System/Policy

NETA partners with Coke bottler for station health insurance

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After several years of work, the National Educational Telecommunications Association announced Feb. 23 that it is offering group health-insurance coverage plans to pubcasters. So far, 70 TV and radio licensees representing nearly 2,900 individuals are participating in the initiative. NETA is partnering with the Coca-Cola Bottlers Association to provide the coverage through that company’s Alliance of Professional Service Organizations (APSO) subsidiary. APSO currently serves nearly 300 employers, including the majority of the soft-drink bottlers and more than 200 other organizations, covering nearly 25,000 individuals.

Development

Obama would keep CPB at $445 mil, end aid to rural pubTV

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President Barack Obama released his fiscal 2013 budget Feb. 13, which, as expected, contains $445 million in advance funding for CPB in fiscal year 2015. CPB has some chance of remaining at that level for four straight years. Congress appropriated $445 million for fiscal 2012 and 2013 as well, but those amounts are vulnerable to rescission, depending on the political winds. For fiscal 2014, the Democratic-controlled Senate would repeat the same allotment while the Republican-controlled House would reduce it to zero.

Idaho Public Television

Phase-out of state aid proposed in R.I., Oklahoma

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Pubcasting networks continue to deal with the uncertainties of state funding in economically and politically precarious times, closing offices, facing possible cuts and bracing for the consequences. Rhode Island: Gov. Lincoln Chafee’s latest budget, unveiled Jan. 31, proposes eliminating state funding to Rhode Island PBS by fiscal year 2014. Support would fall from around $933,000, about a third of the station’s budget, to $425,000 next fiscal year, then zero out. “He’s basically given us until Dec.

System/Policy

Identity: How Dayton-Cincinnati made their merger work

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Matchmaking requires openness, compatibility, shared goals and maintaining a strong sense of identity. That’s the advice for public broadcasters looking to merge, as well as for doe-eyed sweethearts. CET in Cincinnati and ThinkTV in Dayton made the leap nearly three years ago, and by most accounts their union looks strong. The two stations, just 50 miles apart in separate southwestern Ohio media markets, are now incorporated as Public Media Connect and serve a region of 1.4 million households and more than 3.5 million people. Together they showed an operating deficit last year, as did many stations, but the budget gap has been shrinking and is projected to go positive this year.

System/Policy

Upsides: Reconceived public stations can ‘be more PBS’ and be more local

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The stations are here so they can understand and illuminate a community’s aspirations and concerns, engage people in the life of their community, and help people reengage and reconnect with one another. — Richard C. Harwood and Aaron B. Leavy1

The remark above reflects a way of thinking strategically about the institution of public broadcasting at this point in our history. Today, public media boards and executives face such strategic questions as:

What can we do to be a more significant and engaged institution in our community? What should be our focus, and what does that mean for redeploying resources from current activities? How can we help nonprofit and government entities be more effective when their missions are in greater demand?

Development

Scale: Wisconsin net has economies of size and local bureaus, too

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Nothing comes easily to public radio, not even a good idea. About 30 years ago, Wisconsin Public Radio veteran Jack Mitchell came up with the concept of banding together small stations throughout Wisconsin into a centralized system, within which a mothership would handle overhead and distribution, thus freeing up resources for stronger local content. Today, Wisconsin Public Radio operates 33 stations that benefit from strength in numbers – some of which might not exist today were it not for a centralized system. Each station is tied to one of two statewide networks, one featuring the NPR newsmagazines and classical music and the other mostly state-oriented talk programming. WPR “has twice as much programming” as a single network, said Mitchell, who now teaches at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and the networks don’t air the same programs at the same time.

Development

Current participates as information provider in a series of forums

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With this package of articles, Current begins publishing a series of articles on Public Media Futures, appearing in conjunction with a two-year series of quarterly forums starting this month. The forums are co-sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Center on Communication Leadership and Policy and American University’s School of Communication, which publishes Current. Both the articles and the accompanying forums are planned to amplify and contribute to conversations already underway in the field about serious issues facing public service media companies in the 21st-century. The recession and trends in media technology are shaking the structural and financial foundations of public media, suggesting that some of the system’s major operating assumptions will have to change. These articles include commentaries from thinkers in the field as well as reports by Current writers.

