Programs/Content

NPR’s Scott Simon to host second pilot of Wonderful Town variety show

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NPR is mounting a second pilot performance of Scott Simon’s Wonderful Town, a variety show featuring the Weekend Edition Saturday host. The live taping will take place Jan. 22 at the Bell House in Brooklyn, N.Y., where NPR’s trivia show Ask Me Another also tapes. It will feature appearances from comedians and musicians including Eugene Mirman, Nellie McKay and Daily Show contributor Aasif Mandvi. This is the second Wonderful Town pilot to be taped; the first was in February 2013.

Quick Takes

PBS launches new Cyberchase app, and more news in pubmedia programming

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PBS has created its latest augmented-reality app, this one based on the television math series Cyberchase. The development of Cyberchase Shape Quest was funded with a Ready To Learn grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The free app, announced Jan. 9 and offering three games, uses a tablet’s camera to combine real-world images with digital content. Users follow characters Buzz and Delete through various environments, applying spatial memory, visualization and modeling skills to solve problems by taking apart and putting together two- and three-dimensional shapes.

Quick Takes

PBS member KMBH seeks operating agreement with commercial broadcaster

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The operator of KMBH-TV in Harlingen, Texas, announced Tuesday that it will pursue a local management agreement (LMA) with a commercial entity as part of the station’s sale. The PBS member station serves the Rio Grande Valley in the southern tip of the state. The board of RGV Educational Broadcasting Inc., a nonprofit formed by the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville in 1983, oversees the station. Directors authorized Washington, D.C., attorney Larry Miller to petition the FCC to convert the station to a commercial broadcaster. Because the station does not operate on a channel reserved for noncommercial use, it is eligible for such a conversion, Miller told Current.

People

KPCC bolsters newsroom, Babes of NPR blogger joins pubradio, and more comings and goings in pubmedia

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Southern California Public Radio/KPCC in Los Angeles has bulked up its news department in recent months, adding eight staffers to its team and promoting several employees. Since mid-October the station has hired Stephen Gregory as science and environment editor; Doug Krizner, business and emerging communities editor; Dorian Marina, reporter and producer for Take Two, a locally produced weekday newsmagazine; Kristen Lepore, digital producer for social media; Jed Kim, environment reporter; Adrian Florido, community health care reporter; Jeremy Hoffing, software developer; and Joel Withrow, project manager for mobile news experience. KPCC has also promoted Steve Profitt to program developer for broadcast, Molly Peterson to environment correspondent and Stephanie O’Neill to health care correspondent. Meanwhile, the station has cut two general-assignment reporters and a reporter based at the state capitol in Sacramento. “These moves reflect a shift in resources .

Quick Takes

MacArthur Foundation grants $2 million to documentary projects

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The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced today $2 million in new grants to 18 documentary film projects, including some from frequent collaborators with public TV. Individual grant amounts range from $50,000 to $225,000. The latter amount goes to the film 500 Years, which follows the genocide trial of former Guatemalan President General Efraín Ríos Montt. The film is a follow-up to co-director Pamela Yates’s previous film about the Guatemalan genocide, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, which became a 2012 episode on PBS’s POV. A couple of the projects incorporate multiplatform outreach, according to the release: Immigrant Nation is “a multi-platform project that explores the interconnectedness of U.S. immigrants, past and present,” while the team behind Map Your World will build an “interactive web platform enabling global youth to map their communities’ assets and challenges and create media to catalyze positive change.”

Among the other grantees:

In the Game, a documentary about Latina adolescents and soccer from pubTV producer Kartemquin Films;
Hazing, a film about “the cultural practices of hazing,” from director Byron Hurt, who also made the 2006 Independent Lens episode Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes;
Freedom Fighters, a film about exonerated men who start a detective agency, from director Jamie Melzer, who directed the 2003 Independent Lens episode Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story; and
The Arrivals, a story about two undocumented immigrants from director Heidi Ewing, whose PBS credits include The Boys of Baraka and an episode of the now-defunct Now on PBS.

Tech

“f gwenifill”? Former pubmedia consultant’s Twitter mistake results in bizarre messages

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Several news organizations’ Twitter accounts, including some public media accounts, emitted a deluge of cryptic messages reading “f gwenifill” today. The tweets trace to social media strategist Kate Gardiner, who has consulted for public media and nonprofit news organizations and has access to many of their Twitter accounts through TweetDeck, a Twitter client. Gardiner initially tweeted that she had been hacked but told Current that the tweets were a mistake on her part, caused when she was “cleaning up” her TweetDeck account. “f gwenifill” was a test tweet she had created for PBS NewsHour when she worked for the program as its first social media desk assistant, and she accidentally sent it via all the accounts she still has access to. In Twitter’s early days, mobile phone users typed “f” to follow another user. Affected accounts included that of New York’s WNYC and several of its individual programs,  the NewsHour and its specialized Twitter feeds, and the Poynter Institute.

People

Love of cheese leads to new career for former pubradio exec

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Chris Kohtz is no longer in a position to tell you about portfolios of programs available for airing on public radio stations. But he’s definitely your guy if you’re craving a good cheddar or Camembert. After 25 years in broadcasting, Kohtz has shifted careers to pursue his dream of opening a cheese shop. The Wedge & Wheel opened for business Jan. 2 in Stillwater, Minn., on the outskirts of Minneapolis, offering a selection of domestic and foreign-made cheeses to an enthusiastic bunch of cheese connoisseurs.

Quick Takes

Curious City expands beyond Chicago with WYSO Curious

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A localized version of Curious City, the Localore-backed participatory journalism initiative that assigns reporters to research questions submitted by listeners, launched at WYSO in Yellow Springs, Ohio, last month. WYSO Curious is the first version of the multimedia project to launch beyond its home station, Chicago’s WBEZ. In its new incarnation, listeners submit questions online, and WYSO produces stories each month about the answers. Curious City and its project manager, Jennifer Brandel, began developing an open-source platform that could be replicated at other stations with the help of a June 2013 prototype grant from the Knight Foundation. Lewis Wallace, a reporter at WYSO, interviewed Brandel and Curious City editor Shawn Allee at the launch of WYSO Curious in December.