For the second year in a row, spring pledge revenues are up for public broadcasting stations around the country.The gains are a welcome relief to fundraisers throughout the system, who face the challenge of improving revenues from all other sources as federal funding declines. Development professionals from both television and radio say their recent successes are largely due to good programming and the increasing sophistication with which stations conduct on-air campaigns.Propelled in part by a sleeper special “Les Miserables in Concert,” public TV’s drive set a dramatic new record of more than $50 million raised nationally. 1992 1994 1996 Dollars pledged $39.5 million $38.3 million $50.2 million Number of pledges 598,150 525,082 603,724 Average pledge $66.14 $73.03 $83.14 Break minutes 291,374 331.357 340,795 Dollars per minute $135.78 $115.73 $147.28 Stations reporting 133 135 155 Source: PBS   Tallies aren’t available for public radio, but stations generally report results that kept pace with or bested the inflation rate.

Michael Taylor, a reporter for Pacifica station KPFK in Los Angeles, has been murdered. Friends believe the execution-style shooting may have been related to Taylor's involvement in developing a micro-power radio station.

The new owner of Rabbit Ears Productions, Millenium Media, says the company will continue producing radio and video childrens’ stories, despite having fired virtually the entire Rabbit Ears staff (pictured) at the end of April. Millenium will move Rabbit Ears operations from Connecticut to its home base in Philadelphia and rely on freelancers for future productions, says Chief Operating Officer Robert Weissman. The CD-ROM publishing company bought Rabbit Ears Productions–perhaps best known for its two-year-old Rabbit Ears Radio–from founder Mark Sottnick about six months ago. Sottnick says the firings took him by surprise and he is quite unhappy. The event shocked those close to Rabbit Ears’ small, family-like operation, and left observers wondering what will become of the enterprise without the staff that was responsible for its critical success.

You may have recently reacquainted yourself with this classic public TV mini-series. The American Program Service and 20 stations have brought it back for a third set of broadcasts this year, after a few runs on Bravo. Here, David Stewart reminds us of the quality, scope and impact of the production when it premiered in this country 14 years ago. On Monday evening, Jan. 18, 1982, the 11-part, 13-hour television series Brideshead Revisited broke over the PBS audience with the suddenness of a storm. Even those who had been enjoying WGBH’s Masterpiece Theatre for more than a decade were unprepared for this astonishing tour de force, presented by the Boston station’s rival, WNET in New York.

Talking about the current status of drama on public radio, NPR’s cultural programmer Andy Trudeau thinks back 10, 15 years ago, to a panel session on audience building. Someone had asked the speakers, “When is the best time to air drama?,” and a panelist shot back, “1939.” Despite this pervasive belief among station programmers — that radio drama doesn’t draw or hold modern audiences — Trudeau is spearheading an effort to revive the genre. At the very least, his is an attempt — perhaps a last-ditch one — to bolster the only regularly distributed national outlet for radio drama, NPR Playhouse.

Ralph P. Forbes, and The People, Appellant, v. The Arkansas Educational Television Commission, and its Board of Directors in their Official Capacities; The Arkansas Educational Telecommunications Network Foundation, and its Members and Officers Susan J. Howarth, in her Official Capacity as Executive Director; Victor Fleming, in his Official Capacity as Chairman; G. E. Campbell, in his Official Capacity as Vice-Chairman; Dr. Caroline Whitson, in her Official Capacity as Secretary; Diane Blair, in her Official Capacity as Commissioner; S. McAdams, in his Official Capacity as Commissioner; James Ross, in his Official Capacity as Commissioner; Jerry McIntosh, in his Official Capacity as Commissioner; Lillian Springer, in her Official Capacity as Commissioner; Amy L.

Death row inmate, journalist, and international cause celebre Mumia Abu-Jamal has filed a $2 million censorship lawsuit against NPR over the network’s 1994 decision not to air his commentaries recorded for All Things Considered. The suit, filed by Abu-Jamal and the Prison Radio Project in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., argues that NPR nixed the commentaries under pressure from Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), other members of Congress and the Fraternal Order of Police. In addition to seeking damages, Abu-Jamal asks the court to force NPR to air the essays on ATC and then turn over the tapes to him.

Federal appropriations to public broadcasting will end at close of business, Sept. 30, 2000, under the House Republican leadership’s proposal introduced Feb. 28 by Rep. Jack Fields (R-Tex.). The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would live on, however, as overseer of a new trust fund endowed through the auction of vacant noncommercial TV channels. In the meantime, Fields’ Public Broadcasting Self-Sufficiency Act of 1996 delays panic in the field by authorizing annual sums of $250 million a year for fiscal years 1998, 1999 and 2000, and maintaining the traditional 75/25 split between public TV and public radio for these next few years.

A professional campaign firm has begun setting up a Citizens’ Committee for Public Broadcasting to coordinate grassroots support for “full funding” of CPB. Proposed and organized by a New York consumer rights lawyer, Donald Ross, the committee has startup funding from about five major public TV stations, Ross says. The initiative is the latest in a long line of citizen interventions to support or protect public broadcasting. Separate plans for a big-name commission of prominent citizens to resolve “serious issues” in the field’s future were announced by CPB Chairman Henry Cauthen two weeks ago, but have been delayed, according to CPB.

Introduced by Rep. Jack Fields, 1996; no action taken A bill governing the phase-out of federal appropriations to CPB, introduced in the House, Feb. 28, 1996, by Rep. Jack Fields (R-Tex.), then chairman of the House telecommunications subcommittee. Cosponsors: Porter, Oxley, Moorhead, Schaefer, Barton (Tex.), Hastert, Gillmor and Frisa. This text was originally posted on the Library of Congress web site. To ensure the financial self-sufficiency of public broadcasting, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the `Public Broadcasting Self-Sufficiency Act of 1996′.

With no vocal opposition to a CPB task force’s proposal to add audience size to the criteria for radio station grants, the CPB Board unanimously approved the policy Jan. 22. Endorsing the proposal will “send a strong message to stations on the edge that they must try harder,” said task force member Mike Lazar, g.m. of WNIU/WNIJ, DeKalb, Ill., before the board vote. Another task force member, Tom Thomas of the Station Resource Group, estimated that one in six stations will have to improve its audience service to meet the new requirements, which take effect in 1998. “The overall majority of stations that now enjoy the support of the corporation will be doing so in three, four and five years out.”

With its new transmission tower half built, WFUV-FM in New York City now has some more money to pay for it, after prevailing in a funding dispute with a federal agency, but its neighbors won’t rest until the station tears down the steel and erects it elsewhere. The Fordham University station in the Bronx got its good funding news in December when the National Telecommunications and Information Administration settled the university’s lawsuit and gave WFUV an equipment grant of $262,858, plus about $100,000 in legal costs. In declaring WFUV eligible for the federal grant, NTIA Administrator Larry Irving reversed his 1993 decision that the agency would not assist stations carrying religious programming, including WFUV’s weekly one-hour Catholic Mass.

PBS will look at theater, arts and nonprofit executives to fill its long-vacant position of chief program executive, President Ervin Duggan told reporters in a Washington press briefing in January. Several candidates for the job from the commercial media world had possessed the “skill sets” that PBS is seeking, but are making “stratospheric salaries” between $600,000 and $700,000, plus stock options, and won’t work for PBS, where all salaries are capped by law at about $150,000, Duggan said. He believes PBS can find “the instincts of the impresario” and lower salary demands among nonprofit leaders [November 1995 article on search] .