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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.

Margaret Low Smith

Margaret Low Smith, NPR’s senior news veep, will depart for The Atlantic

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Margaret Low Smith, NPR’s senior vice president for news, is leaving the network to take a position with The Atlantic as president of its live-event division, AtlanticLIVE. Smith has worked for NPR for 32 years, heading the news division since 2011. Before holding that job, she worked as VP of programming. She started at NPR in 1982 as an overnight production assistant for Morning Edition. “Her departure will be felt as profoundly as any in recent memory,” NPR Chief Content Officer Kinsey Wilson wrote in an email to station executives.

Programs/Content

Final Poirot episodes reach U.S. via on-demand service

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Three of the five final episodes in the Hercule Poirot detective series, a longtime favorite on Masterpiece Mystery!, will debut in the U.S. next month as an on-demand series available exclusively through online British content distributor Acorn TV. Masterpiece’s Mystery strand will present the broadcast debut of two detective stories, The Big Four and Deadman’s Folly, July 27 and Aug. 3, respectively. British drama fans who want to catch the series finale will have to sign up for Acorn TV, the subscription-based streaming service specializing in British drama. The distributor will provide the episodes via its website and Roku channel. RLJ Entertainment, which owns Acorn Media Group and Acorn TV, also controls a majority share in Agatha Christie Ltd., the company that manages Christie’s literary works.

Development

California Arts Council directs state aid to three public media outlets

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In the first and potentially only government-backed grant program supporting arts coverage by California’s public media stations, KQED, PBS SoCaL and Radio Bilingüe each received one-time funding from the California Arts Council. The Council created its Arts on the Air program as one of several initiatives funded by a special $2 million allocation from the California state legislature. The state aid was split between two arts education initiatives and three grant programs; the council created Arts on the Air specifically to support public, nonprofit media outlets and directed $200,000 to be distributed through a competitive grants process. “It’s a modest program, but the council really wanted to find organizations that would really impact public feeling about the arts, that would build public will and understanding about the value of the arts in our communities,” said Caitlin Fitzwater, spokesperson for the Arts Council. In San Francisco, KQED’s $75,000 grant will help fund an expansion of Spark, a weekly television show and educational outreach program that profiles local artists and art organizations.

Development

GPB Radio to operate Atlanta’s WRAS without tax-based funding

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Georgia Public Broadcasting will fund its new daytime public radio news service on Atlanta’s WRAS through private revenues, not state subsidies, according to Michael H. McDougald, a broadcaster who chairs the state network’s governing commission. GPB “has no intention of using taxpayers’ money to support this new initiative,” McDougald said in an open letter responding to criticism from Public Broadcasting Atlanta, which broadcasts a hybrid format news and music service to the state capitol on WABE-FM. McDougald said the state-owned pubcasting network expects earned revenues to fully support its news and talk programming on WRAS. GPB took over daytime programming of Georgia State University’s 100,000-watt FM station on June 29 through a channel-sharing agreement with the university. The deal drew criticism from GSU students who previously controlled all programming on the station, supporters of their music service and Public Broadcasting Atlanta, a community licensed public radio and TV service.

People

Ange-Aimée Woods, Colorado Public Radio arts reporter, dies at 41

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Ange-Aimée Woods, a Canadian journalist who played a key role in the recent expansion of Colorado Public Radio arts coverage, died July 2 in Montreal of apparent heart failure. She was 41. Woods joined CPR in October 2013 as the Denver station’s first full-time arts reporter. She’d spent the previous decade with CBC’s Radio One, working a variety of jobs including as a senior producer on the live drivetime program Homerun and a social media producer. During her seven months at CPR, she worked on launch of its weekly arts program Colorado Art Report.

Development

Stations retool pledge drives to account for rise in sustainers

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DENVER — An increase in sustaining memberships has provided a welcome source of stable income for some public radio stations, but it has also prompted some to rethink their strategies for on-air fund drives. Under a sustaining membership, a donor sets up automatic monthly contributions to a station instead of giving on an annual basis. That reduces the pressure during on-air fund drives to convince listeners to renew their memberships, and stations are responding by redoubling efforts to enlist new members during pledge campaigns. Executives from two stations described their approaches in a July 10 panel discussion here at the Public Media Development & Marketing Conference. “Our drives are no longer a renewal machine,” said Jacquie Fuller, on-air fundraising manager for Minnesota Public Radio.

Development

Public Media Platform to focus on business planning in project’s second phase

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DENVER — The Public Media Platform is moving into the next phase of its CPB grant, shifting its focus to developing a sustainable business plan and more ways for public media stations to access the content. PMP Executive Director Kristin Calhoun announced the project’s next phase July 9 during the “Digital Day” conference leading up to the Public Media Development and Marketing Conference in Denver. CPB’s five-year, $8 million grant to PMP provided $6 million for the nearly completed build-out and $2 million for the “operational phase,” which winds down on an incremental basis through 2016, according to Michael Levy, CPB executive v.p. of public affairs. The PMP is an application programming interface (API) that provides easy access to both public radio and public television digital content. Public media’s top distributors — NPR, PBS, Public Radio International, American Public Media and Public Radio Exchange — have guided its build-out phase as project partners; they will continue their support, Calhoun said.