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.”

“I don’t remember talking to you before. I can’t remember yesterday. Tomorrow I won’t remember this. It’s not there.” “Is that distressing?” “Actually, no. When you can’t remember anything, you can’t feel good or bad about it.” — Noah Adams’ third interview with Tom DeBaggio, aired July 3, 2000 In the fall of 1999, Noah Adams, co-host of NPR’s All Things Considered (ATC), came across an unusual item in a newsletter published by Tom DeBaggio, who sells herbs from a greenhouse in an outer suburb of Washington, D.C. Adams, who had been purchasing herbs from the DeBaggio family for some years, was informed-along with other customers of DeBaggio Herbs — that Tom, 57, had been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s Disease and that he was keeping a written record of his condition.

As provocatively staged “reality TV” series explode on the commercial networks, PBS is expanding its own slate of what it calls “observational documentaries” in the network’s reinvention under President Pat Mitchell. In April [2001], American High, a fast-paced docusoap series dropped by Fox last summer, will lead off a new weekly PBS strand targeted to teens and young adults. Then, in the fall, Senior Year, a 13-part series that PBS execs promoted to television critics during the January press tour, will take over the same Wednesday 10 p.m. timeslot. This summer P.O.V. also will present Fred Wiseman’s 1968 film High School, a national broadcast debut that was also promoted at the press tour.

Issued by the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) and the Producers’ Advocacy Group, June 1999, and revised Jan. 23, 2001. PDF. INTRODUCTION: The Association of Independents in Radio* (AIR) and the Producers Advocacy Group** (PAG) present the following code in an effort to clarify and standardize rates and practices for working with freelancers in the public radio industry. In recognition of the central role freelancers and independent radio producers play in enriching the content of almost all the important programs on public radio, AIR and PAG recommend the following guidelines when public radio networks, stations or shows use the work of freelance radio producers: LIVING WAGE: Freelance producers should be paid at a rate which allows a decent living.

Low-power FM? Try nearly no-power. The scope of the controversial noncommercial service shrunk abruptly last month when Congress effectively cut the number of possible LPFM stations by an estimated 80 percent. NPR and other opponents of the service who had worried about LPFM interfering with their stations celebrated their victory, while media activists, former pirates and other microradio supporters accused lawmakers of bowing to pressure from the powerful broadcasting lobby. “We are disappointed that Congress chose to ignore the will of the people,” said Cheryl Leanza, deputy director of the pro-LPFM Media Access Project. “This was an unjustified power grab by all broadcasters for what was essentially a moderate request–to give a small piece of the airwaves back to the public.”

Thanks to financing from the new Public Radio Capital (PRC) fund, Colorado Public Radio just realized a long-standing goal—buying Denver AM station KVOD, which it plans to program with wall-to-wall classical music.

Nobody in public radio has encoded and streamed as much audio on the Internet — or had to automate the handling of such a large volume of material — as the staff at NPR Online. What advice do they have for stations that are new to streaming, or just thinking about starting? The writers are Rob Holt, webmaster of NPR Online, and Chris Mandra, production supervisor. The statistics are clear: the time to webcast is now. There are more than 14,000 radio stations on the Web right now, building the interactive future of radio through the Internet medium. According to BRS Media (an e-commerce company), more than 3,500 of these stations webcast their on-air signal live.

More than three years after promising digital channels to broadcasters, the FCC held a hearing Oct. 16, 2000, about what the broadcasters should do in exchange for the spectrum. Most of the testimony was about possible FCC rules requiring political and children’s programming, but former FCC general counsel Henry Geller suggested, as he and others have said before, that the public interest would be served more effectively by assessing spectrum fees and paying pubcasters to do the public-interest programming. This article was adapted from Geller’s statement. The broadcast regulatory scheme, adopted in 1927 and continued to the present time in the 1996 amendments to the Communications Act, is one of short-term licensing, with the licensee committed to serving the public interest — of being a public trustee or fiduciary for its service area.

If the National Forum for Public Television Executives has its way, public TV will: raise an additional $200 million a year by loosening underwriting guidelines (notably, by airing 30-second credits), freeing up stations’ funds by making the PBS national schedule self-supporting, develop educational and local services equal in impact to PBS’s national programming, and restructure PBS, APTS and its other national organizations under a new board of station managers. The petitions come up Tuesday, Oct. 24 at the third annual PBS Members Meeting, where the Forum will ask all PBS member stations to endorse resolutions to the PBS Board. It’s the conclusion of an annual three-day policyfest.

Applicants for low-power FM (LPFM) stations range from mundane (Sacramento’s Sutter Middle School) to exotic (the Women on Top Awareness Series of Norcross, Ga.), and an equally mismatched bunch is debating their future. What else could draw one-time radio pirates to an NPR Board meeting, get network chief Kevin Klose on a Pacifica talk show, or bring together Republican senators and advocates for the blind? Since the FCC began accepting applications for the tiny noncommercial stations in January, the agency has received more than 1,200 from groups in 22 states and territories. Meanwhile, NPR, politicians, commercial radio interests and others have pushed bills to delay, weaken or defeat the new service, citing fears that LPFMs could interfere with existing full-power stations.

The National Forum for Public Television Executives, meeting in Dallas Oct. 2-4, 2000, agreed upon the following petition to put before the PBS Members Meeting later that month, Oct. 24. The petition is divided into three amendments to a less specific “placeholder” petition that the Forum had submitted earlier. In addition to the amendment on Organizational Change (immediately below), there are amendments on System Educational Strategy and New Business Models. Organizational Change Amendment Whereas, It is the strong sense of the National Forum for Public Television Executives (Forum) that it is time for a realignment and redesign of the membership organizations supporting the licensees of public television stations; and Whereas, The Forum believes that an incremental redesign with modest changes will not serve the needs of the licensees; and Whereas, The Forum explored several models for the re-organization of the public television membership organizations and concluded that one model embodies the objectives below and is worth further investigation; now, therefore, be it Resolved, That PBS take the lead, in consultation with the Forum Council, to convene a Task Force comprised of the CEOs and board chairs of membership organizations including but not limited to PBS, APTS, and NETA to investigate a systemwide re-organization of public television’s membership organizations, guided by the following principles: A structure that will be cost-efficient and non-duplicative, A structure that will support new economic models designed to generate substantial new gross or net revenue dollars to the system, while embodying a concept of ownership equity for station members, A structure in which organizations or business units have clear strategic and business objectives, A structure where there is clear accountability to stations, A structure that assures broad and diverse representation of licensees in its governance model, A structure that is consistent with the mission of public television; and, therefore, be it further Resolved, That the Task Force begin its exploration by referencing the following model, which was developed by the Forum at its October 2000 meeting and incorporates many of the characteristics desired by station CEOs: The model includes three targeted business and service activities in support of licensees: Content and Marketing, Technology and Distribution, and Licensee Services, Planning and Advocacy.

After years of charges that PBS has ignored American drama in favor of British imports, the tides are turning. This fall will bring a host of dramatic works, from televised stage productions to cinematic interpretations of literature to short new plays filmed in high-definition video. What ties them together is their renewed focus on literature and theater that is distinctly red, white and blue. Send a transatlantic wire: American drama is back. Instead of entrusting the genre to a single production unit, as it did with American Playhouse in 1982-94, PBS is now buying dramas from several production units, each with its own approach.