Programs/Content

MPB listeners, blogosphere want to know: What’s inappropriate about ‘Fresh Air’?

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Why did Mississippi Public Broadcasting drop Fresh Air from its radio schedule? The blog “A Unitarian Universalist Minister in the South” set off a blogosphere chain reaction yesterday by speculating that the “recurring inappropriate content” cited by MPB Radio Director Kevin Farrell must be the show’s willingness to treat homosexuals as normal people, not the “evil incarnate bent on destroying the American dream, baseball and apple pie, too.” MPB Executive Director Dr. Judith Lewis didn’t get into the details in a statement issued late yesterday, after Gawker and the Huffington Post had picked up on the story. “Too often Fresh Air’s interviews include gratuitous discussions on issues of an explicit sexual nature. We believe that most of these discussions do not contribute to or meaningfully enhance serious-minded public discourse on sexual issues,” she said.

Programs/Content

Project for L.A.’s youth of color still lacks FM channel

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The masterminds of efforts such as NPR’s Bryant Park Project and Chicago Public Radio’s Vocalo know well the difficulties of cultivating new, younger and more diverse audiences for public radio. Now imagine giving it a go in one of the country’s most competitive media markets, Los Angeles. That is the assignment from CPB accepted by L.A. Public Media, a multiplatform service managed by Fresno-based Radio Bilingüe and tailored for younger listeners of color. Imagine further, eight months after taking the assignment and a $2 million grant, there’s still no FM channel to use. LAPM is preparing to launch in July, but probably online instead of on the air.

Programs/Content

Dyson show prepares for second pubradio launch

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Baltimore’s WEAA has begun piloting the Michael Eric Dyson Show, a midday talk show that is being reincarnated for a second try at pubradio syndication. CPB awarded $505,000 to WEAA last fall to create a new public radio home for Dyson after an earlier production by the African American Public Radio Consortium folded (Current, Oct. 13). After Dyson and the consortium parted ways, the group created a new program last fall, Upfront with Tony Cox, but it has suspended production to raise money, according to the show’s website. Dyson is a Georgetown University sociology professor, author and social critic who frequently appears on television talk shows.

Collaboration

Shared reporting planned for Ohio Basin ecosystem

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If any news subject lends itself to coverage by multistation collaborations, it’s the environment of places like the Ohio River Valley, a region of 25 million people who share the river’s assets and liabilities.
Louisville Public Media’s WFPL is leading plans to build a pubradio reporting consortium for the region, starting with a public conference this month.

Programs/Content

The ears have it: classical that’s upbeat, melodic, forward-moving

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Looking to lift up your midday radio audience? Try some uplifting music. That’s a lesson from 10 classical radio stations that have been jiggering their midday playlists with help from a listening study backed by CPB and conducted by the Public Radio Program Directors Association. Eight of the 10 stations saw their midday audiences grow after changing their mixes of music — some grew quite significantly — and the two that lost audience suffered only very small declines. The study began in 2007 when researchers hired by PRPD played 150 half-minute samples of classical pieces for test audiences in four cities.

People

Dyson to try again for pubradio stardom

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Two daily public radio programs for African American audiences have risen from the ashes of News and Notes, a talk show that NPR cancelled in March. But acrimony over plans, funding and personalities involved in the midday programs has split the African American Public Radio Consortium, a key station constituency for any broadcast aimed at black listeners.

Programs/Content

Online symphony, 2 consecutive movements max

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Stations that stream all four movements of the entire symphony could be seen as violating the law’s detailed rules — the “performance complement”—and risking the statutory license for streaming given them by Congress.

Programs/Content

For WAMU and its listeners, HD Radio means more slices of pie to go around

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As a self-proclaimed evangelist for HD Radio, I am often asked why I have inculcated it so deeply in the workings of WAMU in Washington. We devote several full-time employees to produce more than 50 hours a week of live original programming for our multicast channels — bluegrass and Americana music on Channel 2, and news and information on Channel 3. We further demonstrate our commitment to multicasting on our main channel. For the first year after we started multicasting three HD Radio channels, we spent at least 15 seconds of every hour on our flagship signal cross-promoting Channels 2 and 3, and our hosts still give them at least four spots a day. Reminding listeners of the other offerings in our “radio community” requires a sizable investment in airtime, as well as the traffic department’s writing and logging.

Programs/Content

We get Keillor’s take on Keillor, but who’s complaining?

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The series title means something, says arts documentarian Peter Rosen. If your film runs under the American Masters umbrella, it’s about an artist worth honoring.His film, “Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes,” aired in the series last week [July 1, 2009]. But Rosen would have given Garrison Keillor an admiring portrait anyway. “I’ve always thought we have a Mark Twain among us,” he says. With good access to Keillor, Rosen delivers a more detailed picture of Prairie Home Companion’s workings and the star’s personality than did the late Robert Altman’s earlier movie, which contrived to shoehorn a very successful real-life radio show into a plot about an unsuccessful one. Variety critic Dennis Harvey commented: “Portrait captures the charm of A Prairie Home Companion and its creator considerably more than Robert Altman’s star-heavy 2006 feature of the same name.”

Programs/Content

WNYC’s Greene Performance Space now open

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WNYC radio opened its long-awaited Jerome L. Greene Performance Space on Tuesday in Lower Manhattan, reports The New York Times. It’s wired for TV, radio and video streaming, and features a reconfigurable wood stage, seating for more than 100, programmable LED lighting and robotic cameras. “It’s not just about going back to performance; it’s also about adding a 21st-century multiplatform aspect,” said Laura Walker, the president and chief executive of WNYC.

Development

On the Media apologizes for Infinite Mind lapse

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On the Media, the NPR-distributed weekly press review, released a correction last week apologizing for what it called a “lapse in journalistic judgment” in preparing its November 2008 report about the public radio show The Infinite Mind.

Programs/Content

News cycle attracts record listening

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NPR programming on public radio stations topped its previous audience record by reaching 27.5 million listeners a week during Arbitron’s fall 2008 survey period. The weekly cume audience for all NPR programs and newscasts, Sept. 10 to Dec. 10, beat the previous high of 26.4 million set last spring. It is one of several ratings gains announced March 23 by NPR Research:

Measuring audiences for non-NPR as well as NPR programs on those member stations, the weekly cume hit another all-time high, 32.7 million, 6 percent larger than fall 2007.