Wednesday’s PBS debut of Tom and Ray Magliozzi in animated form gets a mixed review from the New York Times‘s Ginia Bellafante, who calls As the Wrench Turns “indisputably adorable” but says, “A television program with scripts and scene boards and illustrators doesn’t merely impede their spontaneity. It also carries the vague hint of ambition, and the Magliozzi brothers have built a career relishing in the joys, essentially, of just sitting around.” (Earlier Current article.)

Laura Walker, president of WNYC, is this year’s recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award, CPB announced today. “Her creativity and willingness to take risks have made WNYC one of the foremost radio stations in the country,” said CPB President Patricia Harrison. In her 11 years there, the station bought its freedom from the city government, launched Studio 360, On the Media, Radio Lab and The Takeaway, among other national programs, and last month moved into a new home [New York Times story] outside of the city’s municipal building, where it operated 84 years. [Current feature on Walker, 2004.]

Posted in Current‘s former online forum, DirectCurrent, by moderator Steve Behrens on July 17, 2008 at 12:28pm Last year, public radio’s Digital Distribution Consortium Working Group predicted (see page 10) that freeing content could result in mashups such as “a Hidden Kitchens regional food content site that mashes up DDC audio and video content with Google Maps and Flickr photos about local restaurants and food events; a Science Talk site that draws on DDC science content combined with selected blog posts on related topics.” And there probably will be much more significant unforeseen innovations, as the DDC authors would probably agree.

NPR today invited Internet techies to take custom feeds of NPR text and audio– 250,000 stories going back to 1995 — and mash their own combinations for personal noncommercial or nonprofit use. It’s “the beginning of what could be some really cool stuff,” predicted Todd Mundt of Louisville Public Media, who said the idea was endorsed by public radio’s Digital Distribution Consortium. The network released an application programming interface (API) that tells techies how to play selected material in widgets and other Internet-fed outlets. A query generator spits out a section of code for selecting material by topic, program and date from NPR’s database.

From the Top has announced dates and sites for its radio and TV tapings. Radio tapings are set between Aug. 10 (Aspen, Colo.) and next May 22 (Omaha, Neb.). Prodigies will hit the road for San Antonio and Lubbock, Texas; Northfield, Mass.; Cincinnati; Mesa, Ariz.; Indianapolis; Mobile, Ala.; Buffalo, N.Y.; and Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, plus two shows at home in Boston. The TV version will be taped in New York’s Carnegie Hall May 27-31 and June 27-July 1.

Readers of Edutopia magazine learned that Garrison Keillor was inspired to invent his daily short, The Writer’s Almanac, by a good experience at the Minnesota State Fair in 1993. Instead of holding a trivia contest, as planned, Keillor walked into the crowd and asked fairgoers to recite favorite poems. Which they did. The article also reports that Norwegian radio NRK has picked up the show. [NRK announcement translated from Norwegian by Google.]

American Public Media will discontinue Word for Word, its weekly broadcast of notable speeches, effective Aug. 8, the distributor announced today. “Despite our best efforts, the program has not gained significant station carriage,” said Jon McTaggart, chief operating officer. [Program website.] Former APM exec Bill Buzenberg launched the series in June 2006 before moving to the investigative journalism organization Center for Public Integrity. The program’s host has been Melinda Penkava.

Pagedale’s story is part of a multiplatform project created by KETC in St. Louis, launched July 1 in partnership with CPB, to map the stories of afflicted neighborhoods and connect struggling homeowners with resources to stave off foreclosure.

Billy Crystal will be the host of WNET’s upcoming comedy series Make ‘Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America, which documents more than a century of American comedy and is due to air on PBS in January. Crystal will introduce each of the six, one-hour episodes and contribute some of his own schtick to the special. Michael Kantor (Ghost Light Films), who produced the Emmy Award-winning Broadway: The American Musical, is creator and producer.

NPR was expected to tell the staff of its Bryant Park Project this week that the morning show will be discontinued July 25, the New York Times reported yesterday. After 10 months’ production, the show aimed at a younger-than-Morning Edition audience was getting an online audience of a million unique users a month this spring but aired on only five analog public radio stations and 19 digital multicast channels, the newspaper said.

Three finalists in the Public Radio Talent Quest won CPB research-and-development grants totaling $800,000 to refine and develop pilots they conceived and hosted. Two of the winners, Al Letson and Glynn Washington, rose to the top from a field of more than 1,400 contestants in the Public Radio Exchange’s Web 2.0-style competition by demonstrating their “hostiness” to online voters and a panel of judges. The third winner, community activist and MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” recipient Majora Carter, was recruited by a group of seasoned production execs who call their scouting project Launch Production Inc. “We were so impressed by the creativity and talent of all of the finalists, we couldn’t pick just one,” said CPB President Patricia Harrison in a video announcing the funding decision.

NPR launched Inside NPR.org, a blog, similar to advance blogs used to shape new programs such as The Bryant Park Project, that will serve as a sounding board for the network’s digital plans. Online staff will discuss services and products under development and seek feedback from users. “We hope that talking about these activities more openly will help create a virtuous cycle of product development and feedback,” wrote post authors Andy Carvin and Daniel Jacobson.

Washington Week made an apparently innocent slip-of-the-tongue much worse by erasing it from the program’s transcript, writes PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler. On June 20, moderator Gwen Ifill clearly didn’t mean to imply that Al Gore was gay when she said he “came out of the closet” to endorse presidential hopeful Barack Obama. But after a blogger named Tony Peyser asked about the slip-up, a producer changed the transcript. (The original transcript is available here.) Peyser, naturally, noted this in his blog, which points up the stupidity of the decision to change it in the first place, Getler writes. “Now, altering a transcript to remove a controversial or embarrassing statement is a very bad and fundamental journalistic sin, and also professionally stupid because someone will always catch it,” he said.

At a time when educational institutions are more likely to be spinning off broadcast stations, the University of Georgia has bought a CBS-TV affiliate in Toccoa, 50 miles north of the Athens campus. The school agreed to pay owner Media General about $1.6 million plus DTV costs f0r WNEG-TV, says the asset purchase agreement and will use it as a teaching lab for communications students producing local programs for the northeast corner of the state, according to Dean E. Culpepper Clark’s remarks on the station’s own newscast and in the Independent-Mail of Anderson, S.C. The station will remain a commercial broadcaster, but Clark indicated it may drop its CBS affiliation.

Chicago Public Radio programming v.p. Ron Jones exits for “a new adventure” as the station cuts two local programs, Hello Beautiful and Right Now, an afternoon talk show. The cuts, announced this week as the station’s board met to approve the budget for the new fiscal year, prompts Chicago Reader venting about Vocalo, the experimental service for younger, web-savvy media consumers and creators. Robert Feder of the Sun-Times summarizes staff reassignments (scroll down).