Public Media Policybase

Latino producers object: PBS diversity data ‘incomplete and often anecdotal’

By |

The Diversity Committee of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers sent this letter to PBS about its November 2008 Report on the PBS Diversity Initiative on Content. The letter was released by Defend the Honor, a Latino civil rights group that led the protests against Ken Burns’ series 2008 The War. March 4, 2009

Ms. Paula Kerger, Chief Executive Officer
Ms. Haydee M. Rodriguez, Director, Diversity Initiative
Public Broadcasting Service
2100 Crystal Drive
Arlington, VA 22202-3785

Dear Ms. Kerger and Ms. Rodriguez:

We would like to thank you for the PBS Diversity Initiative on Content (November, 2008). As you know, NALIP strongly supports and encourages PBS in its efforts to accurately reflect the diversity of American life in its programming and staffing. While we applaud the effort to generate an assessment of the system’s diversity practices, we are concerned by the report’s statement that PBS “cannot paint the full picture of its ‘diverse’ content or the diversity of its staff.”

Programs/Content

Latino producers to PBS: Diversity data ‘incomplete and often anecdotal’

By |

The Diversity Committee of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers sent this letter to PBS about its November 2008 Report on the PBS Diversity Initiative on Content.  The letter was released by Defend the Honor, a Latino civil rights group that led the protests against Ken Burns’ series 2008 The War. March 4, 2009

Ms. Paula Kerger, Chief Executive Officer
Ms. Haydee M. Rodriguez, Director, Diversity Initiative
Public Broadcasting Service
2100 Crystal Drive
Arlington, VA 22202-3785

Dear Ms. Kerger and Ms. Rodriguez:

We would like to thank you for the PBS Diversity Initiative on Content (November, 2008). As you know, NALIP strongly supports and encourages PBS in its efforts to accurately reflect the diversity of American life in its programming and staffing. While we applaud the effort to generate an assessment of the system’s diversity practices, we are concerned by the report’s statement that PBS “cannot paint the full picture of its ‘diverse’ content or the diversity of its staff.”

Programs/Content

Surge of channels, people meter chaos depress PBS ratings

By |

There is no shortage of factors to explain why public TV ratings have kept sliding. For one, the proportion of viewers with access to satellite and cable has increased, bringing a surge in fragmentation. Then there’s Nielsen’s audience estimation system, undergoing its own upheaval while some pubTV stations still lack the encoders that let the ratings company know they’re out there. On top of all this, some station leaders say PBS isn’t doing enough to create programming that grips viewers. Over the last 10 seasons, PBS’s ratings have dropped 37 percent, from 1.9 in 1998-99 to 1.2 in 2007-08.

Programs/Content

Here I am, your special PBS Kids Island (come to me, come to me)

By |

PBS Kids Island, an online amusement park located on the Raising Readers website (www.readytolearnreading.org), offers learning games created by producers of Super Why!, Word World, Sesame Street and Between the Lions, most collected from their separate sites, grouped by reading skill and divided into three levels of difficulty. On the cartoony Island, kids can choose games to play from a carousel ride and win tickets they can use to buy things from the prize booth — video downloads, printable games and coloring sheets. In their own tree house, a kid can stash or play with their prizes and display their awards. Project advisors who work with low-scoring schools eligible for federal Title 1 aid encouraged PBS to give kids the opportunity to choose activities on their own on the Island, because low-income kids don’t get to make many choices or take risks or try experiments, says Sharon Philippart, project director for Raising Readers at PBS. Parents, teachers or caregivers sign up their kids and can monitor their progress through the levels.

