Quick Takes

KCSM owner leaning toward selling station to spectrum speculator

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San Mateo County Community College District Chancellor is recommending that the district’s pubTV station, KCSM, be sold to a spectrum speculator owned by private equity firm The Blackstone Group. Mark Albertson, who covers technology in the San Francisco area for Examiner.com, reported Monday that Ron Galatolo,  chancellor of the college, had chosen LocusPoint out of the four bidders for the station. Other interested buyers include: Public TV Financing, an arm of Independent Public Media, a nonprofit working to preserve noncommercial spectrum; KMTP-TV, a multicultural independent public TV  station licensed to Minority Television Project Inc. in San Francisco; and the Oriental Culture and Media Center of Southern California, a nonprofit promoting communication among different cultures. The Blackstone Group LP, which recorded a $2 billion profit in 2012, owns 99 percent of LocusPoint through its “Blackstone Tactical Opportunities” division, according to FCC filings. A pair of veteran telecom executives owns the remaining 1 percent.

Quick Takes

WBUR announces newsroom changes

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Boston NPR station WBUR announced May 10 two leadership changes in its newsroom. Richard Chacón will fill the newly created position of executive director of news content, while Tom Melville has moved to news director from the role of executive editor of content. Chacón was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and an Ethics Fellow at The Poynter Institute. He will start at WBUR June 10. Prior to joining WBUR in 2011, Melville was news director at New England Cable News.

Programs/Content

NPR, WLRN team up to expand reporting on Latin America

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NPR and Miami’s WLRN are collaborating to boost coverage of Latin America, with NPR’s Lourdes Garcia-Navarro assigned to a new foreign desk in São Paulo. In addition to Garcia-Navarro, the team of journalists includes Tim Padgett, a longtime reporter on Latin America and the Caribbean who previously wrote for Time and Newsweek and recently joined WLRN. Padgett’s primary task will be to coordinate coverage from Miami. Four reporters on the staff of the Miami Herald and its sister Spanish-language publication, El Nuevo Herald, will also contribute. WLRN and the Herald have collaborated on news coverage for a decade.

Quick Takes

Iowa Public Radio reaches $197K settlement with former CEO

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Ousted Iowa Public Radio C.E.O. Mary Grace Herrington on Thursday reached a six-figure settlement with her former employers that staves off future litigation. According to Iowa Public Radio, Herrington will receive two payments totaling $197,000 in return for forgoing any legal claims against IPR. The settlement was reportedly for “emotional distress and other compensatory damages, and attorneys’ fees and expenses.”

Herrington was removed as c.e.o. in February by a 6-1 vote of the board of directors. Her dismissal came after the IPR board began responding to internal complaints about staff morale in June, according to board-meeting minutes and local press accounts. Herrington had been chief executive since 2009, leading IPR through a signal expansion and format differentiation that created two distinct public radio channels for Iowans.

Quick Takes

Latest members of Texas Public Radio? Dogs, cats and a sloth

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At Texas Public Radio, “basic pet memberships cost $60, the same as basic human memberships,” according to the San Antonio Express-News. And so far, the new tactic is paying off. Of 617 new memberships, 126, or about 20 percent, are pets. That’s outselling a new children’s membership five to one. Pet members receive a “TPaRf” scarf and small bowl or rope toy.

Quick Takes

PBS announces fall lineup, no sign of early Downton Abbey release

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It’s official, Downton Abbey fans will have to wait until winter 2014 for their next Edwardian drama fix. PBS announced its fall lineup today, with nary a mention of the Masterpiece megahit. In January PBS President Paula Kerger hinted that PBS was considering changing the premiere to the fall, when it hits the airwaves in Great Britain. Jennifer Byrne, PBS spokesperson, told Current that series Executive Producer Rebecca Eaton will announce the Downton Season 4 premiere date at the PBS annual meeting next week in Miami. Highlights of fall premieres on PBS include an interactive reality series, Genealogy Roadshow, “which uses history and science to connect participants nationwide to their individual and family histories,” PBS said in the announcement; “The Hollow Crown,” a four-part miniseries from Great Performances that combines Shakespeare’s “Richard II,” “Henry IV” (Parts I and II) and “Henry V” into a chronological narrative; and a four-hour, two-part special from American Experience on President John F. Kennedy’s life and death, running on the eve of the 50-year anniversary of his assassination.

People

Merrill Brockway, Emmy-winning Dance in America producer, dead at 90

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Merrill Brockway, a producer and director of several PBS arts programs who was best known for his work on the Great Performances spinoff Dance in America, died May 3 in Santa Fe, N.M. He was 90. Brockway was born in Indiana and began a career as a piano teacher and accompanist before entering TV at the age of 30. He wrote and directed for CBS affiliates in Philadelphia and New York before leaving commercial TV for PBS in 1975, when Dance in America launched. He worked on the program, produced by New York’s Thirteen/WNET, from 1975–88, capturing some of America’s most renowned dancers and choreographers on film. Dance in America spotlighted the work of Martha Graham, Thyla Tharp, and the New York City Ballet as choreographed by George Ballanchine, among many others.

Quick Takes

PBS orders pilot script for Latino period drama

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Variety is reporting that PBS has ordered a pilot script for a drama series, Alta California, from Dennis Leoni, e.p. and writer of Resurrection Blvd., which ran on Showtime 2000-02. The entertainment mag notes that the program was “the first and longest-running Latino dramatic skein in the history of American television.” Alta California will be set in the mid- to late 1800s and focus on an arranged marriage between two families, one Mexican-Californian and the other European American. Carrie Johnson, PBS spokesperson, declined to provide further details to Current, as PBS is still in contract negotiations for the project. Gregory Nava’s Latino drama American Family concluded in 2004 after two seasons on PBS.