Quick Takes

Mashable post contemplates impact of news aggregation apps on NPR

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In a post Tuesday on Mashable.com titled “Will Public Radio Survive Music Streaming Apps?,” Scott Pham, digital content editor for NPR member station KBIA, ponders how news aggregation apps such as Swell will affect public radio stations:
Promising mobile apps like Swell and AGOGO launched this summer, representing a new challenge to legacy media companies like National Public Radio. These apps create new listening experiences for consumers of talk and news because they tie together segments of audio into customizable and curated streams.

AGOGO combines podcasts with segments from NPR, the BBC, audio from videos and text-to-speech versions of newspaper articles. And Swell has been dubbed the “Pandora for news.”

I’m a producer at an NPR member station, and these are frightening words in my world. Pandora dealt a massive wound to our cousins in music radio. The advertising dollars Pandora sucked up will likely never return to the table for terrestrial radio.

Quick Takes

New Sesame Street online hub to focus on math and science skills

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Sesame Workshop will launch a new Sesame Street online hub focusing on science and math on Sept. 24, the New York Times reports. “Little Discoverers: Big Fun With Science, Math and More” aims to go about “teaching nature, math, science and engineering concepts and problem-solving to a preschool audience — with topics like how a pulley works or how to go about investigating what’s making Mr. Snuffleupagus sneeze.”

Programs/Content

OPB courts partners for statewide news network

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Oregon Public Broadcasting has a track record of launching effective news collaborations. Its newest project to create a statewide news network is featured in a recent report from American University’s J-Lab, “News Chops: Beefing up the Journalism in Local Public Broadcasting.”

Quick Takes

Lehrer to premiere biographical play, then assassination novel

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Ex-anchor of the PBS NewsHour, Jim Lehrer, has a play premiering Sept. 12: “Bell,” a one-man show “exploring the curious mind of Alexander Graham Bell.” The show will run eight performances at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C., 7:30 nightly plus a matinee at 2 p.m. Saturday. Bell, the inventor of the telephone and advocate for persons who are deaf, was also the society’s second president, and his family remained active in its management for decades. Rick Foucheux, a member of D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre company, will appear as Bell.

People

KCTS President Moss Bresnahan resigns, citing family issues

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Moss Bresnahan, president of KCTS Television in Seattle, resigned Thursday. “My reasons for making this very difficult decision are deeply personal — to attend to family-related issues that have arisen,” Bresnahan said in a note to public television managers. “I’m so proud of our many accomplishments to date, and I know that KCTS is poised for even greater things in the coming year,” he told the execs. Prior to his arrival in Seattle in November 2008, Bresnahan served as president of South Carolina ETV and WVPT in Harrisonburg, Va. He also spent six years as a board member of the International Public Television Screening Conference (INPUT) .

Programs/Content

Wits introduces social club in advance of fourth-season launch

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American Public Media’s Wits is introducing a “Social Club” for fans as producers prepare to launch the show’s fall season. For $35, fans become members for the fall 2013 and spring 2014 seasons and gain early access to tickets for live performances of the variety show, hosted by John Moe and recorded in St. Paul’s Fitzgerald Theater. They also receive a 10-percent discount on up to four tickets per show and other perks. “Social media has been embedded into Wits’s DNA, so a social club seemed like a natural fit,” APM spokesperson Tara Schlosser told Current.

Quick Takes

Co-founder Shapiro announces departure from Third Coast

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Julie Shapiro, artistic director and co-founder of the Chicago-based Third Coast International Audio Festival, will leave the multiplatform curator of audio storytelling in November. “I thought long and hard (and then longer, and harder) about this,” Shapiro wrote in today’s announcement, “but ultimately realized it’s time to move on and try something different with the next phase of my life.” Shapiro and Johanna Zorn, e.d., founded Third Coast in 2000; its biennial “filmless festival” draws thousands of audiophiles. Shapiro came up with the concept for Third Coast’s popular ShortDocs Challenge, which asks participants to make mini-documentaries while following quirky rules such as using a color in the documentary’s title or including three seconds of “narrative silence.” The organization also hosts a conference for audio producers in the festival’s off-years and produces a weekly podcast and radio program.

Programs/Content

Upcoming season brings more Downton Abbey merchandise

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The fourth season of Downton Abbey, launching in January on Masterpiece, will bring an influx of related merchandise. Soon fans will be able to create a quilt with Downton fabric, drape themselves in Downton jewelry, deck their halls with Downton Christmas ornaments and toast their favorite program with Downton wine as products roll out in anticipation of the premiere. “Our licensing program includes a two-pronged approach,” said Carole Postal, a co-president of Knockout Licensing in New York City, which is managing Downton product licensing in the U.S. and Canada. “Aspirational products are for those who love the elegant period look and feel of the show, and fan-based products are for those who want to show and share their enthusiasm for the characters, the writing and everything else about the series.”

Carnival Films, part of NBCUniversal, owns the intellectual-property rights to the Edwardian costume drama, which has been a huge ratings and critical hit for PBS. Executive Producer Gareth Neame told The Associated Press that Downton merchandise has been rolling out slowly.