Programs/Content

EDCAR: ‘mother ship’ for school media

By |

Five years after the collapse of the CPB-backed OnCourse project, public TV is training for another run at the target. Which is: a comprehensive online digital library that gives teachers just the right video snippet, image, audio clip or interactive simulation that they can plug into a lesson …

Public Media Policybase

Minority consortia to PBS: PubTV’s ‘stunning lack of diversity’ allowed the Burns flap to occur

By |

Public broadcasting’s five CPB-funded minority consortia sent this letter to PBS President Paula Kerger on April 9, 2007. Dear Paula:

I’m writing to you on behalf of my colleagues of the National Minority Consortia (NMC), which, along with the National Black Programming Consortium, includes the Center for Asian American Media, Latino Public Broadcasting, Native American Public Telecommunications and Pacific Islanders in Communications. We would like to offer our support to you in helping to address in a positive manner what we view as legitimate community concerns over the omission of Latino voices from Ken Burns’ The War. It is not the idea of an intentional exclusion that raises the flag of indignation from the American public – and not only, as has been suggested, Hispanic Americans. It is the idea that the perspective of those within the public broadcasting system empowered to make decisions about what is and is not appropriate for a public television event of this magnitude do not fundamentally represent the diversity of this society.

Tech
Ed Caleca and Andre Mendes

Move to PBS’s ACE master control gets mixed reviews

By |

When Ed Caleca came to PBS a decade ago, he expected to see it through completion of the digital TV transition in ’06 before moving on. But media switchovers don’t stick to schedule. With PBS in unending, overlapping transitions, Caleca and colleague André Mendes are leaving their jobs, the network told stations recently.

Programs/Content

Video-rich website supports Eyes revival

By |

Before Eyes on the Prize returns to PBS Oct. 2 [2006] for its first broadcast in 13 years, PBS.org will unveil a major website built around content from the seminal documentary series. The site will offer streamed historic video from key moments in the civil rights movement, including speeches of the Rev. Martin Luther King. Nearly two hours of clips in all will be accessible on the Web in perpetuity. In October, American Experience brings back Henry Hampton’s 1987 television series, which redefined the way Americans talked and learned about civil rights and social justice.

System/Policy

Panel gets more specific about new services

By |

A well-connected panel of business leaders, broadcasters and policy wonks last week got specific about what public broadcasting could do in the future to use its digital signals for the greatest public benefit—and to justify the increased funding that would make it possible. ¶ The Digital Future Initiative panel, convened by PBS President Pat Mitchell a year ago, released its report Dec. 15…

CPB

The wreckage: Journal quits with parting shots at public TV

By |

The same week former CPB Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson resigned from the CPB Board, public TV stations received a low-key announcement that the Wall Street Journal would soon end production of the conservative news analysis series he aggressively championed. Journal Editorial Report, which Tomlinson saw as an antidote to Bill Moyers’ provocative liberal commentaries on Now, will wrap its final PBS program Dec. 2. The controversy over how it came to PBS — especially as details of the process were revealed last week — demonstrated that when politics enters pubTV editorial decisions, none of the players emerges unscathed. Producers for Dow Jones Television, an affiliate of the Journal, initially didn’t explain why they canned the show, but in an unsigned op-ed Nov.

Why public media?

‘Public trust is the rating that matters most to PBS’

By |

Pat Mitchell, then president of PBS, delivered this talk May 24, 2005, at the National Press Club, in the midst of escalating news coverage of the conflict between public TV and Kenneth Tomlinson, then chair of CPB. Mitchell was preparing to announce recommendations for public TV’s future, but the Digital Futures Initiative report was delayed until December 2005, after Tomlinson had quit CPB and the dust was clearing. Since becoming president of PBS, I’ve often been at podiums like this one, with audiences like this one, although perhaps not as well informed or well prepared as a National Press Club gathering or one with so many familiar faces, those of friends and colleagues in public broadcasting. I appreciate the presence of national and local leaders of this great institution of which we are the current caretakers, and along with them, I am grateful to have this opportunity to make the case for the value and relevancy, and in fact, essential need for a vital and viable public broadcasting service in a democracy. Leading PBS at any time comes with bragging rights to be sure.

Programs/Content

Lehrer expects to feel some heat: ‘What we’re doing is kitchen work’

By |

Jim Lehrer, co-founder and host of PBS’s NewsHour, spoke April 12, 2005, at the PBS Showcase meeting in Las Vegas, where he accepted the PBS Be More Award. At one point, he refers to CPB’s appointment of a pair of ombudsmen, announced a week earlier. Thank you. It is always a pleasure to be among the professionals who make up my public television family, and have done so for more than 30 years. There are indeed many familiar friendly faces in this room, but few that would have been in a comparable place when I began my life in public television.

