Jim Sweenie, a four-decade staffer at Pittsburgh’s WQED-FM and host of its Saturday Night Requests, died June 4 after complications from surgery the previous day. He was 76. The station will broadcast a special Saturday Night Requests: Jim Sweenie Tribute on June 18 at 8 p.m. Eastern, with memories and dedications, including condolences from listeners. Sweenie got into radio in the early 1950s by hanging around WMCK-AM in McKeesport, Pa. The station paid him $10 a week for putting away records and reading a sign-off.
George Leigh Hall, 82, a public television leader in North Carolina, Illinois and Virginia, died June 5 at a retirement home in Fuquay-Varina, N.C.
His wife of 60 years, Katherine Waddington Hall, had died six months earlier. After starting in radio during the 1940s in his hometown of Reidsville, N.C., north of Raleigh, Hall joined Capitol Broadcasting Company’s WRAL-AM in Raleigh and advanced to program manager; helped the company acquire a television license and served as the TV station’s first program manager. In 1960, Hall became g.m. of North Carolina State University’s Raleigh studios of the state educational TV network, UNC-TV. Later he headed the telecommunications department at the University of Delaware at Newark. In Illinois, he served as president of Convocom, a three-station confederation of stations in Springfield, Macomb and Quincy.
Stanley S. Neustadt, 87, a longtime communications lawyer for public stations, died May 30 in suburban Virginia. He had lived with Parkinson’s disease for the past 12 years. “Anyone who appreciates public radio and TV should give him some credit because he had a large role in preserving and reserving the frequencies for them,” said a friend and law school classmate Herbert Schulkind. Not long after receiving his law degree from Columbia University in 1948, Neustadt found himself near the center of an unprecedented disturbance at the FCC. He joined the FCC staff as legal assistant to Frieda Hennock, the first female member of the commission and a flamboyant, persistent advocate for reserved educational channels.
Henry Becton, whose employer co-produced a lot of television programs with British broadcasters, is now an Honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE). The CBE, issued by order of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, was presented by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales at an investiture ceremony May 5 at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., in recognition of Becton’s “extraordinary service to the arts and entertainment industry,” the embassy said in a statement. Under Becton’s leadership, from 1984 until his retirement in 2007, “WGBH was the American co-producer of some of the most prestigious British dramas and documentaries made during that time,” the embassy said. Becton and colleagues in Boston oversaw co-production of many TV dramas presented as part of Masterpiece Theatre or Mystery! on PBS, including The Jewel in the Crown, Upstairs Downstairs, Rumpole of the Bailey, the Inspector Morse, Sherlock Holmes and Poirot mysteries, and numerous science and nature documentaries.
When I first started working in public radio 30-plus years ago, I was a college dropout and my day job was butchering fish on the docks in Sitka, Alaska. That’s the village where I grew up. That little public radio station was about as rural and rooted as you could want. Sure, there were jazz shows, and you could sometimes smell a little pot in the air room. But there were also shows about hunting and fishing.
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.
… The two Grannies and their tour group of 14 were, for the moment, safely ensconced in comfortable floating quarters as mobs paraded through Cairo demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak….
Patrick Butler, public TV’s new chief lobbyist, wrote speeches for President Gerald Ford, was a founder of the Pew Research Center, and helped provide Ken Burns with funding for his acclaimed Civil War documentary series. Butler starts work as president of the Association of Public Television Stations Jan. 1. The APTS leader has represented major media firms in Washington — the Washington Post Co. for 18 years, and before that Times Mirror Co.
NPR won four national Edward R. Murrow Awards in latest RTDNA contest honoring excellence in electronic journalism. Top winners among the 14 additional public radio newsrooms recognized by the Radio Television Digital News Association for 2009 include Boston’s WBUR, honored for overall excellence among large-market radio stations, and Michigan Radio’s The Environment Report, cited for best news series in the radio network division. Among five public radio outlets that won in the small-market division, North Country Public Radio in Canton, N.Y., won a Murrow for investigative reporting by David Sommerstein and WSHU in Fairfield Conn., for Charles Lane’s continuing coverage of attacks against Latinos in Patchogue, Long Island. The national Murrow for overall excellence among broadcast-affiliated websites went to NPR.org, which was redesigned last summer to highlight news headlines and feature more visual elements. NPR’s winning news reports include:
A Familiar Enemy for Platoon,” a two-parter reported by Tom Bowman and Graham Smith, sharing the national Murrow for hard news reporting;
“Friday Night Lives,” a series on high school football by Tom Goldman and Mike Pesca, for sports reporting;
“Can I Just Tell You?,” commentaries by Tell Me More host Michel Martin, for writing; and
“In the Kennel: Uncovering a Navy Unit’s Culture of Abuse,” an investigation of hidden abuses of homosexuals in the military by Youth Radio’s Rachel Krantz, aired on All Things Considered.
