River Valley, a region of 25 million people who share the river’s assets and liabilities.
Louisville Public Media’s WFPL is leading plans to build a pubradio reporting consortium for the region, starting with a public conference this month.

System/Policy

Going to news has been done, but going up against WBUR …

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Boston’s public radio landscape shifted Dec. 1 when WGBH moved all of its classical music programming to WCRB 99.5 FM and adopted a news/talk-dominated format for WGBH 89.7. The change, made possible by WGBH’s $14 million purchase of the commercial classical station from Nassau Broadcasting Partners, marks a strategic redirection for the Boston pubcaster that’s known throughout the world as the top producer of television programming for PBS. Its radio service, with a 100,000-watt signal extending far beyond Boston, had tried for decades to satisfy both music lovers and NPR news audiences. Like pubradio licensees in other major cities, WGBH now looks to super-serve both sets of listeners and attract new ones with two distinct formats.

Quick Takes

Two showcases to be webcast live from nonCOMM today

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WXPN in Philadelphia will broadcast live from two music showcases during day two of nonCOMMvention, the annual conference for pubradio’s Triple A music stations. XPN Free at Noon, a weekly live concert series that is open to the general public, is a double-header of Guy Sebastian featuring Steve Cropper, followed by the Derek Trucks Band. Four acts are on the bill of tonight’s showcase: Rhett Miller, The Avett Brothers, Pete Yorn and Delta Spirit. Tune your browser to the live webcasts here.

Quick Takes

New iPhone apps in the works for NPR

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NPR will launch a news-focused iPhone application in July and plans another release for its online music service by September, according to Robert Spier, director of content development for NPR Digital.During a presentation today at nonCOMMvention, the annual conference for pubradio’s contemporary music-mix stations convened by Philadelphia’s WXPN, Spier presented slides of the iPhone app interfaces. The “landing page” for the iPhone news app will feature text-based content, with icons designating audio-based stories. The app also allows users to access archived NPR shows or live streams of public radio stations. iPhone users who want to interact with NPR content will eventually be able to transfer playlists created on computers to their iPhones, although Spier anticipates this function will be added to the app later this year.The iPhone app for NPR Music will feature web-only content such as live concerts, blogs, and sharing functions. “There’s lots of discovery content [on NPR Music] that we would like to bring front and center to the iPhone,” Spier said.

Quick Takes

WYPR faulted by CPB Inspector General

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After a special review of WYPR-FM in Baltimore, CPB’s Inspector General reported March 20 that the station violated the terms of its annual CPB grant and several policies required by Communications Act of 1934. The station, which angered local listeners with the January 2008 firing of longtime host Mark Steiner, did not maintain a functioning community advisory board, nor did it comply with open records requirements for financial records or EEO statistics, the IG’s auditors concluded. They also found that WYPR didn’t properly document how it spent its CPB grant. The report was lauded by station critics who mounted the campaign to “Bring Back Mark Steiner,” but WYPR President Anthony Brandon challenged the IG’s assertion that it didn’t have a functioning CAB. “[W]here we have come short, as the audit has discovered, is primarily in our record keeping.”

Programs/Content

Schiller: ‘No reason for NPR to go it alone’ on the Web

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An often touted and tabled proposal to recast public radio’s web presence as a combination of content from NPR and its member stations is gaining traction among leaders in the field. With strong support from its new president, Vivian Schiller, NPR is beginning to plan a pilot project that would demonstrate how stations’ local news efforts could be integrated with NPR content. Creation of a news portal that integrates pubradio’s world, national and local news coverage will also be endorsed by Grow the Audience, a research and consultation project managed by the Maryland-based Station Resource Group and funded by CPB. The recommendation in the Grow the Audience report, which has yet to be released, was developed in consultation with web strategists who described the online service opportunity that public radio could seize, said Tom Thomas, SRG co-chief executive. The report will call for pubradio to build a collaboratively managed “world-class public-service media news portal” that integrates international, national and local content.