The show aimed “to help children learn to live together in appreciation of the common humanity of different peoples.”
History of public media
After 50 years, NPR upholds public broadcasting’s founding values
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NPR was incorporated Feb. 26, 1970, marking a new stage in the growth of a public media system rooted in education.
Rewind: The Roots of Public Media
How the Works Progress Administration played a critical role in WNYC’s history
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The New York station may not have survived the Great Depression without help from the federal government.
History of public media
New exhibit takes visitors behind the scenes of Maryland Public Television’s 50-year history
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Videos, photos and memorabilia from MPT’s past programming are on display at the University of Maryland.
History of public media
With help from Peter Rabbit and fairy princesses, a pioneering educator showed how radio could teach
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During his 35 years at Indiana State Teachers College — now Indiana State University — Clarence “Doc” Morgan also trained scores of future broadcasters.
Rewind: The Roots of Public Media
Looking back on the lesser-known histories of ‘Chicano Public Radio’
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A group of bilingual radio stations founded in the late 1970s “helped distinguish Spanish-language and bilingual broadcasting as a form of advocacy.”
Rewind: The Roots of Public Media
How France’s national broadcaster bolstered U.S. public radio in its formative years
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From the 1940s to the 1970s, dozens of U.S. public radio stations featured French cultural programming that “let us know that the French people like us and vice versa.”
Rewind: The Roots of Public Media
In 1970, riots and tear gas couldn’t sideline Ohio’s WOSU — but its licensee’s president did
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“The tone of operations was business as usual in virtually every sense despite the strong waves of tear gas through the building.”
A DJ looks back on 50 years on jazz radio in the nation’s capital
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Rusty Hassan has seen shows and stations come and go during his long career on Washington, D.C., airwaves, and he’s still at it.
Rewind: The Roots of Public Media
‘The World Is Yours’: How the travelogue shaped early public broadcasting
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The globetrotting quality of public media is neither new nor politically neutral and has roots in the earliest days of American broadcasting.
History of public media
Read this shockingly prescient 1970 mission statement for the precursor to NPR’s ‘Fresh Air’
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In a previously unpublished grant application, NPR founding father Bill Siemering proposed a show on WBFO in Buffalo, N.Y., “growing out of the need for cross-cultural communication and capitalizing on the unique characteristics of public radio.”
Rewind: The Roots of Public Media
The survival of public broadcasting’s legacy has long been part of its mission
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The National Public Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland reflect an inherent dedication to preservation.
History of public media
How President Johnson set the stage for passage of the Public Broadcasting Act
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Only eight months after LBJ called on lawmakers to support his bill creating CPB, the measure passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support.
History of public media
Early gay radio group donates collection to public broadcasting archives
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Gays & Lesbians in Public Radio, which was active from the late 1980s to the mid-’90s, was a small but dedicated group.
History of public media
At 90, pubradio pioneer upholds a literary tradition
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Decades ago, Karl Schmidt occupied himself by staging elaborate award-winning works of theater for radio broadcast. At 90, he’s still weaving compelling stories on the air, but he’s down to a troupe of just one actor — himself.
CPB Board
Life cycle of a reform: independence of CPB Program Fund
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Ron Hull, a former director of the Program Fund, reflects on the value of buffer from partisan politics
Jan. 2, 1979 — Robben Fleming, a university president and an authority on (labor) negotiations, comes to CPB as its third president. Also in January, the politically appointed CPB Board suspends its committees to reevaluate their roles. This decision shelved the board’s Program Committee, which traditionally had voted aye or nay on national production proposals for public TV. Even before Fleming arrived, the CPB Board had been rethinking this process.
History of public media
Pacifica Foundation By-laws, 1955
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Pacifica began operation of its first and flagship station, KPFA in Berkeley, Calif., April 15, 1949. These are early bylaws of the nonprofit organization. See also Pacifica’s bylaws as of 1999. Article I
Identity
Section 1. The name of this corporation shall be PACIFICA FOUNDATION.
History of public media
CPB will seek operator to develop American Archive; director leaves project
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Having lost its digital projects fund last year, CPB lacks the money to develop the American Archive much further, according to Mark Erstling, senior v.p. The next step is to find an outside institution to adopt and support creation of the proposed archive of public stations’ historic audio, video and films.
That helps explain why professional archivist Matthew White left CPB Jan. 13 after two years as executive director. “It was very clear to him that things were going to change significantly,” Erstling says, and White accepted an offer to lead a “significant” archiving project abroad. White could not be reached for comment. CPB declined Current’s multiple requests for interviews with White over the previous two years.
History of public media
Stewards for the media future
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What public broadcasting can do to plan for its own future and for federal policies that serve the public interest
In the first part of this commentary in Current Oct. 4 [2010], Wick Rowland, an early PBS planner and now a station leader in Colorado, said that public broadcasting’s failure to put time and money into formal research and planning has left it “adrift, mute and helpless” on the periphery of federal policymaking about media and spectrum. Pubcasting was slow to respond to the journalism crisis, aloof from the Obama administration’s big commitment to give the public universal access to broadband Internet service.In Part 2 he suggests how the system could equip itself to develop a more coherent, visionary agenda for its own future and the nation’s media policies. The commentary is available as two PDFs: Part 1 and Part 2. At this extraordinary moment, when so many outside observers and critics are simultaneously trying to define a national agenda for public media — when we should be confidently helping to guide those debates — we seem unprepared for the task.
History of public media
Adrift, mute and helpless
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Why everyone but public broadcasters is making federal policy for public media
The FCC’s recent National Broadband Plan and its Future of the Media initiative have highlighted a chronic problem in U.S public broadcasting: The system has no long-term policy planning capacity, and therefore it always has had great difficulty dealing with the periodic efforts by outsiders to critique and “reform” it. Public broadcasting ignores most media policy research, whether it originates in academia, think tanks or federal agencies, and it often seems out of touch with major national policy deliberations until too late. That disengagement is highly dangerous because it allows others to set the national legal and regulatory agenda for communications without assuring adequate policy attention to public-service, noncommercial and educational goals. Such policy initiatives also can negatively affect the funding and operating conditions of every public licensee. This article, the first of two, examines the history and recent serious consequences of that disengagement.
History of public media
Public Broadcasting Act of 1967
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Public Law 90-129, 90th Congress, November 7, 1967 (as amended to April 26, 1968)
This law was enacted less than 10 months after the report of the Carnegie Commission on Educational Broadcasting. The act initiates federal aid to the operation (as opposed to funding capital facilities) of public broadcasting. Provisions include:
extend authorization of the earlier Educational Television Facilities Act,
forbid educational broadcasting stations to editorialize or support or oppose political candidates,
establish the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and defines its board,
defines its purposes,
authorize reduced telecommunications rates for its interconnection,
authorize appropriations to CPB, and
authorize a federal study of instructional television and radio. Title I—Construction of Facilities
Extension of duration of construction grants for educational broadcasting
Sec. 101.