System/Policy
NPR CEO warns of ‘hostile environment’ ahead for journalism, scrutiny of pubmedia
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“We should be well prepared at every moment to talk with enthusiasm about the purpose and value of public media,” CEO Katherine Maher said.
October CDP Index: Radio results remain sluggish while TV waits for next blockbuster
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A declining rate of growth among Passport users is exposing cracks in new donor programs at TV and joint licensees.
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Development
With crowdfunding, rethink your expectations for engaging public media’s supporters
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As a growing number of public media organizations turn to Kickstarter to raise funding for new projects — with mixed success — development professionals and others in nonprofit media have begun evaluating both the potential and limitations of this new fundraising method.
Quick Takes
Late WVTF music director’s family sues over his 2011 death
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The children of Seth Williamson, a longtime music director and host at pubradio WVTF in Roanoke, Va., have filed a lawsuit against a medical manufacturing company over his 2011 death, reports the Roanoke Times. The complaint says that following hernia surgery, Williamson received more than five times the prescribed amount of an analgesic medication and died a short time later of a “massive” overdose. The family contends a medication pump was faulty. They are suing Hospira Inc., which made the pump, and Abbott Laboratories Inc., which once owned Hospira. Both are based in the Chicago suburbs.
Quick Takes
Dotcom entrepreneur invests $250K in Swell app
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Jason Calacanis is betting big on Swell, the five-month-old app that curates podcasts and news reports. The angel investor, who co-founded the blog network Weblogs Inc., the search engine Mahalo.com and the podcast network ThisWeekIn, announced Dec. 3 that he would invest $250,000 in the app. In a blog post on his tech website Launch, Calacanis cited the app’s pedigree, mission, design and focus on podcasting as reasons for his investment. He had been interested in the similar apps Stitcher and TuneIn, he said, but wasn’t able to invest in them in time.
Doc Martin
There’s Large trouble ahead on Doc Martin
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Ian McNeice, the actor who plays rotund plumber-turned-restaurateur Bert Large, and Joe Absolom, cast as his lanky son Al, dropped some ominous hints about the storylines involving their characters during a recent interview with Current.
Development
CPB financial report shows pubradio closing the gap with pubTV
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CPB recently released its Public Broadcasting Revenue report (PDF) for fiscal year 2012. Findings about the number of contributions, total contributions and the amount of cash business (direct revenue such as underwriting and payments for services, but not in-kind services) show that public radio’s fortunes have been rising as public television’s have been on the decline, to the point that they are close to intersecting in these areas.
Quick Takes
FCC details plans for moving ahead on LPFM applications
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The FCC announced Tuesday details of its plan for working through the more than 2,800 low-power FM (LPFM) applications that it received during the recent filing window. Its first priority is identifying some 900 “singleton” applications that do not conflict with others filed during the window. The commission will start granting those permits next month, according to the public notice, and will then give remaining applicants a chance to resolve conflicts with each other. The FCC will then move to identifying tentative selectees. “It is clear .
Quick Takes
Knight and Ford donate $500,000 to reporting projects in Detroit and Michigan
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Detroit may have filed for bankruptcy, but public-service reporting efforts there and in Michigan just got a big boost. The Knight Foundation and the Ford Foundation announced Tuesday $500,000 in support to two projects, the Detroit Journalism Cooperative and the Michigan Reporting Institute. The cooperative consists of five nonprofit media organizations that will receive $250,000 from Knight to focus on the city’s financial straits and engage citizens in the search for innovative solutions. The convening partner is Center for Michigan, a “think and do tank” advocating for citizen involvement in policy issues, along with pubcasters WDET-FM, Michigan Radio and Detroit Public Television, as well as New Michigan Media, a network of ethnic and minority-oriented news operations. The Michigan Reporting Institute will receive the remainder of the grant from Ford for Zero Divide, a social-impact consultancy using technology to tackle issues of health, economic opportunities and civic engagement in underserved communities.
Quick Takes
NEA’s Alyce Myatt returns to private sector next month
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Alyce Myatt, media arts director for the National Endowment for the Arts and a former PBS executive, is leaving the NEA next month. She joined the agency in January 2011 and broadened its media arts grant category. Traditionally, most of that funding went to public television and radio projects; Myatt widened the pool of recipients to include work on transmedia, app development and video games. “I was given an extraordinary opportunity to expand federal support for the media arts to encompass every platform used by Americans to engage with art,” Myatt said in a statement. “It has been an incredible honor to do this work and to be with colleagues whose knowledge represents the depth and breadth of the arts in America.”
Quick Takes
Ruling reinforces advertising ban on pubcasting airwaves
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A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a constitutional ban on political advertising on public television and radio stations, Reuters reports. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled 8-3 that Congress was justified in prohibiting pubstations from running paid ads for for-profit entities, issues of public interest and political candidates. In April 2012, a three-judge panel of the same circuit voted to allow pubcasters to run those ads in the Ninth Circuit states of the West.
Quick Takes
FCC Chair Wheeler advocates for public TV stations to sell spectrum
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The new chair of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, is urging public broadcasters to sell their television bandwidth in upcoming spectrum auctions, reports TVNewsCheck. In an appearance Monday at Ohio State University in Columbus, Wheeler advocated for channel-sharing deals in which broadcasters would sell off pieces of spectrum and consolidate their signal with other broadcasters. Wheeler said that arrangement would give “forever cash-starved” pubcasters a “pot full of cash” that they could use as an endowment to run their operations while using spectrum more efficiently. “It may be just a great godsend to the PBS business,” said Wheeler, a former PBS Board member. In response, Patrick Butler, president of the Association of Public Television Stations advocacy organization, told Current in a statement that pubTV stations “are committed to pursuing their public service missions by the most effective and efficient means possible.”