People

Everhart promoted to Current managing editor

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Karen Everhart, a media reporter and editor who has covered public broadcasting at Current for more than two decades, has been promoted to managing editor. She joined Current in 1991 and has reported on the programming, politics and funding of both the public television and radio systems, as well as the growth of nonprofit news organizations specializing in investigative journalism and local news coverage. Prior to her March 2012 interim appointment, she was Current’s senior editor covering public radio and digital media.

Programs/Content

Boston audience plays along with High School Quiz Show

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Audiences of WGBH’s High School Quiz Show can now play against Massachusetts whiz kids through an online game that launched early this month. The Boston station’s digital team developed a browser-based game allowing viewers to play along during broadcasts of High School Quiz Show. The game is based on a technology that has become popular among quiz shows in England. The High School Quiz Show live game is running in its beta version, and will be available through the season’s championship episode, to be broadcast May 19. WGBH developers are testing the game on a total of eight shows this season, according to Hillary Wells, e.p. of children’s programming.

Quick Takes

The Office creator explains how PBS station ended up as fictional doc producer

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The New York Times reveals how PBS is figuring into the series finale of the hit NBC sitcom The Office. (Warning: Spoiler ahead.)

The final episode is actually a reunion of the Dunder-Mifflin employees whose lives had been captured by a (fictional) film crew from local PBS member station WVIA. The Times asked Creator Greg Daniels why he chose PBS as the producer of the documentary within the show. “I tried to think what outlet would shoot something like this and take nine years to do it,” Daniels replied.  

 

Development

A digital revolution for public radio fundraising

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Marketing consultant John Sutton has been forecasting what public radio will look like in 2018, and his predictions, published on his blog RadioSutton since February, have been provocative. Sutton is among the pubradio analysts who believe that federal funding “will be sharply reduced or gone in five years.” He also believes that digital listening will fragment the audience enough that eventually NPR will have to raise money directly from listeners or the current public radio economic model will collapse. Below, he lays out a proposal for overhauling public radio fundraising and how it makes both dollars and sense. Imagine a future in which listeners donate 26 percent more money to public radio at half the cost. Imagine that NPR has nearly $60 million more to invest annually in world-class journalism and development of new programs.

Is this imaginative exercise making you uncomfortable?

Quick Takes

Downton Abbey merchandise line coming this year, executive producer says

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Gareth Neame, Downton Abbey e.p., told CNBC that the hit Edwardian drama on Masterpiece Classic will offer a new line of merchandise this year. “We’ll be working across an entire range of products coming out this year,” he said. “From fashion, apparel and homeware and furniture to wallpapers, beauty products and stationary.”

Neame said the show has been “extremely cautious” about developing and selling such items. “In retail terms, the first series launched the program and the brand, the second year ratified it and the show didn’t even hit its high point in the U.S. until this year when series three ended in the U.S.,” Nearne said. “It’s very rare for a British drama to have this much retail potential and merchandizing value.”

CNBC noted that the show’s popularity “has translated into a boom for U.K. retailers who have reported massive sales of arm-length gloves, fur capes, cravats and waistcoats that the Edwardian characters wear in the series. Even the old-fashioned liquor sherry has enjoyed a 15 percent rise in sales according to retail chain Marks and Spencer.”

People

CPB Board selects Mitchelson as inspector general to replace Konz

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Mary Mitchelson, deputy inspector general at the Department of Education Office of Inspector General, will take over as CPB inspector general June 3. She replaces retiring CPB IG Kenneth Konz. The CPB Board selected Mitchelson for the position, which is responsible for promoting economy, efficiency, and effectiveness; preventing fraud, waste and mismanagement in CPB programs and operations; and independently auditing CPB’s internal operations and external grantees. CPB Board Chair Patty Cahill said in Monday’s announcement that Mitchelson “brings a high level of integrity and extensive managerial skills” to the post. Mitchelson has been with the Department of Education’s IG office since 2000.

System/Policy

PubTV urges commission to drop ‘OET-69’ proposal

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CPB, PBS and the Association of Public Television Stations are jointly opposing a proposal by the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) to use a new software program to analyze television coverage and interference data. The proposal was floated by the commission in February and intended to update the analytical tools the commission will use in preparing for the 2014 broadcast spectrum auctions. In a letter filed with the FCC early this month, the three pubcasting organizations said the proposal would adversely affect many public TV stations by reducing the size of their service areas. Pubcasters were responding to a request for comments on “OET-69,” an FCC bulletin that described the methodology used by TVStudy, the software that the commission proposes to use to analyze coverage and interference among full-service digital and Class A television stations. The current software was implemented in the 1990s for use as stations transitioned from analog to digital broadcasting.

Programs/Content

Live from Boston: A marathon of coverage

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Edgar B. Herwick III, a features reporter for WGBH, was enjoying his field assignment on that cool, sunny Monday, interviewing runners as they triumphantly crossed the finish line of the April 15 Boston Marathon.