Famous or obscure, the dancers, painters, musicians and others who appear on “Studio 360” speak first as people, then as professionals.

ITVS, the CPB-funded organization operating in the tricky middle-ground between independent filmmakers and public TV stations, has appointed a leader in the San Francisco indie community as its next chief executive. [She succeeded James Yee, who died in March 2001.] Sally Jo Fifer, executive director of the Bay Area Video Coalition since 1992, will join the Independent Television Service as its top executive in August. BAVC grew explosively under her leadership — through partnerships with Silicon Valley companies during the soaring tech boom and through job-training contracts with federal, state and local government agencies. The ITVS Board sought an executive with entrepreneurial skills and a proven ability to “raise money and think creatively,” says Mark Lloyd, chairman of ITVS and president of the Civil Rights Forum on Communications Policy.

CPB broke format in May 2001, giving its top radio honor, the Edward R. Murrow Award, to one of its own employees, Rick Madden, its v.p., radio. Madden delivered this acceptance speech during the opening session of the Public Radio Conference in Seattle on May 17, 2001. I first walked into noncommercial radio at the University of Notre Dame as a freshman and never walked out. That was in 1963, four years before the Carnegie Commission labeled us public radio. My radio passions ran contrary to my father’s notions of what my interests should be. In my sophomore year, he wrote with a different view: “I’m not overly happy about what seems to me, mistakenly I hope, a changing attitude you have towards school, classes and grades.

With this year’s Edward R. Murrow Award, CPB not only honored Richard H. Madden as key leader in public radio, but also affirmed a set of ideas closely identified with him, which he helped move from the edge to the center of thinking in the field. During Madden’s three decades in the field, and especially his 18 years at CPB, public radio had overcome its earlier aversion to ratings data, allowed numbers to enter its objectives and learned how to build a focused format and a larger, appreciative audience. “We’re not a ‘smaller is better’ enterprise anymore, and none of us can think with that mindset,” Madden said in his acceptance speech May 17 during the Public Radio Conference in Seattle.

About a year and a half ago, we were getting ready to launch a new public radio service here on Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. I asked for advice from colleagues: How would you make them special? What would you put on the clean canvas of a brand new public radio station, the first one of the new millennium? Dozens of people took the time to respond, and we excerpted their advice in Current (Sept. 20, 1999), much of which was about how to be local, how to sound different. “Let the listeners broadcast to the station.

If Frederick Wiseman’s High School works like a time machine, transporting viewers back to their own coming of age experiences in this quintessential American institution, the journey will be bittersweet for alumni of Philadelphia’s Northeast High School, where the landmark documentary was shot. Most alums have never seen the documentary, but they remember the local controversy over how it depicted their alma mater. Threatened with what he describes now as “vague talk” of a lawsuit, Wiseman in 1968 agreed not to screen High School within miles of the city. More than three decades later, the documentary has achieved classic status among independent films.

... David Isay, along with a growing number of gifted documentary-makers, are now experiencing the satisfaction of creating serious inquiries into contemporary events and, especially, human nature....

In the long ago 1950s, a friend of mine, the gifted writer Marya Mannes, composed short features for a lively magazine called The Reporter. Each was a fictional profile of some recognizable personality, a “type” that most of us encounter in life’s daily round: a nervous business executive, the owner-manager of a small restaurant, a bag lady picking her way daintily through the damp contents of a public trash basket. The column was called “Any Resemblance?” and it persuaded most readers that they, along with Ms. Mannes, were splendidly perceptive. I often think of these descriptions when listening to David Isay’s radio documentaries, most of them concerning mildly eccentric persons from, as he says, “the margins of society.”

James T. Yee, former executive director of the Independent Television Service (ITVS) died March 17 in Piedmont, Calif., after an 18-month battle with cancer. He was 53. The former producer and community organizer headed ITVS for seven of its 10 years, 1994-2000. He fought off numerous budget cuts for the CPB-funded service, while building connections between public TV and his constituency of independent producers. Before joining ITVS, Yee co-founded and served as first executive director of the National Asian American Telecommunications Association, helping to raise the profile of Asian-Americans in TV and film. He helped many producers do award-winning work through ITVS and personally received an Emmy for the 1997 documentary a.k.a.

Serialized adventures of an orphan mouse who dreams of becoming a heroic warrior come to the screen [in April 2001] through American Public Television. Redwall, an animated series about woodland creatures in a medieval abbey, stands apart from PBS kiddie fare as a series that’s not appropriate for the Barney and Dragon Tales set. Redwall is for school-aged kids. British author Brian Jacques, whose books are the basis for the series, began writing them out of dissatisfaction with modern children’s stories. “I thought to meself, what’s wrong with kids discovering the magic of a real story like I used to read as a kid?”

Anticipating the rollout of a new strategic plan and budget proposal, PBS laid off 60 employees March 15. Although the 9 percent cutback of positions was spread across the company, the programming department saw some of the most significant changes in what PBS describes as a “strategic realignment” under President Pat Mitchell. Among the team of regional programming execs that Mitchell began hiring last summer, Jacoba “Coby” Atlas and John Wilson were elevated as co-chief programming executives. Atlas, PBS’s West Coast exec, now has responsibility for all primetime and news/public affairs programs. Wilson remains in charge of children’s content, fundraising and syndicated programs, and scheduling.

A 20-day campaign to retain local control of KUNC generated more than $2 million in pledges from some 2,000 supporters.

. . . And the way she couples spur-of-the-moment decision-making and openness to change with highly principled management has prompted some to call her the "Lady of the Iron Whim," one of her many nicknames. She is not afraid to make enemies, or even fire longtime volunteers, if it helps keep the schedule fresh. . . .

The campaign to throw Idaho Public Television out of the state budget seems to have run out of oomph. On Feb. 20 [2001], the legislature’s Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee okayed IPTV’s funding requests almost without change — without raising the privatization issue. And five days earlier, the state Board of Education, licensee of the state network, voted 5-2 to advise the legislature against privatization. “I am fairly certain the issue is dead for this year,” says Jennifer Gallagher Oxley, who reported on the struggle for Boise’s Idaho Statesman. “That doesn’t mean it won’t come up again next legislative session.”