Public TV cleaned up at the Creative Arts Daytime Emmy Awards June 25
PBS and American Public Television, as distributors, had 16 winners (and earlier, 53 nominations). Nickelodeon’s programs and artists won 11 Emmys and ABC’s won 10. Sesame Street scored seven and Electric Company five. Avec Eric, APT’s new food series with chef Eric Ripert, took an award for graphic design. The competition covers broadcasts during the calendar year 2009, 2 to 6 p.m.
Public TV winners included:
Outstanding Children’s Animated Program
Curious George
Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Ellen Cockrill, Carol Greenwald, Dorothea Gillim David Kirschner and Jon Shapiro, e.p.; Matthew Baughman and Paul Higgins, coordinating producers; David Wilcox, producer; Share Stallings, co-producer; Jacqui Deegan, series producer.
Albert E. Rose, former program director of New Jersey Network and later the program distributor who brought nightly British news programs to U.S. public TV, died of lung cancer June 16, 2010, at a hospice in Newtown, Pa.
The primary figures in the histories of the PBS series Frontline and Sesame Street were saluted by PBS
CPB Ralph Lowell Medal: Frontline auteur David Fanning received CPB’s 38th annual Lowell medal May 18 during the PBS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas. The prestigious honor has been presented since 1975 for outstanding contributions to public television. Fanning began his career in journalism at a newspaper in his native South Africa before shifting to American pubTV in 1973. PBS “Be More” Award: Joan Ganz Cooney, co-founder of Children’s Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop) and prime creator of Sesame Street, received the award recognizing contributions to society that exemplify the PBS spirit of “Be more” — “expanding horizons, opening up possibilities and exploring new ideas.”
Cooney commented that she’s especially proud that Sesame Street hasn’t backed away from tough topics such as a parent’s military deployment, unemployment or the death of friends and relatives. “Muppets have a way of making these hard subjects a little easier to grasp,” she said.
The Association of Public Television Stations thanked advocates beyond
the D.C. Beltway
APTS gave its David J. Brugger Grassroots Advocacy Award to Dr. Louis Sullivan, board chair of the Atlanta Educational Telecommunications Collaborative Inc. and former U.S. secretary of health and human services. The Brugger Award, named for the former APTS president, recognizes an individual who has shown “exemplary leadership in advocacy on behalf of public television,” APTS said. APTS’ National Advocacy Awards for 2010 saluted individuals or stations that exemplify effective advocacy for pubTV. Recipients were: Malcolm Brett of Wisconsin Public Television, Molly Phillips of Iowa Public Television, and Rob Shuman of Maryland Public Television. APTS said Brett’s “understated style but dogged determination” were evident last year as he worked with his congressman, Rep. David Obey, to win fiscal stabilization funds for stations.
The Secret Life of Scientists, produced by Seftel Productions for WGBH’s Nova unit, won a Streamy
The online series on PBS.org was judged the best reality or documentary series in the Streamy Awards announced in May. What’s a Streamy? Streamy awards, which just had their second annual outing, recognize program series streamed on the Internet — a category that Streamy organizers believe is a big enough deal that it warrants this new competition apart from the Webbie awards. The e.p. of The Secret Life of Scientists has had notable successes in an early cable “reality” hit as well as public TV and indie docs. Joshua Seftel directed the movie War Inc. and the cable hit Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and produced more than 50 segments for WGBH’s Greater Boston Arts, and the P.O.V. doc Taking on the Kennedys.
Zeleznik tapped for Leo C. Lee Award
Maryanne Zeleznik, news director of Cincinnati’s WVXU, received the annual Leo C. Lee Award from the Public Radio News Directors Inc. during its annual conference in Louisville last week. PRNDI also bestowed 93 awards for public radio work produced in 2009. Among Division A stations, with five or more full-time news staffers, WAMU received three awards, Chicago’s WBEZ, Oregon Public Broadcasting and Pasadena’s KPCC won two each. In Division B, with three or four full-timers, Nashville Public Radio, Connecticut’s WSHU and Cincinnati’s WVXU took home two apiece. Among smaller stations, KCLU (Thousand Oaks, Cal.) and KLCC (Eugene, Ore.) won four awards each.
