Current (https://current.org/page/613/)
“I compare what I’m doing here to missionary work in the sense that the idea and knowledge of public radio isn’t well known in Guam,” says News Director Naina Rao.
The Writers Guild of America voted to authorize a strike if the current contract expires Thursday.
A new reality series tracing the ancestral roots of Americans is coming to PBS directly from Ireland. The format for Genealogy Roadshow was created by an Irish production company, Big Mountain Productions.
Dann Tucker, a fundraising consultant who trained PBS employees in underwriter outreach and organized donor cruises for PBS and NPR, died Aug. 2 in Portland, Ore., of a stroke during open-heart surgery. He was 60.
PBS is dropping its PBS Kids Go! graphics and interstitial materials, as part of a revamp of the on-air branding materials surrounding PBS’s children’s programs.
Penn State Public Broadcasting is now Penn State Public Media, its licensee announced today. “We will continue to operate as a broadcasting service but have expanded to online content development and we wanted our name to reflect that,” said Kate Domico, executive director of public media at the university, which includes WPSU-TV/FM.
The PBS NewsHour is reassigning its senior journalists to new roles by tapping Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff as co-anchors and managing editors of the weeknightly broadcasts. The change, announced today during the Television Critics Association Press Tour in Los Angeles, drops the system of rotating anchor duties among six different NewsHour journalists. It takes effect next month. Jim Lehrer, longtime anchor and co-owner of the show through MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, retains the title of executive editor, but Ifill and Woodruff will lead editorial and strategic planning of PBS’s flagship news show. “Gwen and Judy have been the heart and soul of NewsHour for years,” said Linda Winslow, executive producer, “so it’s wonderful to formalize these new roles and give them an opportunity to provide even more input on the content and direction of the show.”
Threadless, a online company that sells T-shirts with designs voted on by users, is calling for artists to submit designs inspired by NPR and public radio. “We’re all huge fans of NPR and the content they bring to the ears of so many people,” said Threadless CEO Jake Nickell in an NPR press release. “With all of the avid NPR listeners over here at Threadless, the idea of a collaboration between NPR and the Threadless community just made so much sense.”
Artists have until August 26 to submit creations for the “My Sound World” challenge, one of several themed challenges that the website hosts. Once submissions close, users will have one week to vote on the designs. The winner will receive a $2,000 cash prize, a limited-edition alarm clock with an NPR-inspired design by pop artist Peter Max, an autographed copy of the book This is NPR, a $500 Threadless gift code and a private tour of NPR’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The design that the community chooses will be sold online and at the NPR Store.
WBUR licensee Boston University agreed Monday to sell its AM repeater in Yarmouth, Mass., to Langer Broadcasting Group LLC. WBUR entered into the agreement to sell WBUR-AM 1240 to Langer, which plans to flip the station from news to a Portuguese-language format to serve local Portuguese and Brazilian communities. The deal is pending FCC approval, and the sale price was not released. WBUR-AM was the first station on Cape Cod and has been transmitting since 1940. WBUR bought the signal in 1997.
Frontline is spending $1.5 million to bolster its ability to manage its news collaborations, which are growing in number as well as importance. Raney Aronson, deputy executive producer, said the investigative showcase will establish a four-person collaboration desk through a three-year, $750,000 grant from the Philadelphia-based Wyncote Foundation. She tapped Frontline’s series budget for matching funds for the desk, which will also concentrate on transmedia efforts. “The way we do journalism has changed,” Aronson told Current. “Frontline is no longer simply a documentary series on a Tuesday night.” More than half of the films and online reports produced by Frontline are done in collaboration with kindred organizations such as the New York Times, NPR, the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica and, more recently, Spanish-language network Univision.
In anticipation of PBS’s appearance this week at the annual Television Critics Association Press Tour in Beverly Hills, Calif., The Associated Press distributed a July 29 story looking at PBS Chief Programmer Beth Hoppe’s ongoing work to cast it as network instead of a public service. As writer David Bauder notes, “There’s a difference between waiting to see what work producers will offer you and actively going out with some of your own ideas.” Hoppe has done that, as well as “tried to make PBS more topical,” with an examination of guns in America that ran a month after the Newtown, Conn., school shooting; and programs on the Boston Marathon bombing, the meteorite that exploded over Russia in February and the devastation of Superstorm Sandy. PBS’s presentations at the TCA press tour take place today, Tuesday and Wednesday.
Alabama Public Radio will eliminate Public Radio International shows from its schedule, dropping This American Life and The World, reports Tuscaloosanews.com. Director Elizabeth Brock said the decision was based in part on budget concerns. APR will fill the gaps left in its schedule by adding Radiolab and an additional hour of All Things Considered.