Current (https://current.org/tag/american-public-media/page/3/)
To report its special series on the economic forces and societal changes of gentrification, Marketplace embedded a team of journalists in one of the hottest real estate markets in the U.S.
The Public Radio Satellite System adopted standards Thursday intended to normalize audio levels among the programs it distributes to stations. PRSS adopted an audio measurement standard using a number to denote audio levels, instead of the longtime industry standard of peak meters. Decibel measurements provided by meters are largely subjective. The loudness unit adopted by PRSS is used by organizations around the world. Because PBS also uses it, joint licensees can now rely on a single standard, which will simplify operations, according to the PRSS working group that approved the change.
Responding to an opening created by changes to the clock for NPR’s Morning Edition, the BBC is rolling out a 90-second news module for insertion into a bottom-of-the-hour segment designated for local news coverage. The BBC’s Topline will curate top international news stories selected to compliment Morning Edition’s coverage. Stations that subscribe to the BBC World Service through American Public Media can pick it up at no additional cost, but the window for airing it is limited to the newly created 8:31:30 a.m. (Eastern time) break in Morning Edition. Stations are also prohibited from editing it. In a Q&A about the offering, the BBC said its editors will monitor Morning Edition to ensure that the stories featured on Topline don’t overlap with those covered by NPR.
Plus: Texas Tribune looks to the next five years, and the FCC fines a Massachusetts college.
PORTLAND, Ore. — Chicago’s WFMT announced Wednesday a deal with New York–based WQXR to distribute the 2014 season of Carnegie Hall Live. Entering its fourth season, Carnegie Hall Live kicks off Oct. 1 with a broadcast featuring the Berliner Philharmonker. The show is recorded and hosted by WQXR staffers in partnership with Carnegie Hall and was previously distributed by Minnesota-based American Public Media.
Public radio journalists find themselves navigating an ethical gray area as they receive funds for reporting on education from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Infinite Guest, a new podcast network from American Public Media, brings together feeds of broadcast programs, existing podcasts and new shows in an effort to build a digital following for audio content. Headed by Program Director Steve Nelson, Infinite Guest debuted Wednesday with 12 shows, six of them new. The podcasts are headlined by a mix of established pubmedia talent and outside personalities. “We really wanted to be able to have a way to work with people who already have a great fan base, to develop their voices in a new way,” Nelson said. “So we went out and found some people we really think are talented and great and wanted to do something different.”
Three of the network’s shows are existing APM programs Wits, The Dinner Party Download and The Splendid Table, and another is MPR Classical’s Top Score, a program devoted to video game scores.
The pubcaster is restructuring its news division, with little effect on programs airing on stateside pubmedia.
A proposed revamp of NPR’s newsmagazines would allow for longer underwriting credits, expand the number of morning newscasts, and incorporate American Public Media’s Marketplace Morning Report as a baked-in segment within Morning Edition. NPR is announcing the changes today to staff and member stations after working with stations on the revisions for more than a year. The network will solicit and review feedback from stations over the next two weeks, aiming to implement the changes by Sept. 22. “These changes give Member Stations new flexibility to meet local audience needs while ensuring that Morning Edition and All Things Considered remain vibrant national programs that continue to fuel the public radio economy,” NPR said in a memo to stations.
With a day to spare, Salt Lake City’s KCPW-FM hit its goal of raising $42,000 to pay off delinquent programming fees and avoid going dark. KCPW was six months in arrears on payments in programming fees to American Public Media. Station staffers took to the airwaves, sidewalks and online starting June 29 to try raising the money by July 3. The station hit the goal Wednesday afternoon. Of the $42,000, $12,765 came in from an Indiegogo crowdsourcing campaign.
A collaborative news hub in New Mexico, sea level monitoring project in south Florida and music visualization project in Texas are among the 12 winners of this year’s Online News Association Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education.
As the Public Media Platform prepares for its phased rollout across the system in January, Executive Director Kristen Calhoun is seeking opportunities and partners willing to experiment with its still-unknown potential.
Alabama Public Television, WHYY, Transom.org and New York Public Radio are among the grantees.
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.
