People
Purposeful Loni Ding
|
Loni Ding, 78, a filmmaker who brought issues of Asian American identity to the surface, and to PBS, and helped win legislation backing independent producers, died Feb. 20 in a hospital in Oakland, Calif.
People
Gregory Shanley, 49
|
Longtime public radio journalist Gregory Shanley, 49, a statewide talk host on Iowa Public Radio, died Jan. 26 [2010] in Iowa City.
People
Lillie Herndon, 93
|
Lillie Edens Herndon, who served on the boards of CPB and PBS, died Dec. 3, 2010, at her home in Columbia, S.C. She was 93. Herndon’s CPB appointment was one of seven by President Richard Nixon. Five of those were in August 1974, just two days before Nixon turned over power to Vice President Gerald Ford. Herndon also served on the CPB Board under presidents Ford and Carter.
People
Robben Fleming, 93
|
Robben Wright Fleming, 93, a former president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and of the University of Michigan, died Jan. 11, 2010, in Ann Arbor, Mich. Fleming’s CPB Board chair during his stint in Washington, Lillie Herndon, died just over a month earlier. During his CPB tenure from 1979 to ’81, he secured Walter Annenberg’s original pledge of $150 million to support a wave of college-level video telecourses commissioned by the Annenberg/CPB Project and distributed through public TV. [Longtime CPB executive David Stewart wrote that Fleming was one of CPB’s best presidents — “the first and last to bring a natural dignity, as well as an intellectual grasp of what the position required.”]
In his 1996 book, Tempests into Rainbows: Managing Turbulence, Fleming wrote: “The most delicate part of achieving success in administering a huge grant .
People
Robben Fleming, one of CPB’s best presidents, ‘seemed to me the least interested in himself’
|
David Stewart, one of CPB’s original employees and later a writer and Current contributing editor, sent this letter after the death of Robben Fleming, a former president of CPB. To the editors:
I was very sad to learn of Robben Fleming’s death in the Feb. 28, 2010, issue of Current newspaper. He served as CPB’s president from 1979 to 1981 — sadly, one of the shortest tenures for, in my view, one of the best presidents in the organization’s history. Predictably, his obituary described a number of important decisions that provided CPB with considerable prestige, as well as new audiences for public television.
People
Winter Horton Jr., 80
|
Winter D. Horton Jr., a leader in public broadcasting since the 1960s, died Nov. 12 in Pasadena, Calif. He was 80. In 1964 Horton was among the founders of Los Angeles public television station KCET. From 1965 until 1970, he served as v.p. for development at National Educational Television, a predecessor of PBS.
People
Dyson to try again for pubradio stardom
|
Two daily public radio programs for African American audiences have risen from the ashes of News and Notes, a talk show that NPR cancelled in March. But acrimony over plans, funding and personalities involved in the midday programs has split the African American Public Radio Consortium, a key station constituency for any broadcast aimed at black listeners.
People
No show in Escondido for Mister Rogers’ ‘successor’
|
Michael Kinsell imagined that his Michael’s Enchanted Neighborhood show would replace Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on public television. Instead, Kinsell and his dream ended up on The Museum of Hoaxes website, which tracks “dubious claims and mischief of all kinds.”
For at least the past 18 months, the young San Diego man took his plans to a sequence of top entertainment pros, pitching a gala fundraising concert that would pay tribute to the late Fred Rogers while presenting Kinsell as Rogers’ successor. Though the event fizzled last month, leaving an empty concert hall in the San Diego suburb of Escondido on Sunday night, May 31, Kinsell had demonstrated he could come from nowhere, win the assistance of others and nearly reach the spotlight. The 1,500 seats in the hall were to be filled with people who paid $300 or more per seat to support children’s public television; millions more would watch the broadcast as a pledge special. In his quest for pubcasting fame, Kinsell sent e-mails, obtained by Current, in which he touted the “confirmed” luminaries who would appear at the tribute: Andy Williams, Bill Cosby, Christina Aguilera, Diana Ross, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, President Bill Clinton, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and first lady Maria Shriver.
People
Young promoter cancels his debut as Fred Rogers’ successor
|
Michael Kinsell, who planned to present himself as the next Mister Rogers at a controversial gala on Sunday in San Diego, told Current in an e-mail Thursday night that he is canceling the show. Kinsell, who said he is 18, had publicized the May 31 fundraising event as a star-studded posthumous tribute to the famous host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
People
PBS objects to fundraiser by ‘successor’ to Mister Rogers
|
PBS is accusing a San Diego teenager of “falsely claiming association” with the network and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. He is selling tickets for a May 31 gala event where, according to a news release by his publicist, he will present himself as successor to the late Fred Rogers. Michael Kinsell, who told Current he is 18, said he has produced six episodes of a new show, Michael’s Enchanted Neighborhood. Kinsell described the benefit event, to be held at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido, as a tribute to Rogers that will raise funds for “children’s public television” and, he hopes, for his own new show. He said he invited members of Rogers’ family to receive a Children’s Hero Award in Rogers’ honor and said he will give $10,000 in mid-June to Family Communications Inc., Rogers’ production company in Pittsburgh.
