Current (https://current.org/tag/radio-programs-content-news/page/10/)
More than six weeks after first announcing his arts-and-culture radio program’s exit from longtime distributor PRI, Jesse Thorn revealed the details of Bullseye’s new partnership on his Tumblr account Feb. 7. Beginning in April, the program will be distributed through NPR, with no break in carriage after the program’s relationship with PRI ends in late March.
The educational system in the newly independent South Sudan is undergoing many changes, and WXXI’s Hélène Biandudi recently reported on them firsthand for broadcast and digital audiences of the Rochester, N.Y., station.
WXXI in Rochester, N.Y., is teaming up with a local museum to encourage a community dialogue on race relations. The Rochester Museum & Science Center is hosting “Race: Are We So Different?” The traveling exhibit from the American Anthropological Association examines the history, human variations and personal experiences surrounding racial differences. WXXI-FM produced five feature-length reports prior to the exhibit’s Jan. 19 opening. The reports aired during Morning Edition and All Things Considered and examined the political and cultural history of racism, the science and genetics of human biological diversity, the link between race and health, and other matters. WXXI Radio’s daily 1370 Connection public affairs show also is producing four one-hour programs with WDKX-FM, a local urban contemporary station, which run weekly through Feb.
With Generation Putin: Young People and Change in the Former Soviet Union, a new hourlong public radio special, Public Radio Exchange and producers from Seattle-based Common Language Project take listeners to a places in Eastern Europe that they might never visit otherwise.
Four years after the first iteration of PRX’s Public Radio Player iPhone launched, a complete, “ground-up rewrite” is ready, with features including a prominent “donate” button and the ability to download content for listening off-network. PRX announced the features of the newest version of its app during a conference call with stations Jan. 10. Director of Technical Projects Matt MacDonald said the overhaul’s goal was to continue to make the app one that individual stations without resources to build their own would continue to view as theirs. The Public Radio Player app, which is only available for Apple iOS devices, offers up thousands of stations streams, programs and podcasts from PRX, NPR, PRI and APM.
Dec. 31, 2012, marked the last day that Lisa Mullins, longtime host of PRI’s The World, held that position. On Jan. 1, reporter and substitute host Marco Werman took over hosting full time, a promotion that PRI announced Dec. 7.
Bullseye with Jesse Thorn will continue to be heard over broadcast radio after the show has left distributor PRI in spring 2013, host and creator Jesse Thorn told Current.
Transom.org has awarded small radio production grants from its Donor Fund. The online watering hole and how-to site for radio producers provided grants of $1,000 each to six producers who will debut work on the site next year with help from Transom editors:
The Core, a series of podcasts launched by a group of teenagers working with Open Orchard Productions;
William Dahlberg, who will produce a story about an unsolved murder in his hometown of Newbury, Vt.;
Erin Davis, who will create a multimedia project about “adventure playgrounds”;
Andrew Forsthoefel, who will produce an hourlong documentary about his cross-country trip that began in October 2011;
Mary Helen Miller, who will complete a radio documentary about a mixed-race group of Tennesseans; and
Lauren Ober, who is working on a story about “a quest to find meaning in life after your life has been saved at the cost of someone else’s,” according to Transom. The Donor Fund is a pool of money created in 2011 from individual contributions of Transom readers. Grants of $500 to $1,000 were awarded to five producers last year, and their programs have been featured on Transom throughout 2012, according to Jay Allison, independent producer and Transom founder. This year’s grant recipients were selected from a pool of 40 applicants. This article was first published in Current, Dec.
From roughnecks to singing cowboys and itinerant knife dealers, North Dakota’s oil boom has lured thousands to remote areas of the state to find their fortunes, and in the process became a fertile source of stories for an immersive yearlong multimedia reporting project.
Conrad, president and co-founder of the 50-year-old Cleveland-based classical music station, received ideastream’s “Great Idea Award” for his service as a leading classical musical broadcaster, producer and distributor of cultural programming. Ideastream praised Conrad and his colleagues for ensuring that WCLV remains a treasured resource by donating the commercial station to the nonprofit ideastream, operator of WVIZ-TV and WCPN-FM. The transfer takes effect Jan. 1, 2013. “This will complete the transition of WCLV into the ideastream family and will give listeners who appreciate classical music on the radio as well as businesses, foundations and other organizations, the opportunity to support this institution,” wrote Conrad on the WCLV website.