Development

Capacity: Radio’s local newsrooms weigh in

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As the chorus calling on public media to add more local journalists grows, let’s be mindful of the specific ways adding journalists can dramatically improve local public service. Just by enlarging its newsroom to four, five or six journalists, a station will gain the human wherewithal to unleash a proper beat system. Beats cause reporters to become specialists. With a news staff of six, for example, a newsroom could have reporters well versed in the actors, history and nuances of a starter set of beats — education, health, business, law, environment and arts/culture. These specialists are more likely to break original stories, to know when it’s important to follow up, and to extract meaningful news analysis from a week’s events.

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.

Programs/Content
Photo illustration of the Abbey and its inhabitants illuminated by the fiery light of battle

Unusual rights delay: hint of budget strife?

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PBS’s ongoing negotiations to curb per-hour costs of producing programs and to assert more control over content are increasing friction with its largest producer, Boston’s powerhouse WGBH, according to sources at other stations with knowledge of the situation.

For a period until just four days before the second-season premiere of the gem of this season’s PBS schedule, Downton Abbey from Masterpiece Classic, the approval of PBS broadcast rights for the series hung in the balance as WGBH protested the network’s contract demands….

AIR

NPR increases pay rates for outside producers

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NPR and the Association of Independents in Radio unveiled a new payment structure for news reports Jan. 1, raising rates 7.5 percent for station-based and indie radio producers, effective immediately. NPR adopted a three-tiered compensation system and established standard rates for tape syncs. “NPR’s decision to increase rates, which comes at a time of tight budgets, is intended to reflect our commitment to the vital network of station-based and independent reporters whose contributions enhance our programming every day,” NPR interim news chief Margaret Low Smith said in an email. Reaching agreement took nearly a year of negotiations with AIR and internal consultations at NPR, according to AIR President Sue Schardt.

System/Policy

Pubcasters, Daystar and others are eyeing KCSM bids

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Potential bidders for pubcaster KCSM-TV in San Mateo, Calif., put up for auction by its college licensee, include both religious broadcasters and names well known in public media. Daystar Television, a growing religious network that has bought pubTV channels in Dallas and Waco, Texas, and bid for them in Orlando, Fla., and Orange County, Calif., was on the attendance list for the San Mateo Community College District’s pre-bid meeting Jan. 10. Also on the list were former WNET exec Ken Devine of Independent Public Media, a nonprofit that aims to preserve spectrum for public media (Current, Oct. 17);  Ken Ikeda and Marc Hand of Public Media Company, an affiliate of Public Radio Capital; Booker Wade, head of the Minority Television Project and non-PBS pubTV station KMTP in San Francisco; and a rep for Stewart Cheifet Productions, which created Computer Chronicles, a show that ran on public TV for 20 years, ending in 2002.

System/Policy

Rochester indie-movie venue now operated by WXXI

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WXXI in Rochester, N.Y., has acquired a downtown movie house, The Little Theatre, it announced Dec. 19. The art-deco theater, founded in 1929 as part of a “little theatre” movement promoting alternatives to Hollywood’s mass-audience movies, still specializes in indie and foreign films, including anime and docs. In recent decades it was expanded from one to five screens, and to 940 seats, and it became a nonprofit. “The Little,” as it’s known locally, screens more than 100 films a year and hosts several annual community film festivals.

