Quick Takes

Ken Burns, defending PBS in USA Today, pits Reagan’s words against Romney’s

By |

PBS documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, whose extensive credits include The Civil War, Baseball and the upcoming The Dust Bowl, authored an editorial in Tuesday’s USA Today in which he said that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney “knows the price of things, but he clearly doesn’t know their value.” Romney has attracted the ire of the pubcasting community for frequently stating throughout his campaign that he would cut funding to CPB, and he reiterated his intent to do so during last week’s presidential debate. Burns recalled filming The Civil War in the late 1980s, during which time he visited then-President Ronald Reagan in the White House. At the time, according to Burns, Reagan expressed his support and admiration for both the National Endowment for the Humanities and CPB, two government-funded entities that backed the film. “Reagan put both hands on my shoulder and said, ‘That’s it!

People

POV captures five of PBS’s nine news and documentary Emmys

By |

PBS topped all the other broadcast networks, as runners-up ABC and CBS each won seven. POV’s “Last Train Home,” a film about Chinese migrant workers who go home to celebrate New Year’s, won in two categories — best documentary and outstanding business and economic reporting (long form) — while “Armadillo,” which tracked Danish soldiers in Afghanistan, was cited for editing in the documentary and long form category. Also in the long-form category, “Enemies of the People,” which examined Cambodia’s killing fields, won for outstanding investigative journalism; and “Where Soldiers Come From,” about National Guard recruits from northern Michigan, was cited for its continuing coverage of a news story. All films aired during 2011, POV’s 25th season. “Many of the filmmakers honored tonight have taken tremendous risks to tell these stories of common people caught up in extraordinary circumstances,” said Cynthia López, co-executive producer of POV.

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.

Programs/Content

Pipeline 2013

By |

This year’s Pipeline survey lists 120 television projects planned, underway, or completed for future seasons on public TV, beginning with Winter 2013.

Programs/Content

PBS taps BBC’s Midwife to boost Sunday viewership

By |

PBS’s yearlong effort to build more audience flow in its primetime schedule moves into new territory with the Sept. 30 U.S. broadcast premiere of Call the Midwife, a limited-run BBC drama that will attempt to draw in Masterpiece fans and keep them watching an hour longer on Sunday nights.

Tech
Vermont PTV control room before and after NGIS

At last, PBS’s new distribution system nears completion

By |

In August 2005, PBS’s $120 million Next Generation Interconnection System was hailed as a major advance for the public broadcasting system. Its target completion date was late 2006. Seven years, several generations of technology and a change of management later, the main components of NGIS are finally moving toward full implementation.

Quick Takes

Ifill made “big mistake” in defending fired journalist, says PBS’s ombud

By |

In his latest column, PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler considers a recent flap involving PBS NewsHour correspondent Gwen Ifill, who on Wednesday tweeted in support of fired journalist David Chalian. Chalian, the Washington bureau chief for Yahoo News, was fired after he said that Mitt Romney was “happy to have a party with black people drowning,” referring to the Republican National Convention starting as Hurricane Isaac approached New Orleans. Chalian was unaware that his microphone was on, and the comment was broadcast. Before joining Yahoo, Chalian had worked as the NewsHour’s political editor. “I can understand Ifill’s wanting to go to bat for a friend and colleague,” Getler wrote, “but my personal view is that this was a big mistake on her part, feeding, unnecessarily, a conviction among many critics and reflecting poorly on PBS.

Programs/Content
Gwen Ifill covers GOP convention 2008

NewsHour gives party conventions 18 hours, assigns female anchor team

By |

With the NewsHour‘s Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff stepping into co-anchor roles for PBS’s coverage of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, producers have reconfigured their set and editorial plans for the 18 hours of live broadcasts that begin airing on PBS stations on Tuesday.

