System/Policy
Alaska Public Media to expand broadcast reach through acquisition of TV station
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The station, previously a CBS affiliate, reaches more than 85,000 viewers in southern Anchorage.
Current (https://current.org/current-mentioned-sources/steve/page/552/)
The station, previously a CBS affiliate, reaches more than 85,000 viewers in southern Anchorage.
The CWA unit representing StoryCorps workers is challenging how management handled recent layoffs, alleging retaliation.
• Pubcasting is not happy with the FCC’s spectrum auction report, with three of the system’s major organizations saying June 6 that the new rules violate the Public Broadcasting Act. “We are obliged to express our profound disappointment that the Commission has rejected one of public television’s most important policy goals in the auction process — our request that the Commission ensure that no community find itself without free access to public television service in the aftermath of the auction,” read a joint statement from the presidents of the Association for Public Television Stations, CPB and PBS. • The second annual “Bob Ross Bar Crawl” will take place Sept. 30 in Chicago. Ross fan Jimmy Barrett got the idea for the event after holding a Halloween party in which two of his friends coincidentally both dressed as the Joy of Painting star. Attendees will ride a rented trolley around Chicago’s North Side, decked out in beards and Afro wigs, according to DNAInfo Chicago.
Editorial staffers at Baltimore’s WYPR are petitioning management for union representation, according to a June 6 release from broadcast union SAG-AFTRA, which seeks to represent them. A majority of editorial staff delivered a union petition to management June 3, and the National Labor Relations Board received a petition June 6, according to the release. Management has not yet acknowledged the petition. “We all believe in the value of public radio, as well as WYPR’s mission to produce high-quality journalism,” the release read. “We want to see the station improve and better serve listeners across the state.
The filmmakers behind a new documentary briefly discussed their “deeply troubling” experience with public TV in an appearance on public radio’s On Point Wednesday. Tia Lessin and Carl Deal directed Citizen Koch, now hitting theaters after vying for grant funding and a broadcast commitment from PBS’s Independent Lens. The film examines the influence of wealthy conservatives such as David and Charles Koch on Republican politics. A May 2013 article by the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer suggested that ITVS, Independent Lens’s producer, backed away from the film due to pressure from New York’s WNET, where David Koch sat on the board. Appearing on On Point, Lessin and Deal said ITVS asked them to remove content related to the Kochs from their film and to change the name.
A proposed merger of two Florida public TV stations would serve a combined market area roughly equivalent to the country’s seventh-largest Nielsen market.
CPB and Ready to Learn, a U.S. Department of Education program supporting preschool learning, will provide $2.2 million in grants to 21 public television stations to create new or expand existing school-readiness projects. One of the new grants, announced June 3, will establish an Illinois Ready to Learn transmedia network with pubTV partners WILL in Champaign-Urbana, WSIU in Carbondale and WTVP in Peoria, to reach 12,000 educators and 13,000 school children. Partnering with community coalitions in central and southern Illinois, the effort will provide educational programs to three low-income communities, as well as offer professional development for educators. The stations received just over $105,000 for that work. Since 2011, pubTV stations nationwide have used Ready to Learn grants specifically to extend the educational benefits of PBS Kids content by providing interactive math and literacy programs and services to local communities.
Plus: Rockers tweet for #SaveWRAS.
LeVar Burton’s Kickstarter campaign to fund a digital rebirth of Reading Rainbow promises to reconnect classrooms with the pubTV brand and may inspire a new version of the series from partner WNED-TV.
In their efforts to foster a productive dialogue with readers, the race and culture blog’s editors have turned their comments section into one of Code Switch’s defining characteristics.
Plus: radio from a tugboat, and a Reading Rainbow parody.
Haynie shot for the politics beat of Chicago Tonight.