Two years after Antioch College reopened its campus in Yellow Springs, Ohio, it negotiated an $8 million deal to buy back WYSO, NPR News and contemporary music station broadcasting at 50,000-watts on 91.3 MHz. Antioch University, a five-campus university system, has operated WYSO since 2008, when its undergraduate school in Yellow Springs shut down. A group of Antioch College alumni bought the school and most of its assets in 2009 and accepted a new class of freshmen in fall 2011. The $8 million purchase agreement announced Dec. 10 transfers ownership of WYSO back to the small liberal arts college in Yellow Springs; it also strikes clauses in the 2009 purchase agreement that would have allowed the university to claims on Antioch College’s campus or assets.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science singled out the first of four BURN documentary specials, “Particles: Nuclear Power After Fukushima,” which aired March 11, 2012, the first anniversary of the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan. The series was produced by SoundVision Productions in partnership with American Public Media’s Marketplace and distributed by APM. The award citation recognizes SoundVision Executive Producer Bari Scott, Host Alex Chadwick, Managing Producer Mary Beth Kirchner, Senior Producer/Editor Robert Rand and Technical Director/Mix Engineer Robin Wise. AP science reporter Seth Borenstein, a judge in the competition, called the broadcast “gripping, informative and thorough — radio science journalism at its best.” Larry Engel, an associate professor in the American University School of Communication, praised its “excellent combination of story reporting, writing, character development, and sound recording and editing.”
The award was announced Nov. 14, and the winners will receive $3,000 and a plaque at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston in February 2013.
For the next year StoryCorps, the public radio group collecting and presenting life stories told between family members and friends, will undertake a new initiative to record oral histories of veterans and active-duty members of the armed forces serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Military Voices Initiative, or MVI, plans interviews of more than 2,000 people, enough to produce more than 700 stories. Funded by CPB and the Boeing Company, MVI is StoryCorps’ eighth initiative focused on a specific ethnic community or news event. The Griot initiative, for example, collected stories of African-American family life. Some of interviews conducted for MVI will be broadcast on NPR’s Weekend Edition while the entire collection will be housed at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. CPB and StoryCorps, a nonprofit founded by indie radio producer David Isay, officially launched the initiative Dec.
WDDE-FM signed on in August 2012, becoming the first public radio station based in the state of Delaware. Governor Jack Markell cut the ribbon at a ceremony at WDDE’s Dover headquarters Dec. 3.
The company behind NPR’s Science Friday show is suing a Colorado preacher and radio host for trademark infringement and cybersquatting with his radio show that debunks evolution, Real Science Friday. The lawsuit was filed in the Supreme Court of New York by Manhattan-based Sciencefriday Inc., the company behind the weekly program heard on more than 300 NPR stations. The complaint names Real Science Friday co-hosts Robert A. Enyart and Fred Williams, as well as the company Bob Enyart Inc.
News of the lawsuit was first reported in the New York Post. Real Science Friday promotes creationism and focuses on science that shows “evidence for the creator God including from biology, geology, astronomy, and physics.” The lawsuit alleges that the show’s companion website, www.realsciencefriday.com, violates the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act by attempting to misdirect web users who are looking for the companion website to NPR’s Science Friday show to Enyart’s main website www.kgov.com. Sciencefriday Inc., is asking for a permanent injunction, at least $100,000 in punitive damages and transfer of ownership of the www.realsciencefriday.com website domain.
From exploring underground tunnels to tracking the evolution of the Chicago accent, Curious City is an unconventional spin on community-based public media reporting.
Torey Malatia’s argument against “advocacy journalism” — leveled at Smiley & West after Chicago’s WBEZ carried the program for two years — is merely a weapon of mass distraction from the real issue.
Two commercial radio stations in Chicago have picked up the weekly Smiley & West show after it was dropped from WBEZ, the city’s public radio news outlet. WCPT, a progressive talk station, began airing the show Sunday, Nov. 4 at 3 p.m. and will add it to its three FM stations starting in January. It also picked up The Tavis Smiley Show for its weekend lineup. WVON-AM, which targets an African-American audience, will debut Smiley & West Saturday at 11 a.m.
WBEZ canceled the show hosted by author and broadcast host Tavis Smiley and activist and critic Cornel West last month, citing a drop in audience.
Producer Barrett Golding said had been thinking about ending the public radio show when he learned that NPR was considering dropping its contract to distribute it. “That gave me the reason to stop producing,” Golding wrote in an email. Golding was “kinda sick of the mostly volunteer work,” he said. The weekly hourlong program compiled audio pieces from archives, independent and documentary producers, and elsewhere in public radio, usually around themes. It aired on about 100 stations.
There are now enough public radio stations to reach more than 90 percent of the American public, and pubcasters have adding specialized stations to increase listening options in areas where pubradio already exists. So it’s rare that all-new stations arise, especially in the East, or can afford to get going with sparse populations. An exception: the twin stations of Cape & Islands Public Radio, WCAI on Cape Cod, Mass., and WNAN on Nantucket Island. Founder Jay Allison, a nationally prominent independent radio producer, surveyed colleagues nationwide for advice on the stations’ sound. A selection of the responses:
Jeffrey Dvorkin, [then] v.p., news, NPR, Washington, D.C.
This is an opportunity that doesn’t come along very often.