Nice Above Fold - Page 570
Big MacArthur kudo to Jad Jad Jad Abumrad rad rad
The MacArthur Foundation today publicly confirmed what fans already know: Jad Abumrad, auteur/producer and co-host of WNYC’s Radiolab, is some kinda genius. He is one of 22 scientists and other creative types who received $500,000 MacArthur fellowships in recognition of their achievements and potential. “This show is the central creative mission of my life right now, and the money might give me the space to bring new things into it,” Abumrad said in a New York Times article reporting the awards. Abumrad probably will have more to say Wednesday morning when he keynotes the Public Radio Program Directors conference in Baltimore.Link TV announces new c.e.o., former ABC News exec Paul Mason
Nonprofit satellite channel Link TV today (Sept. 20) announced a new c.e.o., former ABC News executive Paul Mason. After 30 years in commercial television, Mason told Current, he “wanted to go someplace optimistic, where there’s tremendous passion about mission.” “That’s happening in not-for-profit media,” he said. He takes over as Link launches several initiatives, including LinkAsia, a half-hour online news show hosted by Yul Kwon, a former FCC deputy chief and host of the upcoming four-part PBS series America Revealed; and ViewChange.org, an online media hub funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, that “highlights progress in reducing hunger, poverty and disease in developing nations,” as Link describes it, with stories of the people helped by global development organizations such as Save the Children, Oxfam, UNICEF, CONCERN and Bread for the World.Hearst TV exec to head World channel
Elizabeth Cheng, a Hearst Television executive, is the new general manager for the World channel, WGBH announced today (Sept. 20). Cheng will oversee all business, technical and creative aspects of production, distribution and marketing for the digital multicast service, which was developed by WGBH and WNET in 2004 and relaunched on multiple platforms last year (Current, June 7, 2010) with funding from CPB. At Hearst, Cheng was a vice president, as well as director of programming and communications for WCVB-TV Channel 5 Boston and director of programming for WMUR-TV Channel 9 Manchester, N.H., both ABC affiliates. In addition to executive producing specials and series programming, she was in charge of Chronicle, WCVB’s nightly news magazine covering the New England region.
CPB to ask for $451 million for fiscal 2015
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting soon will request $451 million in advance funding for 2015, Tim Isgitt, CPB’s government affairs s.v.p., told board members in Washington, D.C. today (Sept. 19). That’s up slightly from the $445 million for the system in President Obama’s fiscal 2012 budget, which forward-funds FY14. CPB is also asking for $20 million in digital funding for 2013, Isgitt said, for collaborative station infrastructure projects, educational media support for teachers and public safety initiatives. And Patrick Butler, president of the Association of Public Television Stations advocacy organization, told the board that he’s “feeling a little bit better” about those funding prospects on Capitol Hill, compared with the brutal budget battles earlier this year.On the beat in Juárez, you listen with your gut
As a reporter for the multistation “local journalism center” Fronteras: The Changing America Desk, I am surrounded by borders. I live in Texas, work in New Mexico and regularly report in Mexico. In a 15-minute drive, I can be in a different state or a different country. It’s a tricky but fascinating work environment that’s further complicated by the drug war next door. The toughest but most compelling stories that we cover come from Mexico. In the past four years, Ciudad Juárez, El Paso’s sister city to the south, has commanded national attention with a horror show of headlines — a headless body strung up from a inner-city overpass, a deadly car bomb and a massacre at a teenage birthday party.Localore: matchmaker for innovation
Two years after its Makers Quest 2.0 project tapped independent producers to stretch the creative boundaries of public radio, the Association of Independents in Radio is launching Localore, a major CPB-backed initiative designed to jump-start new-media experiments at local public broadcasting stations.
