Social Media

WGBH team offers social media tips at SXSW

By |

Public media professionals who work in social media took to the stage at a South by Southwest session Friday to give real-world examples of engaging with audiences while relying on small staffs and little funding.

Programs/Content

Masterpiece expands hours with “gushing pipeline” of classics, mysteries

By |

Masterpiece will concentrate on bolstering its popular Classics and Mystery! strands with an boost in support from its main sponsor, Viking River Cruises. Executive Producer Rebecca Eaton is also working on developing a major new series. The WGBH icon program’s footprint will expand by 50 percent — around 20 hours — with additional episodes spread throughout the season. Extra hours will be scheduled Sundays at 8 p.m. or 10 p.m. Eastern time, before or after Masterpiece’s longtime 9 p.m. time slot.

Programs/Content

Clash over Poirot rights caps growing tensions between PBS, Acorn

By |

Acorn TV, the upstart streaming service specializing in British television, is still a tiny operation, with about 115,000 paid subscribers. Nonetheless, its fast growth is causing outsized concern at PBS and Masterpiece, public television’s longstanding home for British drama. Brewing tensions came to a head over rights to the final three episodes in David Suchet’s marathon 70-program portrayal of Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. As a result of the rift, Acorn TV premiered the episodes to its streaming subscribers in August and syndicated them directly to local public TV stations, with Masterpiece nowhere in the picture. The broadcast window for the finale’s broadcast opens Nov.

People

Sherlock adds three Emmys in primetime ceremony

By |

Sherlock: His Last Vow, a BBC production that aired as part of WGBH’s Masterpiece, won three Primetime Emmys at the televised awards ceremony Monday. That brought the detective drama’s total Emmys to seven, the most of any program. Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Sherlock Holmes in the series, won the Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a miniseries or movie, while Martin Freeman won for outstanding supporting actor in a miniseries or movie for his portrayal of Sherlock’s sidekick, John Watson. Writer Steven Moffat took home the Emmy for outstanding writing for a miniseries, movie or dramatic special. The drama also won four awards at the Creative Arts Emmys announced Aug.

Programs/Content

Popularity of Downton creates embarrassment of riches in Masterpiece slot

By |

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The success of Downton Abbey, whose fifth season has been set for Jan. 4, has created a novel problem for PBS: too many programs to fit into the Sunday-night slot occupied by Masterpiece. It’s possible that PBS might schedule some of the excess series at another hour or on another day. But there are no plans to do so for now, according to Masterpiece Executive Producer Rebecca Eaton.

Programs/Content

Final Poirot episodes reach U.S. via on-demand service

By |

Three of the five final episodes in the Hercule Poirot detective series, a longtime favorite on Masterpiece Mystery!, will debut in the U.S. next month as an on-demand series available exclusively through online British content distributor Acorn TV. Masterpiece’s Mystery strand will present the broadcast debut of two detective stories, The Big Four and Deadman’s Folly, July 27 and Aug. 3, respectively. British drama fans who want to catch the series finale will have to sign up for Acorn TV, the subscription-based streaming service specializing in British drama. The distributor will provide the episodes via its website and Roku channel. RLJ Entertainment, which owns Acorn Media Group and Acorn TV, also controls a majority share in Agatha Christie Ltd., the company that manages Christie’s literary works.

Development

PBS to track behavior of viewers pledging to core-schedule programs

By |

In an experiment signaling public TV’s resolve to address concerns about the long-term effects of transactional pledging on its donor base, PBS plans to test whether fundraising around regularly scheduled signature series can convert more viewers into loyal members and donors. Though traditional fundraising programs generate more cash for stations, many development professionals believe that pledging around core programs could yield better-quality donors who are committed to public TV’s mission. Stations such as Maryland Public Television and PBS SoCal in Orange County, Calif., have successfully pledged series from PBS’s National Program Service, as well as popular British dramas and comedies acquired from other distributors. Their results prompted PBS to take a deeper dive into the approach. “As we transition from a goal of gross dollars into a broader philosophy of the long-term value of donors, this seemed like a great time to look seriously at best practices with emphasis on sustaining donations,” said Joe Campbell, v.p. of fundraising programming.

Quick Takes

San Diego Comic-Con will include Sherlock panel

By |

PBS will have a presence at the San Diego Comic-Con for the first time in 44 years, with a Sherlock panel in the upcoming conference, Entetainment Weekly reports. The panel will feature co-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss (also executive producers and writers for the show), and producer Sue Vertue — but alas, star Benedict Cumberbatch will not be there. EW writer James Hibberd will moderate at the event, on July 18. Masterpiece, the British drama showcase that brought Sherlock to PBS, hosted a screening and Q&A with Moffat, Verte and Cumberbatch in New York last year, which brought out screaming throngs of fans. In 2011, it introduced U.S. audiences to the BBC show at the New York Comic-Con.

Quick Takes

Next Masterpiece drama set in hospital gynecology unit in 1961

By |

Masterpiece and ITV Studios, production home to Downton Abbey, will partner again on Breathless, a medical drama set in a London hospital’s busy gynecology unit in 1961, the two announced last week. According to a press release, “Breathless follows the lives of a group of doctors and nurses working in a London hospital, a world in which everything and everyone has their place. But underneath this veneer simmers a cauldron of lies and guilty secrets, driven by love, ambition and sex.” Rebecca Eaton, Masterpiece e.p., said in the announcement that “television dramas that tell good stories about womens’ lives in the 20th century are endlessly interesting to me, and apparently to lots of other people — look at the appeal of Call the Midwife and Mad Men. We’re all fascinated by the enormous changes that happened just a short time ago.

People

Great Expectations exceeds expectations by winning four of PBS’s 11 Creative Arts Primetime Emmys

By |

As a Masterpiece production competing against other miniseries, movies and specials, Great Expectations received Emmys for outstanding achievement in costume design (Annie Symons, Yvonne Duckett), art direction (David Roger, Paul Ghirardani, Jo Kornstein), main title design (Nic Benns, Rodi Kaya, Tom Browich) and cinematography (Florian Hoffmeister). In addition, the Masterpiece production Page Eight won an Emmy for original main title theme music (Paul Englishby). Other PBS winners included the Independent Lens production Have You Heard From Johannesburg, a seven-part series about the global anti-apartheid movement that received a juried award for exceptional merit in documentary filmmaking. Cited were Connie Field, producer; Lois Vossen, series senior producer; and Sally Jo Fifer, executive producer. Geoffrey Ward received the Emmy for nonfiction writing for scripting Ken Burns’s Prohibition: A Nation of Hypocrites.