System/Policy

State aid to Virginia stations again in jeopardy

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Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has proposed zeroing out the state’s $7.2 million in state funding for Virginia’s public television and radio stations and their educational telecommunications services for the next two years. Pubcasters hope to convince McDonnell to restore some funds by arguing for the value of the educational services they provide. The state’s system does more for public schools than pubTV in many states. WHRO in Norfolk/Hampton Roads, for example, has created 22 online high-school courses that are available to schools for much lower annual fees than the roughly $5,000 per-student charges of commercial vendors, according to Bert Schmidt, WHRO’s president. The governor’s office denied pubcasters’ request for a meeting, but Schmidt and his colleagues are still pursuing “creative solutions,” he says, such as channeling money through appropriate entities to assure politicians that it’s used solely for educational purposes.

Programs/Content

As NBC partners, pubmedia may expand reporting, visibility

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NBC will share stories, resources and content distribution with two public broadcasters, ProPublica and two local nonprofit newsrooms under the FCC agreement clearing Comcast’s 2011 takeover of NBC Universal. If the preexisting, five-year collaboration between NBC-owned KNSD in San Diego and the nonprofit Voice of San Diego news site is anything to go by, news consumers may see real benefits. Boosting NBC Universal stations’ local content through partnerships with nonprofit news organizations was one of the conditions placed on the network to complete its deal with Comcast. ProPublica, the Pulitzer-winning investigative enterprise that frequently partners with other top news outlets, will work with WNBC-TV in New York, as well as with all 10 NBC-owned stations in the country. In other metro areas, WCAU in Philadelphia will work with pubcaster WHYY, and KNBC in Los Angeles with team up with public radio station KPCC, operated by a sister organization to American Public Media.

System/Policy

PubTV in L.A. not yet a case of win-win-win-win

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When KCET announced in October 2010 that it would quit PBS after four decades as its primary Los Angeles affiliate, the task facing PBS was enormous: Find a local outlet to step into the breach, establish new branding, arrange for cable carriage, find homes for orphaned shows, and, most importantly, change long-term tuning habits so 16 million-plus potential viewers could find their favorite programs. All in less than three months. The outlet that stepped up was Orange County’s KOCE, a second-string station still recovering from a costly, drawn-out legal battle with religious programmer Daystar Television Network several years earlier. KOCE became PBS SoCal and, with extensive effort and CPB aid, the PBS program schedule began broadcasts on a new channel Jan. 1. But nearly a year into the new reality, it’s clear that the changeover has not been without complications.

System/Policy

Albany gets a lot of Chartock, but how much is too much?

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When Alan Chartock, president of Northeast Public Radio in Albany, N.Y., was on a wife-imposed Mexican vacation, despite her objections he still found a way to call in for his five-day-a-week 7:34 a.m. spot. Chartock, 70, lives and breathes the media institution he created nearly single-handedly in 1981. He’s on air most days and often hosts two weekly shows, one about medicine and the other about media. If you are one of the 450,000 monthly listeners to mother station WAMC or its 22 repeaters in the hilly towns and valleys where New York meets Vermont and Massachusetts, you know a lot about Chartock. You know he’s always trying a new diet (currently, no white food).

People

Ancient human remains found under Alaska station

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KCAW/Raven Radio in Sitka, Alaska, may not have a skeleton in its closet, but it has one in its basement. Contractors working beneath the studio in October uncovered human remains that may predate the 103-year-old building. KCAW General Manager Ken Fate told Current on Nov. 28 that the station is “working closely with the Sitka Tribe of Alaska” to determine whether the body is that of a tribal ancestor. The station reported on its website that when the bones were discovered between two slabs of bedrock, work immediately stopped.

System/Policy

Fairbanks station quits shared feed as Anchorage arrives

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Cooperation among Alaska’s public TV stations took a backwards step last week after a modest gain in September. A major result of three years of talks among the three largest stations was that KAKM-TV in Anchorage, the state’s dominant city, would join the AlaskaOne consortium of stations in Fairbanks, Juneau, Bethel and smaller towns, which have shared a TV schedule since 1995. Last week, KUAC-TV in Fairbanks said it will drop out of the AlaskaOne TV consortium as of July 1. The Fairbanks station, which had assembled the feed, opted out after its partners in AlaskaOne voted in November to merge its program feed with that of KAKM in Anchorage. In a Dec.