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Project Core: A vision for scale and growth

Over the past three years, CentralCast has been hard at work implementing critical upgrades that lay the foundation for a more resilient and advanced future. And now, the culmination of these efforts is taking shape in our most ambitious initiative yet: Project Core.

Programs/Content

CPB to support more collaborative journalism projects

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CPB will devote $2.5 million to reporting projects spearheaded by stations and national producers, President Patricia Harrison announced Nov. 12 at the Public Radio Regional Organizations Super-Regional conference in Fort Washington, Md. The funder will provide $1.5 million for the Diverse Perspectives project, an initiative to support reporting from groups of news stations for local, regional and national use. Like the CPB-backed Local Journalism Centers, the stations will focus on particular topics. The number of stations to receive the two-year grants will depend on the range and size of proposals submitted, said Bruce Theriault, CPB senior v.p. of radio, but he estimated that about five groups will receive support.

Quick Takes

APTS’ Butler sees “real progress” on GOP pubcasting support on Capitol Hill

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BOSTON — More than half of the 22 signatories of a letter on Capitol Hill this week supporting public television’s efforts to include translators in costs of spectrum repacking were Senate Republicans, Patrick Butler told attendees at American Public Television’s Fall Marketplace. Butler, president of the Association of Public Television Stations advocacy organization, said that number seems small, and there is still “missionary work” to do. “But the number two years ago was zero, and I consider double-digits a sign of real progress,” he said. GOP members of the House and Senate also joined in letters to their respective appropriations committees identifying public broadcasting as a funding priority, and are working together as members of the newly reconstituted Congressional Public Broadcasting Caucus, Butler said. He said pubcasters are also seeing state funding return.  “During the five years since the recession began, public broadcasting had lost almost $100 million in state funding,” Butler said.

Quick Takes

PBS renews Tavis Smiley through 2015

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PBS has renewed its commitment to Tavis Smiley for another two years, keeping the talk show on public TV through 2015. “The highlight for me is surviving” as a late-night talk show, Smiley told the Associated Press. The program, which tapes in Los Angeles, will face less competition in booking guests once NBC’s The Tonight Show moves to New York in February, he noted.

Quick Takes

WGBH, Library of Congress to host pubcasting’s American Archive

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This item has been updated and reposted with additional information. Boston’s WGBH and the Library of Congress will host and preserve the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, a permanent collection of more than 50 years of public broadcasting history. More than 40,000 hours of content dating back to the 1950s will be digitized, stored and made available for on-site access at both WGBH’s Boston headquarters and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., according to a Nov. 14 announcement from CPB, WGBH and the Library. Development of a permanent pubcasting archive began in 2007 through a CPB initiative.

Programs/Content

NPR combining news apps, multimedia teams

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NPR’s news applications and multimedia operations are merging into a single unit to be headed by current News Applications Editor Brian Boyer. “We were already sitting right next to each other,” Boyer said. “When we moved into the new building, it was already obvious that we would be working closely together.”

The departments have already collaborated on several projects, including a web presentation of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s family photos and a Tumblr, Cook Your Cupboard, which advises home cooks about how to use odds and ends from their pantries. Other desks have often approached Boyer’s team about attempting projects with multimedia components, he said, forcing him to redirect such requests to the Multimedia desk. The new arrangement will make collaboration smoother, he said.

Quick Takes

Programmers meeting in Boston for APT’s Fall Marketplace

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BOSTON — American Public Television’s annual Fall Marketplace kicked off Wednesday, providing programmers with screenings of dozens of offerings from the major pubTV distributor as well as professional development sessions. APT President Cynthia Fenneman, right, greets special guests at the opening reception, appearing direct from that quirky English seaside village of Portwenn: Doc Martin actors Ian McNeice, left, and Joseph Absolom, aka Bert and Al Large. The conference continues through Saturday. (Photo: Ed Shenkman)

 

Quick Takes

NBCUniversal buys out remaining partners in PBS Kids Sprout

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The NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment Group has acquired full ownership of PBS Kids Sprout, according to the New York Times. The cable channel was founded by a partnership including public television in 2004. NBCUniversal bought out the ownership stakes of PBS and HIT Television Ventures, which is owned by Apax Funds. PBS branding will be removed from the channel. Another former partner, Sesame Workshop, sold its stake to NBCUniversal in December 2012.

Quick Takes

Rehm to direct marketing for American Geophysical Union

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Dana Davis Rehm, a former NPR senior v.p. and public radio station manager, is joining the American Geophysical Union as its director of marketing. Rehm left NPR in February after 13 years in various roles within the organization’s executive ranks. Her departure was part of a restructuring within the marketing and communications division under former NPR chief Gary Knell. Rehm began at NPR as v.p. of member and program services, a job that involved leading NPR’s 2005–06 New Realities initiative. After a promotion to senior v.p. of strategy and partnerships, she helped manage its acquisition of Public Interactive from Public Radio International.

Quick Takes

NPR News vets to reshape E.W. Scripps news strategy

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DecodeDC, the political podcast and public radio show created by former NPR correspondent Andrea Seabrook, has been acquired by the E.W. Scripps commercial newswire service. Scripps bought the independently produced podcast as part of a strategic restructuring and expansion of its Washington-based coverage under Ellen Weiss, former NPR News chief. Weiss joined Scripps in February as its Washington bureau chief and developed plans to focus the bureau on enterprise and investigative reporting for Scripps-owned TV, digital and print properties. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Seabrook will join the Scripps bureau staff, which is beefing up its multimedia production capacity and folding its newspaper wire service, according to a Nov. 11 release announcing the purchase.

Quick Takes

President Obama among notables reciting Gettysburg Address for Burns’s outreach

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PBS filmmaker Ken Burns has assembled an array of top politicians, media stars and other celebrities to recite the Gettysburg Address in honor of the 150th anniversary on Nov. 19 of the famous speech. It’s part of the outreach for Burns’s documentary The Address, scheduled to air April 15, 2014. So far the video submissions, available here, include Presidents Obama, Clinton, Carter and both Bushes; House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi; several senators such as Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.); CNN’s Wolf Blitzer; businessman Warren Buffet; comedians Stephen Colbert and Whoopi Goldberg; PBS NewsHour’s Gwen Ifill; NPR’s Nina Totenberg; director Steven Spielberg and many others. The campaign is inspired by Greenwood School in Putney, Vt., the subject of Burns’s film.