It’s official: KCET, one of the biggest siblings in the PBS family, is leaving home for good. Although station President Al Jerome has complained for years about high network dues and the contentious overlap situation with KCET’s three PBS brethren in the Los Angeles area, few in the system thought he would actually sever the station’s 40-year link to PBS. Mel Rogers, president of the region’s new primary PBS station, KOCE in nearby Huntington Beach, summed up the reaction of many pubcasters:
“Up to the last minute, I did not think Al would go nuclear,” Rogers told Current. The first major-market affiliate to announce its defection came after months of difficult negotiations that had the feel of a high-stakes game of chicken (timeline). KCET’s decision to drop its PBS membership as of Jan.
June 2007: In a presentation to the PBS Board’s Station Services Committee, KCET protests that its dues assessments are disproportionately high and the other PBS stations in the Los Angeles market are overstepping their rights as part-time PBS members (PDP). Also June 2007: A PBS Board task force flies to Los Angeles to meet with the four PBS affiliates: The L.A. Unified School District’s KLCS, KOCE in Orange County, KVCR in San Bernardino and KCET. January 2008: Partly in response to KCET’s complaints, the PBS Board establishes a Membership Policies Review Committee to more closely examine PDP issues. March 31, 2009: The PBS Board approves the review panel’s final recommendations. The new rules aim to reallocate station dues more equitably in multistation markets.
After negotiating with PBS for eight months over a proposal to reduce its dues and remake public TV in the Los Angeles market, the city’s biggest public station announced last week that it is preparing to completely drop out of the network. If KCET proceeds with its back-up plan for financial relief, as of Jan. 1 PBS would be left without a station committed to air the bulk of its schedule in the nation’s second-largest media market. It would be the first departure of a major-market member in the network’s history. KCET President Al Jerome told Current in an extended interview that he’d prefer to remain with PBS, but — if the network doesn’t budge — he has unanimous board backing to forgo the PBS brand and the icon series from its National Program Service.
After negotiating with PBS for eight months over a proposal to reduce its dues and reconfigure pubTV in the Los Angeles market, the city’s bigget public station announced this week that it may drop out of the network by Jan. 1. If KCET proceeds with that option, PBS would be left without a station committed to carrying its primetime and children’s schedules in the nation’s second-largest media market. It would be the first departure of a major-market member in the network’s history. KCET President Al Jerome told Current that he’d prefer to remain with PBS, but says — if the network doesn’t budge — he has unanimous backing from the station’s board of directors to forgo the PBS brand and the icon series of its National Program Service.
Three years after Latino activists bitterly criticized Ken Burns’s The War for omitting interviews with Hispanic soldiers and sailors, CPB and PBS concluded negotiations to create a Diversity and Innovation Fund to seed new productions, Current reported. PBS issued this RFP on its website. CPB/PBS Diversity and Innovation Fund
Request for Proposals
Weekly, Primetime Television Series
Objective
This RFP, the first from the Diversity and Innovation Fund, is designed to solicit proposals to provide the NPS with a new, weekly, primetime series – content that will expand viewership and usage, reaching an adult audience on-air and online that reflects the diversity of the 40-64 year old US population. Specifically, the DI Fund seeks to:
Diversify the NPS by attracting more racially and ethnically diverse viewers and Web visitors within the target demographic;
Expand the current NPS audience through the increased use of content created by a diverse group of producers and through the effective use of new and emerging technologies;
Leverage the talent and creativity of executive producers and producers from minority and underserved communities;
Build capacity for the public media system from within those communities; and
Encourage innovation in the planning, production and distribution of public media content. The content should be conceived and budgeted with multiple-platform use (broadcast, VOD, Internet, mobile, DVD, etc.) in mind from the outset. As producers develop their proposals and ultimately their pilot programs, they should consider not only the traditional broadcast components but also the digital strategy which may include web presence, mobile applications, social media, inclusion in the Digital Learning Library and/or PBS Teachers, etc.
From PBS’s June 2010 request for primetime series proposals to be funded by the CPB/PBS Diversity and Innovation Fund. See also Current feature on the Explorer Archetype. The Explorer Archetype
Research shows the most successful brands embody a single archetype. To define and fully leverage PBS’s brand, we are employing Archetypal Branding, a proven strategy in which an organization aligns all activities behind a single unifying concept. We believe adopting this strategy will help us increase audience engagement, raise money and build brand loyalty.
Children’s television pioneer and Sesame Street creator Joan Ganz Cooney is the recipient of this year’s Be More Award from PBS. She accepted her honor at the PBS National Meeting, continuing in Austin. From the podium, PBS President Paula Kerger said Cooney’s work from 1968 to 1990 at her Children’s Television Workshop makes her “one of the single greatest educators of children in the world.” Former Be More winners include Bill Moyers and Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Frontline’s David Fanning received the 38th annual Ralph Lowell Award from CPB last night in Austin.