The coverage, airing at 8 p.m. ET through Thursday on most PBS stations, marks the passing of the torch from retired anchor Jim Lehrer, and makes Ifill and Woodruff the first female anchor due to co-anchor coverage of the major party conventions…

PBS

WGBH, the top producer of PBS programs, now owns Public Radio International

By |

In a move signalling its ambitions to extend its clout and influence in public radio, Boston’s WGBH has acquired Public Radio International, the Minnesota-based program distributor of radio programs such as This American Life, The World and The Takeaway. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but the sale will help to stabilize the nonprofit program distributor PRI, which ran an operating deficit of $2 million in 2011, according to PRI spokesperson Julia Yager. “This is a deal borne out of shared visions,” Yager said in an interview with Current. PRI began examining its options last year as its leadership considered the implications of various funding scenarios for public media. PRI looked for partners to help it continue distributing radio programming and found that WGBH was best aligned with its own mission and values.

Quick Takes

Noncom groups file comments on FCC’s third-party fundraising proposal

By |

NPR, PBS and the Association of Public Television Stations are among broadcast organizations weighing in with the FCC on its April proposal for a change in policy to allow pubcasters to raise money for charities and other nonprofits on the air without first obtaining a waiver. All three are opposed. Other pubcasters filing comments include New England Public Radio and the University Station Alliance, which also oppose the change, and North Carolina’s UNC-TV, which “generally supports” the change. Several religious organizations, including the National Religious Broadcasters, also back the proposal. Joint comments from PBS and APTS, filed Monday (July 23), urge the FCC to limit any rule change to licensees that do not receive a CPB community service grant.

Programs/Content

PBS chief endorses ouster of Market Warriors host Fred Willard

By |

LOS ANGELES — It’s unlikely that PBS will reinstate Fred Willard as announcer of Market Warriors, its new antiquing reality show, if Los Angeles prosecutors decline to press charges for his July 17 arrest for lewd conduct in a Los Angeles adult theater. The comedic actor, whose role on the show was limited to voiceover announcing, was fired July 19 after news of his arrest went viral. Producers at WGBH tapped Antiques Roadshow’s Mark Walberg to replace him and to re-voice the episodes Willard had already completed. In Market Warriors, which premiered last week, antique-savvy buyers compete to buy and resell collectibles, and earn the highest returns at auction. Because Willard did not appear on screen, no scenes had to be reshot, PBS President Paula Kerger said during her July 21 executive session with the Television Critics Association.

Firelight Media

PBS discount plan a ‘no-brainer’ for WLVT

By |

The public TV station serving eastern Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley recently decided that the best way to survive as an independent station was to step back from its status as the primary station serving its market. For WLVT in Bethlehem, a small city less than 70 miles north of Philadelphia, becoming a PDP station “was a natural,” said Tim Fallon, acting c.e.o. “It just doesn’t make sense that two stations, just two channels away from each other, have exactly the same programming.”

WLVT, which is locally branded as PBS39, was hard-hit by budget cuts in 2009 when the state sliced its $1 million in annual support to $100,000. Nearly half of its staff was laid off. When longtime C.E.O. Patricia Simon stepped away in March, the board appointed Fallon, a businessman and longtime station board member and volunteer. After taking over at WLVT, Fallon came to an “alignment of vision” with WHYY President Bill Marrazzo on how the stations could complement each other.

Quick Takes

PBS, six stations testing donation requests on COVE

By |

PBS and six stations are testing approaches for soliciting donations through COVE, PBS’s local-national video platform, according to PBS. Five 15-second pre-roll ads will instruct users to click on a donation button that is linked to a local station’s fundraising page. PBS will compare results for each ad with click-through rates and donor conversions. It expects to report on results by the end of October. Stations participating in the pilot are Iowa Public Television; KPBS in San Diego; KLRU, Austin, Texas; PBS SoCal in Los Angeles; WGVU, Kalamazoo, Mich.; and Chicago’s WTTW.

System/Policy

WMFE-TV sells for $3.3 million to University of Central Florida

By |

WMFE-TV in Orlando, Fla., the former PBS flagship that had been set for sale to religious broadcasters, has a new buyer. The University of Central Florida announced June 21 that it plans to purchase WMFE for $3.3 million. The boards of UCF and WMFE, a community licensee that also operates a radio station, must approve the sale contract before it goes to the FCC. UCF, also in Orlando, played a role in preserving PBS service to the market last year when WMFE moved to sell its TV operation and focus on its public radio station. UCF partnered with Brevard Community College in Cocoa to convert WBCC, a pubTV station licensed to the community college, into a full-service PBS station broadcasting as WUCF.