Current (https://current.org/tag/pbs/page/24/)
Though public television stations have been reluctant to solicit pledges during their daytime PBS Kids block, some are testing new approaches for tapping into viewers’ strong affinity for the shows.
Bolstered by ratings data on their digital multicast channels and years of experience in managing them, public TV station programmers in many markets are refining their channel lineups.
An Auto-Tuned video of the late PBS icon Fred Rogers is going viral, with more than 700,000 views as of Friday (June 8) afternoon. The three-minute video was remixed by Symphony of Science’s John Boswell for PBS Digital Studios. “When we discovered video mash-up artist John D. Boswell, aka melodysheep, on YouTube,” the PBS studio said in a statement, “we immediately wanted to work together. Turns out that he is a huge Mister Rogers Neighborhood fan, and was thrilled at the chance to pay tribute to one of our heroes.” It’s the first in a series of PBS icon remixes.
“Today I want to lay out a vision for how we can invent our future, a future where public television is serving millions more people with billions more videos …”
Three dozen general managers have coalesced around a proposal by PBS Interactive chief Jason Seiken to jump-start low-cost local video production at public TV stations. Seiken laid out his plan for reinventing public TV’s new media strategies during the PBS Annual Meeting in Denver.
Independent Lens and POV, the PBS series at the center of a dispute about public TV’s commitment to independent film, are moving to Monday nights, PBS’s highest-rated evening.
After stints in the cable world as producers and programmers, PBS execs Beth Hoppe and Donald Thoms returned to PBS last August to assist Chief TV Programming Executive John Wilson with primetime scheduling. They’ve also been working closely with producers to craft shows that will help build more audience flow across weeknights. With Hoppe’s expertise in science and nature production, and Thoms’ love of the arts and independent films, the pair brings passion for the programs that cover the breadth of PBS’s variety service, they said during a May 3 interview with Current. Here, the three programmers discuss their progress over the past year and their plans for the coming summer and fall seasons, including:
How strategies for presenting arts programs have evolved since last fall’s nine-week festival;
How granular Nielsen ratings numbers help them make decisions about commissioning, scheduling and promoting primetime programs; and
Why PBS stepped back from its proposal last year to insert promotional breaks into programming. This transcript has been edited.
Know something about antiques? Prove it,” screamed the ad seeking “pickers” for Market Warriors, the long-awaited companion series to PBS’s most popular primetime program, Antiques Roadshow. Though PBS pioneered the concept of reality television with American Family and other cinema verité documentary series, it refrained from adding more reality TV as the genre became a staple of commercial television. But with the coming summer season and beyond, PBS is dipping into the reality game. A trio of unscripted programs — each coproduced by Boston’s WGBH— will premiere within the next year.
PBS is seeking a 2 percent increase in membership fees in its draft budget for fiscal 2013. Although still subject to review by station execs and formal approval by the PBS Board, the proposed dues hike would be the first since fiscal 2009. “A key focus of this budget is the performance of critical maintenance on PBS’s technology infrastructure that is necessary to maintain reliable distribution of content to stations,” PBS spokesperson Jan McNamara told Current in a statement. “The majority of station dues [are] dedicated to content. This will continue to be the case in the coming fiscal year.
Independent producer Kartemquin Films posted this petition online to arrange more favorable scheduling than Thursday nights for the indie showcases POV and Independent Lens. See also <Current coverage. Taking Action: PBS Needs Independents
March 15, 2012
The following is an open letter to PBS. We encourage all independent filmmakers and fans of public media to join us as signatories by commenting below, or emailing us at [email protected], or tweet #PBSNeedsIndies to us on Twitter. Kartemquin has a long history of supporting public broadcasting, and we feel we must again rise to the challenge in raising our concern, and hopefully awareness and action, over the issues below. As independent filmmakers, as participants in the evolution of public broadcasting, as viewers and as citizens, we protest PBS’ decision to move the two premier strands of independent documentaries, Independent Lens and POV, from their established home on Tuesday nights to Thursday, a night on which local stations program locally-selected material.
Five suspects, considered among the “most sophisticated hackers in the world” by authorities, were arrested and charged Tuesday (March 6) in Manhattan federal court with conspiracy in connection with computer attacks last year against PBS, Fox Broadcasting Co. and Sony Pictures Entertainment, reports CNN. A sixth suspect pleaded guilty in August to computer hacking and other crimes and has been cooperating with government investigators. On May 29, 2011, techs at PBS.org as well as the NewsHour and Frontline websites spent hours regaining control during the cyberattack (Current, June 13, 2011). The hack exposed contact information for hundreds of PBS staffers, stations, producers and press, as well as several internal PBS databases.