Diversity
Diversity: More than good intentions?
|
Several minority advocates who received the report said they appreciated PBS’s effort, but they found it wanting.
People
Woody Wickham, 66
|
Woodward A. (Woody) Wickham, 66, a strong supporter of independent documentary films and public media producers, died of cancer Jan. 18 [2009] at his home in Chicago. In more than a dozen years at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 1990 to 2003, Wickham helped support such projects as Kartemquin Films’ documentary Hoop Dreams, the Creative Commons alternative to copyrights, and Dave Isay’s StoryCorps, for which Wickham was the founding board chair. With MacArthur’s money, Wickham was a consistent supporter of P.O.V. and Frontline, local media arts centers and Kartemquin, says Alyce Myatt, who worked with him at the foundation. Wickham also supported the foundation’s work in human rights, aiding the International Criminal Court, and media reform groups such as the Media Access Project.
People
Gene Parris, 82
|
Gene Parrish, a longtime pubradio broadcaster known for his programs on classical, jazz, opera and choral music, died Jan. 2 [2009] of lung cancer in Harbor City, Calif. . . .
People
Cherry Enoki, video editor, dies in climbing accident
|
Chihiro “Cherry” Enoki, who shared a Daytime Emmy nomination this year for her editing work on the pubTV show Design Squad, died in a fall while climbing California’s Mount Shasta Nov. 28 [2008]. She was 33.
People
Schiller hit ‘every point’ on NPR’s c.e.o. wish list
|
NPR’s next president made one giant leap in the news business two years ago when she moved from long-form documentary production into digital media for the New York Times Co., but it wasn’t the first or the last of Vivian Schiller’s career.In the early 1980s, Schiller was living in the Soviet Union, working as a translator and guide for professional groups touring the country, when she was hired as a “fixer” for the Turner Broadcasting System. The job required her to do everything from translating during negotiations for TV productions to making dinner reservations, and it gave her an entrée into television. “I fell in love with media,” she said. Schiller rose from entry level to executive v.p. of CNN Productions, an award-winning documentary unit. Her predecessor in the job was Pat Mitchell, who left CNN in 2000 to become PBS president.
People
James Day, 89
|
He put San Francisco’s KQED on the air in 1954 — with Jon Rice, the station’s legendary first program director — and in 16 years demonstrated much of what “public television” could become, years before the Carnegie Commission put forth the new name for educational TV.
People
Stern lost support in his tryout as No. 1 at NPR
|
There was no single reason why the NPR Board ended Ken Stern’s 18-month run as chief executive officer — or at least none that any participant in the decision would describe publicly after Stern’s abrupt exit March 6 [2008].
People
Stern lost support in his tryout as No. 1 at NPR
|
There was no single reason why the NPR Board ended Ken Stern’s 18-month run as chief executive officer — or at least none that any participant in the decision would describe publicly after Stern’s abrupt exit March 6 [2008]. Judging from what board members, station execs and other observers are willing to say, it came down to a lack of confidence in Stern’s ability to lead the organization in directions that public radio’s various stakeholders — especially NPR stations — could embrace. “I can’t comment on the nature of that decision,” said Dennis Haarsager, a longtime station leader now serving as interim c.e.o., “except to say that it was more forward-looking as opposed to backward. No malfeasance should be imputed from this.”
Indeed, Stern’s fans and critics alike say he contributed significantly to strengthening NPR’s financial standing and positioning it as a news organization capable of global coverage. Stern did not respond to Current’s interview request through NPR’s spokesperson.
People
Hosts walk high wires, producers hold the nets
|
Successful producers help talent compensate. They make a deal with their talent: “I’ll help you maneuver the everyday travails of living life, and you will go out there every night and try to give the performance of your life.”
People
Zoel Parenteau, 75
|
Zoel J. Parenteau Jr., a key figure in two midwestern public TV stations, died Jan. 10, 2008, at age 75. Parenteau launched Kansas City’s pubTV station, then known as KCSD and operated by the public schools, in 1961. His title changed to g.m. and the call letters to KCPT when a separate nonprofit took charge later. In 1972, he moved to KPTS in Wichita, Kan., and managed it for 25 years.