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Project Core: A vision for scale and growth

Over the past three years, CentralCast has been hard at work implementing critical upgrades that lay the foundation for a more resilient and advanced future. And now, the culmination of these efforts is taking shape in our most ambitious initiative yet: Project Core.

Programs/Content

NPR to stock new mobile app by aiding stations on back end

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NPR is preparing member stations to provide local news for the network’s new mobile app, slated for release by summer. NPR content chief Kinsey Wilson discussed and previewed the app Feb. 24 for station execs attending the Public Media Summit in Washington, D.C. It builds on the Infinite Player, an NPR platform released for bigger-screened devices in 2011, moving it to a mobile interface and adding local station content to NPR’s own programming. Summit attendees heard an NPR newscast item about the Winter Olympics segue into a segment from San Francisco’s KQED about a labor dispute. The audio included a plea for donations to KQED.

Quick Takes

Monday roundup: WNYC gets $10 million, POV pairs with NYT, PRPD elects directors

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• WNYC/New York Public Radio is receiving the largest grant ever given to a public radio station, it announced today. The pubcaster will use the $10 million from the Jerome L. Greene Foundation for digital innovation and to support its Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, keeping ticket prices low for events there. Also today, the station introduced a new Discover feature to its WNYC app, allowing listeners to create and download curated playlists with a function that “blends personal preferences with an element of surprise,” it said in the announcement. • POV’s new online documentary collaboration with the New York Times kicked off over the weekend with an in-depth look at a group of developmentally challenged men who survived decades of neglect in a small Iowa town. The Men of Atalissa, produced by the Times, was posted on both websites March 8.

Quick Takes

Thursday roundup: CPB presents education grants, CPI wins Goldsmith, Schiller talks Twitter news

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• CPB has awarded multimedia journalism grants totaling more than $1.18 million to nine public media stations for education coverage aligning with its American Graduate dropout prevention initiative. “These grants will allow stations to report on the state of education locally, while contributing to the national conversation about solving the dropout crisis,” said Bruce Theriault, CPB radio s.v.p., in Wednesday’s announcement. Grants to three stations — WAMU, Washington, D.C.; WNED/WBFO, Buffalo, N.Y., and Wyoming Public Media — provide for reporters who will cover education topics full-time. Cleveland’s WCPN/ideastream will assign two reporters to education as part of a community engagement initiative and a multi-state data mapping project involving the Southern Education Desk Local Journalism Center and stations in Florida and Indiana. Grants were also awarded to: KERA, Dallas, for a reporter assigned to the multiyear project Class of ’17; Radio Bilingüe/KSJV in Fresno, Calif., for a Spanish-language radio series on academic success of Latino students in America and four one-hour programs in English for other pubmedia stations; Oregon Public Broadcasting for The Class of ’25, focusing on one elementary school class learning under new state education goals; WNYC, New York, for the journalism training program Radio Rookies; and WUNC, Chapel Hill, N.C., for its American Graduate–Crossing the Stage project, distributed nationally by PRX. • The nonprofit Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C., won this year’s prestigious Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, announced today by Harvard’s Shortenstein Center.

Tech

Houston Public Media launches new site combining TV and radio offerings

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Houston Public Media unveiled a new website this week as part of its ongoing effort to converge its radio, TV and digital operations. The site launched March 1 alongside a six-month marketing campaign that combines billboard ads and direct mail, aiming  to raise awareness of the pubcaster’s multiple offerings under one brand. The website was developed by outside consultants and provides an online portal to HPM’s television and radio stations, including news/talk 88.7 FM and classical 91.7 FM, all owned  by the University of Houston. The Houston stations were managed separately until a 2011 reorganization that adopted  a converged pubcasting model along the lines of Cleveland’s ideastream and San Diego’s KPBS. With the March 1 site relaunch and promo blitz, HPM consolidated its branding and marketing, offering memberships and selling underwriting for Houston Public Media rather than the three individual stations.

Programs/Content

Odd Squad to be PBS Kids’ newest math learning series

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It’s a question that parents and teachers struggle to answer at home and in the classroom: how do we make math fun for kids? The creative minds at PBS Kids have spent the last few years devising a solution to that problem. With Ready to Learn funding provided through the Department of Education in 2010, PBS staff set their sights on creating two math-focused children’s shows. Their answer for the 3- to 5-year-old crowd was PEG + CAT, an animated series that debuted last fall.  Produced by Fred Rogers Company, PEG + CAT teaches measurement, shapes and patterns, skills that help the characters solve their real-life problems.

Odd Squad, a live-action math series geared toward children ages 5 to 8, is the latest addition to PBS’s slate of math-based kids’ programming.