CPB and PBS are completing an agreement that may lead to the agency’s first annual grants for the PBS National Program Service based on measures of diversity and innovation in programming and related projects. Sources tell Current that this funding method would be one of the strongest attempts to encourage diversity and innovation in pubcasting so far, influencing the allocation of $14 million or more over the two-year contract. [Update: The final amount, CPB announced May 13, will be $20 million over two years. PBS request for proposals.]
CPB President Pat Harrison announced to the Board at its January meeting that the two had “reached a signed agreement,” but since then CPB has declined to provide specifics. “Yes, CPB and PBS have a signed agreement that commits funding to projects that emphasize diversity and innovation,” CPB spokesperson Louise Filkins told Current in an e-mail.
After starting the process to hire a new chief content officer, PBS has reduced the purview of the job. The CCO will oversee TV programming but will no longer supervise PBS Interactive and web content. The position also lost oversight over program promotion. Until Current asked about the job description last week, the position said “the CCO will lead the PBS Interactive team.” That wording was from an older job description, spokesperson Jan McNamara said. PBS has now deleted that paragraph and a few other lines from the online document.
Paula Kerger wants public TV stations to know that the combination of flat station dues, dwindling resources and balanced budgets may be slowly strangling PBS’s ability to fund new-media innovation. “We can’t continue to go down this path,” the network president told her board March 26 [2010]. PBS’s member stations are strangling, too, and the network probably can’t count on them to contribute more in dues for fiscal year 2011, which starts in July. The board endorsed a balanced budget — to be sent to stations for comment — that relies on no increases in assessments for member services, program services or fundraising programming.The board also capped at 5 percent any dues increase or decrease levied on an individual station. Fiscal 2011 will be PBS’s second year in a row without an increase in station support.
ByJim ent,</em> April 2010 through February 2011Kutzner, Mark Schubin, Dave MacCarn, Bruce Jacobs, G. John Garrett and Chris Fournelle |
PBS convened and CPB supported the PBS Quality Group’s evangelism for DTV quality in 2010 and 2011. The group, including tech specialists from stations, series producers and PBS, and consultants, held a series of workshops around the country, and members prepared these articles. Here are PDFs of the pieces published in Current. 1. Maintaining quality
You can’t always ‘fix it in post.’
A few PBSers will return to the action in the National Adult Baseball Association (NABA) league this spring. KCET President Al Jerome formed the California Blue Jays in 2002, recruiting diamond stars such as the strong double-play combination of shortstop Lloyd Wright (president of WFYI in Indianapolis) and second baseman Andy Russell (senior v.p., PBS Ventures). Mel Rogers of KOCE in Huntington Beach, Calif., and Jeff Clarke of San Francisco’s KQED have also played for the team. The far-flung players practice on their own using local batting cages and, no doubt, family members drafted into playing catch. The Jays gather for a week each year to compete.
PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler wrote recently in his online column about what he views as a problem: that public television viewers are confused about where programs on public television come from and assume that everything on public TV originates at PBS. What the PBS ombudsman wrote
On Dec. 29, 2009, Ombudsman Michael Getler wrote that “viewers are very often, and understandably, confused” when he explains that shows like Ideas in Action are on public TV but did not go through PBS. He said “PBS and its affiliates ought to figure out some way to flag viewers on the screen about programs that are not developed, approved and distributed by PBS.” When the show premieres this month, Getler expects more complaints about the co-production with the Bush Institute, which is “perceived as a political entity.”
PBS is raising tent-poles to reinvigorate its primetime lineup. Over the next one to three years, it will shrink down a number of as-yet-unidentified series to high-profile special events, then use the freed-up production money and schedule space to nurture new shows it hopes will mature into icons.
David Fanning, the founding executive producer of PBS’s Frontline series, gave this talk in 2009 as the annual James L. Loper Lecture in Public Service Broadcasting sponsored by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. Thank you, Geoff Cowan and Dean Wilson, for your kind words, and especially for your invitation to come here to the Annenberg School to give the annual Loper Lecture. This also gives me a chance publicly to thank Jim Loper, for the years of work he gave not just to KCET but as a leader in public broadcasting. It’s an honor to be invited in his name. I would also like to thank Mr. Russell Smith for his sponsorship of this lecture.
Viewers like you — by name — have literally moved to the front of the line in underwriting credits at WQED in Pittsburgh. Since mid-August, a Mary Jones or Joe Smith of Anytown, Pa., who donated as little as $40 to the station, is mentioned ahead of major corporations or donors providing hundreds of thousands. That better reflects the overall importance of viewer contributions to the TV/FM licensee, said Deborah L. Acklin, g.m.
At a time when audience contributions are proving more reliable than many corporate and state government funders, the WQED credits and new ones from PBS are emphasizing the role of viewer-donors. The new national multiplatform credits package that PBS began feeding to stations in August focuses on the viewer as “Explorer” branding concept (Current, June 23). PBS head Paula Kerger seemed to approve of WQED’s idea after a Pittsburgh reporter mentioned it during her July appearance at the Television Critics Association tour in Pasadena, Calif.
The kinds of people who like new experiences, enjoy scanning expanded horizons, want to see things from varied perspectives are the people most likely to be PBS viewers, says Margaret Mark.