Programs/Content

Jazz Ambassadors revisits time when Cold War diplomacy got hip

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It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing — and a handy role in a Cold War propaganda campaign. In the late ’50s, U.S. government officials eager to make a case for America’s superiority to Communist regimes found a new vehicle to deliver the message to a global audience. They staged a series of global tours of top jazz musicians to showcase the popular and inclusive art form, promoting the democratic values enshrined in the music while also offsetting the backlash brewing among African Americans fed up with discrimination. Those tours wound down in the ’70s, but a new film next year will revisit their legacy. Presented by New York’s WNET, the 90-minute Jazz Ambassadors will showcase the overseas adventures of jazz legends such as Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington.

People

Car Talk co-host Tom Magliozzi dies at 77

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Tom Magliozzi, half of Click and Clack on NPR’s Car Talk, the Tappet Brothers, died Monday of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 77. Magliozzi and his brother Ray hosted Car Talk for 37 years before it ended production in 2012. The show continues airing in reruns. Doug Berman, the show’s producer, said in a blog post that Tom Magliozzi and his brother “changed public broadcasting forever.”

Quick Takes

Friday roundup: Parachutist gets stuck on St. Louis tower; PBS station’s finance manager pleads guilty to embezzling

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• The broadcast tower of St. Louis’s Nine Network picked up an unexpected Halloween decoration Thursday night: a parachutist who was stuck for two hours about 120 feet off the ground, reports KMOV-TV. Firefighters rescued 27-year-old Timothy Church after he attempted to jump off the tower. The illicit leaper and an accomplice were charged with trespassing. https://twitter.com/CoryStarkKMOV/status/528035355585695744/

• Elsewhere on the crime beat, a former finance manager for WFWA-TV in Fort Wayne, Ind., pleaded guilty Thursday to embezzling money from the station in July 2010, according to the News-Sentinel.

System/Policy

Regents extend funding for Iowa Public Radio

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The Iowa Board of Regents agreed Oct. 23 to continue funding Iowa Public Radio at current levels through the end of fiscal year 2016, reversing a plan to zero out funding by that time. IPR’s 2012 strategic plan called for zeroing out the board of regents’ support by the end of fiscal year 2016. The station saw shortfalls in major giving revenue and lacked an executive director for a year until Myrna Johnson joined the network in January. Citing those factors, IPR asked for board funding to remain at 12.5 percent of its operating budget.

Quick Takes

Downton, Roosevelts help boost PBS to fifth in ratings

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PBS finished the 2013-14 broadcast season in fifth place among broadcast and cable networks, up from eighth the previous season and 11th in 2011-12. Beth Hoppe, PBS’s chief programmer, has focused on scheduling similar genres together to retain primetime audience from one show to the next. “It’s a strategy that is paying off,” she said in the announcement Wednesday. Average primetime household Nielsen ratings rose over last season from 1.43 to 1.50, finishing with an average audience of some 1.9 million viewers, according to PBS. Viewing on Sunday nights, anchored by Masterpiece and its hit Downton Abbey franchise, grew 7 percent over last season.

System/Policy

FCC dismissal of indecency complaints clears way for renewal of pubcasters’ licenses

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Pubcasters Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Twin Cities Public Television and KCOS-TV in El Paso, Texas, were among the almost 700 broadcasters whose licenses were renewed en masse earlier this month, after the FCC quietly cleared many stations nationwide of indecency charges. The renewals had been on hold due to allegations that some of their programming may have violated FCC regulations barring broadcasters from airing indecent material between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. The complaints were thrown out as part of an agency effort to reduce the backlog of applications to be processed. The complaint against LPB was apparently over an episode of Doc Martin, according to LPB President Beth Courtney. “You’re kidding me” was Courtney’s reaction when she learned of the complaint’s target, she said. “There was nothing that I saw under any guideline that would be a problem,” Courtney said, adding that the agency’s rejection of the complaint “was the appropriate response.”

The complaint pending against Twin Cities was apparently over “blurred nudity” in an episode of Globe Trekker, according to station spokesperson Elle Krause-Lyons.