NPR has hired Todd Mundt as editorial director for NPR Digital Services
In his new position, Mundt will help stations develop digital content strategies and oversee news training offered to them. He now serves as v.p. and chief content officer at Louisville Public Media in Kentucky, p.d. of the licensee’s news/talk station and its local host for Morning Edition. Before joining Louisville’s three-station complex, he was director of content and media at Iowa Public Radio, chief content officer for Michigan Public Media in Ann Arbor and host of an NPR-distributed talk program, The Todd Mundt Show. Mundt is chair of the Public Radio Program Directors Association and has served on the Public Media Platform advisory council. Bob Kempf, g.m. of the Boston-based NPR unit, said the hiring completes the Digital Services management team, which also includes Stephanie Miller, director of station relations; Steve Mulder, director of user experience and analytics; Doug Gaff, director of technology; and Keith Hopper, director of product development.
The shift of Independent Lens from Tuesdays to Thursdays this season has created ratings and carriage woes for the indie-doc showcase.
NPR President Gary Knell has restructured the news organization’s top ranks, elevating digital chief Kinsey Wilson to executive v.p. and chief content officer and appointing Margaret Low Smith senior v.p. of news, a job she took on an interim basis last year. When Wilson joined NPR as senior v.p. and general manager of digital media in 2008, the position was parallel to the senior news exec post then held by Ellen Weiss. Knell’s restructuring elevates Wilson in NPR’s organization chart to supervise all of NPR’s content areas — news, programming and digital media. “In Kinsey and Margaret, we have two journalists, strategists and leaders with a keen understanding of the craft that distinguishes NPR — and how we continue to innovate and evolve,” Knell said in a news release. The new structure allows for greater coordination of NPR’s news, digital and programming strategies, and a “more seamless integration” of its news operations, according to the release.
Partners in the project are the pubmedia minority consortia — the Center for Asian American Media, Latino Public Broadcasting, Native American Public Telecommunications, the National Black Programming Consortium and Pacific Islanders in Communication — as well as the Independent Television Service and POV. The festival will be offered for video streaming on PBS.org and the redesigned PBS YouTube channel, which will be unveiled as the festival opens. The festival includes an audience participation element. Viewers can cast online votes for their favorite films, and PBS will recognize the winner with a People’s Choice festival award. PBS will use the Twitter handle #PBSolff to build social media buzz during the five-week run.
While a local public broadcasting station traditionally romances big-donor prospects in its locality, it can occasionally find itself in a jealous spat with a national network courting prospects in its nation. It happened recently in Denver….
PBS’s ongoing negotiations to curb per-hour costs of producing programs and to assert more control over content are increasing friction with its largest producer, Boston’s powerhouse WGBH, according to sources at other stations with knowledge of the situation.
For a period until just four days before the second-season premiere of the gem of this season’s PBS schedule, Downton Abbey from Masterpiece Classic, the approval of PBS broadcast rights for the series hung in the balance as WGBH protested the network’s contract demands….
If this is Tuesday, it must be history. At least, that’s what PBS hopes viewers think as the service moves forward with plans to identify specific program genres with days of the week. “People have had difficulty navigating through our schedule,” Kerger told TV critics gathered in Pasadena, Calif., for the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour, where PBS previewed content Jan. 4 and 5. “Being able to build destination nights and really build programs that link well together on a single night seems to be working out quite well.”
PBS says its move of Nova from Tuesday to Wednesday, its new science destination, has encouraged it to create more theme nights.
The return of Downton Abbey proved to be a ratings blockbuster for PBS, while critics mostly heaped praise on the Emmy-winning drama’s second season. Downton’s season premiere Jan. 8 [2012] attracted an average 4.2 million viewers, not including viewing through station replays, DVRs or online streaming. That figure was double the average primetime rating for PBS and exceeded the average rating of the first season of Downton Abbey by 18 percent, the network said. That night PBS’s audience was 64 percent larger than on previous Sundays this year, reaching an average Nielsen rating of 2.0, TRAC Media Services reported. In strong PBS cities Boston, Seattle, San Francisco and St.
Next year’s Public Media Development and Marketing Conference, the annual event organized by pubradio’s Development Exchange Inc., will include a new track for pubTV professionals, produced by PBS. The conference runs July 12-14 in Seattle. The track will focus on pledge practices, fundraising and community engagement around children’s programming, and television-specific research. DEI and PBS announced the collaboration in a statement Dec. 6.