Norman S. Craley, a broadcast engineer who worked 35 years at Washington’s WETA, died of cancer March 24 at the Capital Hospice in Arlington, Va. He was 65. He had been diagnosed with metastatic esophageal cancer six months earlier and had chemotherapy, leading to a clear scan in February, his family told WETA, but the cancer took a rare and fatal course, spreading in his head. “Norm was a jack of all trades” who handled cameras, edited video and found his perfect match in master control, often working the night shift, wrote Joseph Bruns, the station’s chief operating officer, in a memo reporting the death to WETA’s staff. “His master control colleagues fondly remember Norm as reliable, a leader and the kind of guy who would do anything for anyone.”
Craley’s WETA career was interrupted when the Air Force called him to active duty in the Vietnam War, Bruns said.
Producers for public broadcasting — and developers for its websites — received 14 Peabody Awards, announced March 31, 2010
Regarding websites, the judges honored two in public media:
Sesame Street’s (“prodigious adaptability . . . delightfully educational, interactive,” the Peabody announcement said) website
NPR’s (“one of the great one-stop websites. And there’s music you can dance to”) website
Peabodys went to six PBS programs — double the number won by any other organization:
“Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About,” about the great New York choreographer, from WNET/American Masters, produced and directed by Judy Kinberg, with Susan Lacy, e.p. — website
“The Madoff Affair” from RAINmedia and WGBH/Frontline, written and produced by Marcela Gaviria and Martin Smith, edited by Jordan Montminy, with Chris Durrance, co-producer — website, watch online
two films on Independent Lens—
“The Order of Myths,” about the black and white Mardi Gras traditions of Mobile, Ala., by Margaret Brown, with Folly River Inc., Netpoint Productions, Lucky Hat Entertainment and ITVS (“highly original, moving and insightful”) — website
“Between the Folds” from Green Fuse Films and ITVS about the art of paper-folding (“makes you gasp at the possibilities — of paper and of human creativity”) — website
“Endgame,” a dramatization of secret talks that helped end apartheid in South Africa, from Daybreak/Channel 4/Target Entertainment, presented on WGBH’s Masterpiece Contemporary — website
“Inventing LA: The Chandlers and Their Times,” from KCET, Los Angeles (“drama enough for several feature films”), written, directed and produced by Peter Jones, with Brian Tessier, supervising producer, and exec in charge, Bohdan Zachary — website
KCET also scored with with its regional broadcast SoCal Connected—specifically two reports on the medical-marijuana conflict (“lively, eye-opening coverage”)—“Up in Smoke” by correspondent Judy Muller, producer Karen Foshay and editor Alberto Arce, and “Cannabis Cowboys” by reporter John Larson, producer Rick Wilkinson, editor Michael Bloecher, and associate producer Alexandria Gales.
The host of Latino USA for all of its 17 years, Maria Hinojosa, is now its proprietor, too, along with producer Sean Collins, her partner in a new media company in the digital cloud. Futuro Media Group, announced this month, starts off highly virtual and will get moreso. Hinojosa records her reports in a soundproofed closet in Harlem. Collins, her e.p. for five years and a former producer of All Things Considered, works in his hometown of St. Louis.
Jim McEachern, who was the principal technical leader for the Public Radio Satellite System for its first two decades and was a key planner of NPR’s technical facilities, died March 3 at age 71. He was one of NPR’s first employees in 1971 and worked for the network for 33 years until he retired in 2004. McEachern leaves his wife, Mary E., children Terrance, Elizabeth and Molly, and sister Janet Macidull. The family will hold a celebration of his life Saturday, April, 3, at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Rockville, Md. In lieu of sending flowers, friends may donate to their local public radio stations.
A few PBSers will return to the action in the National Adult Baseball Association (NABA) league this spring. KCET President Al Jerome formed the California Blue Jays in 2002, recruiting diamond stars such as the strong double-play combination of shortstop Lloyd Wright (president of WFYI in Indianapolis) and second baseman Andy Russell (senior v.p., PBS Ventures). Mel Rogers of KOCE in Huntington Beach, Calif., and Jeff Clarke of San Francisco’s KQED have also played for the team. The far-flung players practice on their own using local batting cages and, no doubt, family members drafted into playing catch. The Jays gather for a week each year to compete.