Music City Roots: Live from The Loveless Cafe, a weekly radio show and HD webcast featuring roots, alt-country and Americana music from Nashville, is heading to public television as a 13-episode series showcasing performances from its 2012 season. The show will be released for pubTV broadcast Sept. 5, presented by Nashville Public Television and distributed by American Public Television. Carriage commitments from 75 stations so far includes major markets such as WNET in New York and WGBH in Boston. In each episode, emcee Keith Bilbrey — a former Grand Ole Opry announcer — welcomes musicians to a 600-seat barn at the Loveless Cafe, built in 1951 and locally famous for its homemade fried chicken and biscuits.
NPR and American Public Media are partnering with a new mobile app that curates talk radio and podcasts according to listener taste. Swell, which launched June 27, is the latest venture to bring digital radio programs to listeners through digital rather than terrestrial means.
J.J. Yore, a veteran producer credited as a creator of the public radio show Marketplace, was one of three senior executives riffed June 17 from American Public Media, the Minnesota-based company that produces the series. Yore, who rose up through the production ranks two years ago to become v.p. and g.m. of the weeknightly business and economics show, will be succeeded by Deborah Clark, e.p. who steps into the role of v.p.
Clark has worked for Marketplace over two stints since 1995, and APM expects her to move the show forward “business as usual,” Mardi Larson, spokesperson, wrote in an email confirming the layoffs. “We thank J.J. for his valuable and lasting contributions to our company’s mission and audience service, and we wish him well in his next career opportunity.”
“I am disappointed, and I’m surprised, but I’m not angry,” Yore said in an interview last week. “This is the thing I’ve been associated the longest with in my life. But I am now looking forward to figuring out what will come next.”
APM also eliminated the positions of Mary Pat Ladner, v.p. of marketing, and Kathy Golbuff, v.p. of underwriting.
“After Innocence: Exoneration in America” provides an in-depth look at wrongful imprisonment in the U.S.
Beginning July 1, the BBC’s Newshour will alter its show clock, ceding 4.5 additional minutes from its newscast for local cutaways. The change boosts the total allowance of local minutes within each Newshour broadcast to 16.
Public radio reporters took all nine awards for radio reporting in this year’s Sigma Delta Chi Awards, which recognize outstanding reporting on radio, TV and the Web by national and local news organizations. NPR’s Ina Jaffe, Quinn O’Toole and Steven Drummond won for breaking news reporting (network syndication) for “Los Angeles VA Has Made Millions on Rental Deals.” For investigative reporting, John Ryan and Jim Gates of KUOW in Seattle were cited among stations in markets 1–100 for “Shell’s Arctic Oil-Spill Gear ‘Crushed Like a Beer Can,’” while Sandy Hausman of WVTF and Radio IQ in Roanoke, Va., won in the 101+ market category for “Naming the Fralin,” about naming the University of Virginia Art Museum. In the feature categories, Linda Lutton, Cate Cahan and Sally Eisele of Chicago’s WBEZ won for “The weight of the city’s violence, on one school principal,” and Lance Orozco of KCLU in Thousand Oaks, Calif., for “My Cancer.”
NPR’s State of the Re:Union, co-distributed by Public Radio Exchange, won the syndicated documentary award for “As Black as We Wish to Be,” which explored an Appalachian foothills town in Ohio where residents who look white identify as African-American; it was reported and produced by Lu Olkowski, Laura Spero, Taki Telonidis and Al Letson. Alabama Public Radio’s “Winds of Change,” coverage by Pat Duggins, Ryan Vasquez, Maggie Martin and Stan Ingold of a Tuscaloosa tornado, won for smaller-market documentary. The public service in radio journalism winners were “If it’s legal: Five ways legal pot could affect your life,” by the staff of Seattle’s KPLU (markets 1–100); Charles Lane and Naomi Starobin of WSHU in Fairfield, Conn., for “State struggled at fire prevention ahead of Manorville blaze.”
In the television categories, San Francisco’s KQED and the Center for Investigative Reporting won for large-market (1–50) documentary for “Heat and Harvest,” a report on the effect of climate change on California agriculture by Mark Schapiro, Serene Fang, Gabriela Quiros and Craig Miller.