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The U.S. public wants more news coverage of climate change, surveys find

As hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and heat waves have intensified over the past decade, public concern about climate change has grown dramatically. Today, 65% of the U.S. public is worried about the issue, up from 52% a decade ago, according to nationally representative surveys conducted by scientists at Yale University and George Mason University.

System/Policy

Vermont PTV should be sanctioned for closed meetings, CPB IG finds

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CPB’s Inspector General has recommended that the corporation sanction Vermont Public Television in response to 22 open-meeting violations by VPT’s board dating from July 2011. In the May 5 report, IG Mary Mitchelson said that while 17 of the meetings were closed for appropriate reasons, such as personnel matters, the station failed to provide written explanations for why the meetings were not open to the public. The IG’s conclusions were based on interviews of board members who attended the meetings in question as well as an examination of documents detailing what business was transacted, the report said. Following the IG’s recommendation, the decision on whether or how to penalize the station rests with CPB’s management. Michael Levy, e.v.p., said CPB will respond to the IG within 90 days.

Programs/Content

GPB coming to Atlanta airwaves with WRAS-FM deal

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In a channel-sharing agreement announced Tuesday, Georgia Public Broadcasting will expand its public radio service into the Atlanta market starting June 1 via Georgia State University’s 88.5 WRAS-FM. GPB Radio will program the station with a news format from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., providing Atlanta with its first public radio outlet to air news in midday hours. The city’s WABE, operated by Atlanta’s public school system, airs NPR’s newsmagazines but also schedules classical music from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays. “We wanted to bring something that is not currently in the market,” said Bert Huffman, v.p. of development for GPB. “We recognize that people can get classical music from WABE.”

Programs/Content

PBS plans digital video service as premium for station members

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Public television stations are hoping that special access to a rich library of PBS programs will convince viewers to become members and entice members to keep contributing. The multiplatform subscription program, with the working title MVOD (Membership Video on Demand), will be built atop COVE, PBS’s local-national video site. PBS is backing the initiative with $1.5 million in its fiscal 2015 budget. MVOD will feature past seasons of signature PBS general-audience series and provide stations with the ability to add locally produced series, said Ira Rubenstein, head of PBS Digital. “I think of it as Amazon Prime or Netflix, but only for station members,” he said.

Programs/Content

With return to KCET, SoCal Connected adds local color amid hard news

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Los Angeles public TV station KCET is bringing back weekly series SoCal Connected after a yearlong hiatus, this time as a mix of hard news and features. The award-winning show will start its sixth season May 14. In previous seasons, SoCal earned a reputation for hard-nosed journalism, along with 17 local Emmys, by covering corruption at the Los Angeles Housing Authority, sweetheart deals involving electronic billboards and the dire consequences of climate change. But after the station dropped its PBS affiliation, it went into an economic tailspin that resulted in the layoffs of 22 employees, including Bret Marcus, SoCal’s executive producer. The show then went on hiatus.

People

Kenneth Tomlinson, CPB chair at center of scandal, dies at 69

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Tomlinson, a former Reader’s Digest editor and CPB Board chair who mounted a behind-the-scenes campaign to balance what he saw as a liberal bias in PBS programming, died May 1 in Winchester, Va., after a long hospitalization.