Meet the cub of the tiger of the house that Fred built
It hasn’t been a truly beautiful day in the neighborhood for more than 10 years. Not since Fred Rogers, star of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood for 33 years, hung up his red cardigan sweater for the last time in 2001. He had made 900 episodes of TV’s most gently nurturing programs for children. A couple of years later, in early 2003, Rogers died of stomach cancer and, though his nonprofit company lived on, his Neighborhood became a ghost town, existing only in reruns. Two years ago, PBS cut the number of reruns on its national schedule to one a week — at 6 a.m.Blogosphere lashing for NPR report that went straight down the middle
As Jay Rosen sees it, “he said, she said” reporting is a “lame formula” for fact-based news reporting, a method of presenting opposing points of view that is out-dated and gutless. When Rosen, an NYU j-school professor who blogs at Press Think, found an example of “he said, she said” reporting in NPR’s Sept. 8 story on regulations on abortion clinics in Kansas, he called down the network in a series of posts that accused NPR of being cowardly: “NPR has, in this case, allowed its desire to escape criticism to overwhelm its journalistic imagination,” Rosen wrote. “‘He said, she said’ does not serve listeners.PBS steals big wins from HBO at Primetime Emmys
At the Primetime Emmy Awards Sunday night (Sept. 18), premium cable channel HBO “was beaten up in prestige categories by an unlikely foe — public broadcasting, which gets its funding from the government and viewer contributions,” reports the Los Angeles Times. PBS won 14 statuettes (including the earlier Creative Emmy presentations) compared with HBO’s 19, but Masterpiece’s “Downton Abbey” walked away with some of the night’s top honors, generally reserved for big-money HBO productions. The Brit import about an aristocratic family in pre-World War I England won for TV miniseries or movie; Julian Fellowes, series creator, also won the writing award in that category; and director Brian Percival and supporting actress Maggie Smith took those honors.Musicians’ stories join their music in Sound Tracks for PBS
Steve Talbot worked in public TV for more than 20 years before trying his hand as chief fundraiser for one of his own projects. His timing was not the greatest. On the day in 2008 when Lehman Brothers imploded, PBS agreed to back the pilot for Talbot’s Sound Tracks, a newsmagazine-style show about contemporary music around the world. The hourlong debut, which aired in January 2010, got positive feedback from viewers, programmers and PBS, but the recession has hampered Talbot’s efforts to make more episodes of Sound Tracks ever since. He’s still raising money to produce additional episodes. “I picked the absolute worst time in my life to try to do this,” he says.If you pay commissions on underwriting sales, make them incentives for team behavior
... Management can support responsible behavior, however, by designing compensation systems that reward it. These techniques include offering a livable base salary augmented by commissions ... and using a year-end bonus to reward such activities as assisting in philanthropic requests....Digital Promise finally realized in White House launch
Lawrence Grossman, former PBS president, and Shae Hopkins, executive director of Kentucky Educational Television, are two board members of Digital Promise, the White House’s educational initiative that was announced Friday (Sept. 16) in Washington, D.C. The project, backed by the Department of Education, Carnegie Corporation of New York and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, will work to identify breakthrough educational technologies, partner with researchers and entrepreneurs to determine what works best, and drive private-sector investment in innovation. The initiative also includes a League of Innovative Schools to help test projects, $15 million in new awards from the National Science Foundation to support research on next-generation learning environments, a national alliance of more 35 of America’s top education-policy researchers, and more.Robert M. Reed, first g.m. of Hawaii's public TV network, 79
Robert M. Reed, the founding manager of Hawaii’s public TV network who became a publisher and an author, died of respiratory failure Sept. 17, 2011, in Winter Park, Fla. He was 79. He started the Hawaii Educational Television Network in 1962 and served as its g.m. and an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii. In a 20-year career in public television, he also served as g.m. of KUED in Salt Lake City and as head of public TV’s national syndication service in Bloomington, Ind., and at PBS. He worked at stations in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Atlanta; and Madison, Wis.; as well as Honolulu.FCC extends Common Alerting Protocol deadline into 2012
The Federal Communication Commission released an order today (Sept. 16) that extends the deadline for Emergency Alert System (EAS) participating stations to implement the new Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) standard. The order moves the deadline from Sept. 30 to June 30, 2012. The extension may allow the first-ever National EAS Test scheduled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the FCC, set for Nov. 9, to run more smoothly, notes the CommLaw Center blog of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. Media including NPR, the Association of Public Television Stations and PBS joined the National Association of Broadcasters in requesting the extension, reports TV Technology.National Book Award finalists to be revealed live on pubradio
Finalists for this year’s National Book Awards will be revealed live on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud, from the new Literary Arts space in Portland. It’s a public-radio first, said Sarah Jane Rothenfluch, the show’s executive producer. Beginning at 9 a.m. local time on Oct. 12, host Dave Miller will interview past winners, finalists and judges, who will announce the finalists.
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