Programs/Content

Mitchell probes Buster’s detour into controversy

By |

PBS has launched an internal review to find out why the gay mommies episode
of Postcards from Buster took so many people by surprise — especially
the show’s main funder, the U.S. Department of Education, and numerous aggravated conservatives. Two weeks after new Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings blasted the
children’s program for depicting same-sex parental couples, Minnesota conservatives were urging the state legislature to slash aid to Twin Cities PTV for airing the “Sugartime!” episode. Though PBS dropped the episode Jan. 25, mere hours before receiving Spellings’ searing letter, a quarter of public TV’s licensees — 46 of about 170 — have aired the show or plan to. Some aired it promptly and at the program’s usual hour.

Public Media Policybase

Secretary of Education objects to Postcards from Buster ‘two moms’ episode, 2005

By |

Margaret Spellings, secretary of education in George W. Bush’s administration, complained to PBS in 2005 about an episode of the animated Postcards from Buster children’s series with funding from her department. In the episode, Buster visits a Vermont family that has two moms. See also Current story. January 25, 2005
Ms. Pat Mitchell
President and Chief Executive Officer
Public Broadcasting Service
1320 Braddock Place
Alexandria, Virginia 22314

Dear Ms. Mitchell:

The Department of Education has strong and very serious concerns about a specific Ready-To-Learn television episode, yet to be aired, that has been developed under a cooperative agreement between the Department and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The episode — “Sugartime!” — is part of the “Postcards from Buster” series, and would feature throughout the show families headed by gay couples. As you know, the cooperative agreement that PBS is using to support these programs is designed to prepare preschool and elementary age children for school.

Programs/Content

PBS, producers, Comcast wed to create digital kids’ channel

By |

Sesame Workshop President Gary Knell describes plans to create a PBS-branded
digital cable service for preschoolers as a “renewed marriage vow”
for PBS and the famed producer of Sesame Street, partners over three
decades in teaching young kids about letters and numbers and getting along. It’s a four-way marriage, however, and the two for-profit partners
are cable giant Comcast and Hit Entertainment, the London-based owner of Barney,
Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank Engine and other kid brands. The deal gives public TV stations on-screen credit — “brought
to you by your local public TV station” — and access to future
shows from Sesame and Hit, but it associates public TV with a new digital
channel that carries ads during program breaks and that’s available
only to cable subscribers who pay extra for digital-tier service. [The channel was later named PBS Kids Sprout.]

When the 24-hour channel starts next fall, moreover, PBS will discontinue
its packaged PBS Kids channel, leaving stations to package their own kids’
services if they don’t participate with the partnership. For PBS and Sesame Workshop, the agreement announced Oct.

Programs/Content

PBS again taps viewer curiosity about old things

By |

A spin-off of Antiques Roadshow, PBS’s most popular series, will visit memorable guests from past installments and guide viewers through the ins and outs of the antiques market. Antiques Roadshow FYI debuts early in 2005 as a half-hour weekly magazine program. PBS will pair it with another new half-hour series to be announced next month. PBS announced the new Roadshow series July 8 [2004] during the Television Critics Association summer press tour. The network also announced a three-part history series, Guns, Germs and Steel, to be made with Lion Television and National Geographic Television.

Programs/Content

As cume slips, duo aims to keep PBS ‘relevant’

By |

For the past four years under PBS President Pat Mitchell, the network has had two chief program executives — at headquarters in Alexandria, Va., John Wilson, a veteran public TV programmer who came to PBS a decade ago from KAET in Phoenix; and in Los Angeles, Jacoba (Coby) Atlas, a news and documentary producer who previously worked with Mitchell at CNN. In this interview they describe for the first time a new formal practice of using minimum ratings, along with other factors, to judge the success of programs. They also discuss brainstorming with producers to create new programs and the tight budgets that limit how many new things PBS can try. Atlas and Wilson spoke with Current at PBS headquarters and later by phone. This transcript is edited. Setting ratings floors

In your programming plan in the PBS budget for next year, you talk about establishing a new set of goals for judging programs. What factors will you consider?