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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.

Quick Takes

David Isay gets help running StoryCorps with new chief executive

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StoryCorps has hired its first chief executive in its decade-long history, reports the New York Times. Robin Sparkman, currently editor in chief of The American Lawyer magazine, joins the Brooklyn-based oral history project next month. Founder David Isay “will continue to be the public face of the organization,” the report said, as creative director and chief fundraiser. Sparkman will focus on management and strategic planning. StoryCorps content is a longtime favorite of NPR audiences.

People

PBS selects Vecchi to replace McCoskey as chief network engineer

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PBS has named Mario Vecchi chief technology officer, calling the former AOL executive “a world-class technologist.”

Starting Jan. 27, Vecchi will oversee distribution operations and engineering, media management, interconnection engineering, information technology, web and new media applications/systems and technology strategy and planning. In the Dec. 13 announcement, PBS President Paula Kerger praised Vecchi’s “wealth of skill and experience.” He holds three engineering degrees, including a doctorate, from MIT. He is currently president of P&A Development Inc., a broadband network consulting firm for new businesses.

Quick Takes

Facebook adds ‘Donate’ button for nonprofits

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A new feature added to Facebook on Monday allows donors to give directly to charities by clicking on a “donate now” button. “The Donate feature will appear beside Posts in News Feed shared by participating nonprofits and at the top of their Facebook Pages,” Facebook said in a statement on the new feature. “When people click ‘Donate Now’ they can choose the amount, enter their payment information, and immediately donate to that cause.”

Facebook said it will store the donor’s credit card on file, but that information will not be shared with the nonprofit. Launch partners include the Nature Conservancy, Oxfam America, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Malaria No More and the World Wildlife Fund. Facebook is accepting applications from other nonprofits that want to join the program.

Programs/Content

Producers take podcast covering marketing innovations to pubradio distribution

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Ad man and podcaster Mike O’Toole has teamed up with veteran pubradio producer Jim Russell to adapt a narrative-focused business podcast into a public radio series. The show, The Unconventionals, features long-form interviews with executives who run startup companies or established businesses that have adopted game-changing tactics for marketing to younger consumers. O’Toole, host and president of PJA Marketing + Advertising, seeks guests who fit a certain profile — entrepreneurs whose innovative business models disrupt those of their competitors. He aims to highlight undertold stories in business and marketing, looking beyond companies such as Apple, whose narratives have been “told to death.”

During the podcast’s first two seasons, O’Toole interviewed Michael Dubin, c.e.o. of Dollar Shave Club, a web-based company that sells personal care products for men through a subscription-based business model, and Geoff Cottrill of Converse, which refashioned its brand with hip sensibilities by investing in Rubber Tracks, a recording studio that provides free studio time to musicians. O’Toole began podcasting 15 years ago with This Week in Social Media, which was later revamped to focus on news about the field of marketing under the title This Week in Digital Media.

System/Policy

Virginia stations signal intent to hop on joint master-control bandwagon

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Virginia public broadcasters WCVE and WVPT are the latest stations to come together to form a joint master control. Starting as early as February, programming for WVPT-TV in Harrisonburg, Va., will be transmitted from a joint control at WCVE, a dual licensee about 120 miles to the southeast in Richmond. The arrangement is a win-win: the service provides WCVE with a new source of revenue, and WVPT rings up savings by avoiding an expensive refresh of its outdated equipment. Execs at both stations said they’ll use the extra cash to produce more content. “We are at end of life for most if not all of the equipment in our current master-control facility,” said David Mullins, WVPT president.

Quick Takes

Is “no one in public radio” qualified to head up NPR?

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According to pubradio consultant John Sutton, several sources close to the NPR Board say that “current and past CEO search committees have taken the position that no one in public radio is qualified to manage the external relationships NPR must forge to succeed in the digital age.” “I hope that’s not that case,” he notes in a blog post on Radio Sutton. This creates “an interesting dichotomy,” he writes. “NPR’s Board searches for leaders who want to build on public radio’s great success, but does not think the leaders who are very much responsible for creating that success are good enough for the job.” He adds: “NPR’s recent CEO failures raise the legitimate possibility that a highly qualified station manager has a better chance of growing into the external CEO role than an external candidate has of growing into a successful public radio system leader.”

Programs/Content

Flatow finds more traction for ‘Science Friday’ in PRI distribution

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After two decades as a weekly NPR program, the 22-year-old Science Friday is preparing to shake things up. With its move to Public Radio International distribution on Jan. 1, the talk show has ambitious plans to put its content into wider distribution through collaborations with PRI series such as The World and The Takeaway as well as with the PBS science program Nova. WGBH in Boston, which acquired PRI in 2012, is involved in production of all three major series, opening new cross-platform distribution and branding opportunities. A new educational specialist is working to turn more of Science Friday’s content into curricular materials, and PRI is exploring ways to offer its programming through PBS Learning Media, the online resource providing free media and lesson plans to K–12 educators.

Programs/Content

Grants, donations to NPR support expanded reporting, app for personalized listening

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NPR has lined up $17 million in grants and individual gifts to expand two beat-reporting units and to complete development of an app designed to provide a personalized, location-based listening experience of content from NPR and local stations. Most of the funding, about $10 million, supports development of the app, which NPR has referred to internally as Project Carbon. Slated for release by April 2014, the app will enable listeners to hear, read and watch public radio content across digital platforms, providing an experience similar to what Pandora or Spotify offer for music. The app is designed to customize the content it delivers by using geolocation, gathering feedback and tracking when and for how long users listen. Though the app will launch initially for smartphones, NPR plans to expand its capabilities to serve “as many platforms as needed,” said Kinsey Wilson, chief content officer.

People

Bobby Jackson, public radio jazz fixture, dies at 57

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Bobby Jackson, a longtime jazz host, producer and program director, died Dec. 9 at his home in Cleveland. He was 57. Jackson was a music and programming director at public radio stations in Atlanta and Cleveland for many years before creating and hosting his own jazz program, The Roots of Smooth, in 2009. The Roots of Smooth aired on 21 stations nationwide.