Nice Above Fold - Page 879
- The Los Angeles Times reports that on April 17 Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre will show free continuous screenings of The Armenian Genocide, the controversial documentary debuting on PBS stations that night. Filmmaker Andrew Goldberg rented the theatre after KCET in Los Angeles declined to broadcast both the film and the panel discussion that PBS commissioned to follow it.
- A new commercial AM/FM news-talk station in Washington, D.C., hopes to attract a chunk of public radio’s audience by combining a livelier sound with meatier coverage, reports the Washington Post‘s Marc Fisher. The Post is partnering on the station with Bonneville International, owner of the city’s successful WTOP-AM.
- Michael Coleman tells the Detroit Free Press that he did not embezzle from Michigan Public Media in Ann Arbor, his former employer. Coleman is now g.m. of WDET-FM in Detroit. A Detroit News columnist compares news of the embezzlement charges to “hearing that your mother has been brought up on shoplifting charges.”
- If pediatricians agree that media screen time is not appropriate for children under age two, why are Sesame Workshop and a leading child advocacy organization co-producing a DVD series for babies? “Essentially it is a betrayal of babies and families,” one critic of the new brand of infant media and toy products tells the Washington Post. Child development experts have asked Zero to Three, the advocacy group that’s co-producing the Sesame Beginnings DVD series, to end its association with the Workshop. “We believe that your partnership . . . is exploitative of both babies and parents and severely damages your credibility as an advocate for the health and well-being of young children,” write the leaders of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, in a March 17 letter.
- Consultant and blogger Robert Paterson gives a sneak peek at a New York Times feature about NPR’s growth in the post-Kroc era, dated for Sunday. “To put it in perspective, the [Baltimore Sun] just closed my old Beijing bureau,” says Frank Langfitt, a Sun alum and NPR reporter. “NPR just opened a Shanghai bureau. It’s night and day.”
- Digital video recording pioneer TiVo is introducing a new service that will automatically record and aggregate educational kids programs, the Associated Press reports (via USA Today). The new tool, which will debut mid-year and be part of TiVo’s recently launched KidZone parental-control feature, will record shows tagged with the “E/I” label that denotes educational and informational programming for kids. It will also include a list of shows recommended by the Parents Television Council, Common Sense Media and Parents’ Choice Foundation. The service will be free but is only available to subscribers with standalone Series2 machines.
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