Nice Above Fold - Page 822
Bryant Park co-host Burbank to depart
Luke Burbank, co-host of NPR’s new morning show Bryant Park Project, told his listeners that he plans to return to his hometown of Seattle so that he can be closer to his daughter. Check out his “Long Goodbye” on yesterday’s edition of BPP and this video blog entry with listeners’ comments.Martin proposes limits for cross-market ownership
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s proposal to allow cross-market ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations would limit acquisitions to certain conditions within the top 20 markets. Other pending proposals to change ownership rules for local radio and television stations apparently have been tabled. The FCC announced the proposal this morning and set a Dec. 11 deadline for comments. Free Press quickly dubbed the proposal “corporate welfare for big media” and said it appears to contain a loophole allowing consolidation in many more markets.Columbia j-school honors PBS filmmaker Ofra Bikel
Tonight, Columbia University gives a black-tie salute to Frontline documentarian Ofra Bikel [profile]. She’ll receive the $25,000 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism. Her investigations have freed 13 people who otherwise would have been jailed because of breakdowns in the justice system, including aggressive plea bargaining, rigid mandatory sentences and reliance on faulty testimony. Among those freed are Terence Garner, whose crime was to have a name similar to a suspect’s. Betsy Kelly, one of seven North Carolinians sentenced for child abuse and freed after Bikel’s Innocence Lost reporting, will attend the dinner. “Ofra Bikel’s work has shone a stark light on the realities of the American justice system,” said Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia j-school.
Listeners lose out if Sirius and XM merge
What will happen if federal regulators allow Sirius and XM satellite radio to merge? Washington Post radio columnist Mark Fisher concludes that listeners will have fewer channels to choose from and low-rated channels such as Sirius’s NPR Talk may not survive.Check your 2008 conference dates
Next year’s major get-togethers are planned, mostly. Among them: pubradio’s Music Personnel Conference in Mobile, Ala., Feb. 17-29; NFCB’s Community Radio Conference, March 26-29 in Atlanta; Public Radio News Directors, July 16-19 in D.C.; Grassroots Radio Conference, also in July, in Portland, Ore. See Current‘s Calendar for more.FCC announces window for FM applicants to negotiate deals with competitors
In a public notice issued today, the FCC has given applicants for new noncommercial educational FM stations 60 days to work out settlements with competing applicants or make technical amendments that would resolve conflicts between their applications. Applicants must identify competitors within their community of license by searching the commission’s database.
KMBH board members dismissed without explanation
“Three members of the KMBH-TV [Harlingen, Texas] board of directors were dismissed in August without explanation, according to information that recently became public,” reports the local Valley Morning Star. “According to the articles of incorporation filed with the state of Texas in 1983, the bishop or administrator of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brownsville is the only member of RGV Educational Broadcasting [the station’s owner].” Bishop Raymundo Peña dismissed the three board members–experienced pubcasters Bill Elliott, Chelse Benham and Betsy Price–without explanation. “Their dismissal reduced the board from its original seven members to four, one less than required by the station’s original articles of incorporation,” reports the paper.BitTorrent now offers pubTV downloads
PBS will make episodes of pubTV series including Nova, History Detectives and Teletubbies available as $1.99 downloads via BitTorrent.com, the two companies announced today. The same shows will be available at Vuze.com as well. BitTorrent is peer-to-peer file sharing protocol that reduces the hardware and bandwidth burden of sharing large media files, such as films, by breaking them down and using the various network clients to distribute bits of the file to one another. It is one of the most popular means of illicit online music and movie swapping, but the actual company, BitTorrent Inc., only offers licensed full-length films, TV shows and music videos from Fox, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, and many other networks and cable channels.KMBH refuses to turn over financials
KMBH in Harlingen, Texas, has refused to turn over financial documents to the local newspaper, the Valley Morning Star, unless a reporter at the paper reveals confidential sources who provided him with information about the station’s finances, the Associated Press reported today. The station had earlier filed a police complaint against the reporter, accusing him of disorderly conduct and yelling at a receptionist while at the KMBH office, a charge the reporter denies. Currently on the KMBH website, there is posting titled “Financial Transparency Now Online,” which invites visitors to “review our audited financial reports.”New PBS and CPB literacy initiative announced
PBS and CPB today announced a new literacy initiative, PBS Kids Raising Readers, to begin in January 2008. Supported by Ready to Learn funds from the U.S. Department of Education grant, the project will target 2-8-year-olds and feature on-air tips for caregivers, educational materials such as DVDs and books, and new Web content for kids and teachers, including a 32-week preschool curriculum and an online course for childcare providers.President Johnson’s remarks on signing the Public Broadcasting Act, 1967
In LBJ's 1967 speech endorsing public broadcasting, he says he has asked his advisers "to begin to explore the possibility of a network for knowledge."Stations join NPR in launching music site
Promising “everyone from Aaron Copland to Aaron Neville,” NPR and 12 producing stations released a beta version of the new NPR Music website today at npr.org/music. Organized by genre, the site offers live and recorded performances, artist interviews, blogs and profiles, podcasts and more, tapping into the deejays, music archives and expertise of stations identified with music, including WBGO (jazz), WKSU (folk) and WXPN (Triple A). Other stations will be added as partners, NPR said. Websites of participating stations such as New York’s WFUV feature links to items on the new site. One holdout was L.A.’s KCRW, Current reported in July.Florida, Minnesota donors question sale of favorite stations
Fans of two now-defunct college stations are pursuing legal actions against the sale of the stations to Minnesota-based American Public Media Group.Two supporters of Florida’s Christian Family Coalition filed suit Oct. 18 [2007] in a state court in Miami to overturn Trinity International University’s September sale of former Christian music station WMCU to APMG, which aims to start a classical music station in Miami. In the Twin Cities area, where a classical station was on the losing side, a group of former listeners to St. Olaf College’s bygone WCAL has questioned its sale to APMG’s Minnesota Public Radio, which converted it to The Current, a contemporary music station.Pipeline 2008
It won’t cause as many lumps in throats as the highly concentrated preview reel that PBS displays at its Showcase conference each spring, but it offers many jolts of promise for upcoming seasons of public television.Responding to Current’s annual Pipeline survey, producers and their distributors supplied most information for this list of about 140 completed, scripted, proposed and dreamt-of productions. Thanks to all who responded to the survey. Please direct inquiries about specific programs to the contact people listed with each title.Included:only noninstructional projects one hour or longer that will debut nationally in January 2008 or later. Winter/Spring ’08 | Summer ’08 | Sometime in ’08 | Winter/Spring ’09 | Fall ’09 Sometime in ’10 | Sometime in ’11 | Airdate to be determined Winter/Spring ’08 The Adirondacks Producing organizations: WNED-TV (Buffalo, N.Y.)Goodman recovering from Bell's Palsy
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! described her recent bout with Bell’s Palsy in an online column for Truthdig.
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