Programs/Content

Kerger suggests viewers contact NEA “if they have issues with the focus of their funding”

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In an article in the Deseret News, PBS President Paula Kerger advises viewers to reach out to the National Endowment for the Arts to voice their support for PBS arts programming. “I’ve not tried to encourage any large, grassroots efforts,” Kerger said, “but I think people should let the NEA know if they have issues with the focus of their funding.” The NEA recently broadened its Arts on Radio and Television fund to Arts in Media, resulting in far fewer grants to public radio and TV programs (Current, April 23).Kerger “recommended addressing concerns to Rocco Landesman, NEA chairman, either through direct correspondence or a phone call,” the Salt Lake City, Utah, newspaper said in the Saturday (June 9) story.

Programs/Content

“Live from Lincoln Center” creator retiring after more than 30 years

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John Goberman, who created Live From Lincoln Center more than three decades ago, is departing as executive producer on June 30 after more than 200 live national telecasts.The series continues in its 37th season on PBS this fall.Goberman was cited by Symphony Magazine as one of the 50 most important individuals making a difference in American music. He pioneered the video and audio technology by which concerts, opera, ballets and plays could be telecast during live performances without disruption of performers and audiences. His television work has garnered 13 national Emmy Awards, three Peabody Awards and the first Television Critics Circle Award for Achievement in Music.Goberman also created the concept of “Symphonic Cinema,” in which orchestral scores are performed live to the films for which they were originally commissioned. After departing Lincoln Center Goberman will focus on those events, as well as staging concert galas and video presentations across the country.

Development

Extolling public TV’s mission with an edge

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I love standing on a stage — especially in the American heartland — and saying to 500 public television supporters, “Fear is for people who don’t get out much. When we travel, we get out. And, in the same way, when we watch public television, we get out.”

There’s a lot of fear being pushed in our society these days, and as I see it, the flip side of fear is understanding. And, like travel, public television promotes understanding. As much as I love to talk about Europe and the value of a journey that takes you outside your comfort zone, I also love to talk about the mission of public TV to challenge us with new ideas — especially if they get us out of our comfort zones.

Programs/Content
Tony Lepore, dancing cop extraordinare and public access standout.

Alliance with pubTV boosts Rhode Island PEG

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Rhode Island is a proven example of what can happen when public TV and public access media collaborate, but their merger is not likely to be widely replicated. However, pubTV and public access executives say their collaboration provides important lessons for the rest of the public media world.

Programs/Content

Output: Prop 8 goes down in starry radio docudrama, online cultural essays graduate to videos at KCET.org, and more

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On Sunday, June 10, L.A. Theatre Works debuts a radio docudrama about the federal court case that overturned the referendum that banned  same-sex marriage in California. Director Rob Reiner assembled an all-star cast to perform 8, which was written by Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. Brad Pitt plays Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court for Northern California; Martin Sheen and George Clooney portray the lawyers who joined forces to argue for gay rights — Ted Olson and David Boies, respectively. Olson and Boies had been combatants in arguing Bush v. Gore before the U.S. Supreme Court, so their alliance in the Perry case added a twist to the case and the dramatization. Kevin Bacon plays the lead attorney for Prop 8’s proponents.

Programs/Content

UConn’s ratings-rich lady hoopsters desert CPTV

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The 18-year partnership that helped prove there’s an audience for collegiate women’s basketball came to an end last week when the University of Connecticut dumped the state’s public TV network for SportsNet New York, a regional cable network with vastly greater reach than Connecticut Public Television. Women’s basketball has been a ratings winner for CPTV, boosting its membership and underwriting revenues, and President Jerry Franklin moved quickly to try to stem the losses. Two days after UConn announced its new contract with SportsNet, Franklin unveiled a licensing deal with Connecticut Sun of the Women’s National Basketball Association. Broadcasts begin airing May 20 on “CPTV Sports.”

Still, Franklin anticipates repercussions from the loss of UConn women’s basketball — for both CPTV and UConn. “We have about 100,000 members — radio and television — and about one-third are members because of UConn women’s basketball,” he said.

Programs/Content

Output: Producers swarm a conference, an ‘extreme journalist’ trots the globe, and more

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A conference about ideas and creativity provided the latest opportunity for a group of adventurous radio producers to challenge their own inventiveness by producing as much radio as they could in a day and a half. The six producers behind Longshot Radio reconvened in New York May 3 and 4 to create crowd-sourced, socially networked audio in conjunction with the 99% Conference, where speakers discussed how to put ideas into action. Longshot covered the event in conjunction with WNYC’s Radiolab, whose host, Jad Abumrad, was one of the featured speakers. Within 30 hours, Longshot emerged with 75 pieces of raw tape gathered at the conference and contributed via Internet by people in 18 cities in the U.S. and Canada. More than 20 people beyond the core producers contributed, and Hsi-Chang Lin composed original music on the spot to score the pieces.

Development

Q&A: ‘Building on strengths’ key to PBS strategy

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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.

Programs/Content

Shows sate ‘appetite for a real-world experience’

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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.

Programs/Content

PubTV multicaster V-me faulted for airing ‘ordinary commercials’

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V-me, the Spanish-language multicast channel carried by 42 public TV stations, pulled underwriting spots from its schedule last month amid complaints about potential violations of FCC standards for noncommercial sponsorship. V-me Media, a for-profit venture in which New York’s WNET has a minority ownership stake, is in the process of reviewing all sponsorship spots under tightened underwriting guidelines. RoseLynn Marra, director of station relations for V-me Media in New York, told Current that V-me has heard from “three to five” stations about its underwriting credits since January, and is working to address their concerns. She declined to identify the stations or the specific problems they raised. But V-me’s leadership moved abruptly last month to ensure the channel was in compliance with FCC underwriting rules.

Development

NEA slashes funds to WNET arts series, elevates digital media

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The Arts on Radio and Television fund of the National Endowment for the Arts, a source of millions of programming dollars for public media, is distributing matching grants to a wider range of recipients this year — from a smaller pool of money. Pubcasters are anxious about the plunge in funding to flagship programs and independent projects now that the Endowment’s revamped Arts in Media fund also supplies cash to digital-game designers, app designers and artists working on web-based interactive platforms.

In 2011, almost all of the grants went to public TV and radio programs. This year about half did. The number of grantees was up from 64 to 78 and the total amount committed was down from $4 million to $3.55 million. In the past, two major beneficiaries of NEA funding are the PBS arts showcases American Masters and Great Performances, both produced by New York’s WNET. The biographical documentary series and the performance strand each received $400,000 from the NEA last year.

Programs/Content

WTCI plans to launch a new multicast channel of local programming with seed funding from the city of Chattanooga.

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WTCI plans to launch a new multicast channel of local programming with seed funding from the city of Chattanooga. The Voyager channel will carry live coverage of civic events, such as city-council meetings throughout the region and issue-focused town hall events. It will also feature a new weekly series on arts and culture. Local documentaries and WTCI’s own five weekly series would also get additional plays on the channel. Content will be accessible across multiple platforms and promoted via social media.

Programs/Content

PBS weighs new night for Indie Lens, POV, after uproar

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PBS has agreed to consider “alternative scheduling options” for the independent production showcases Independent Lens and POV, which lost carriage and audience after the network moved their shared time slot from Tuesday to Thursday nights. By late last week, several hundred producers had signed an online petition started by Chicago-based Kartemquin Films after Current reported March 15 [2012] on negotiations over scheduling of the series. The petition concludes: “We are deeply concerned that PBS’ poorly considered decision could jeopardize both the meeting of public broadcasting’s mission and . . .

Programs/Content

Suspects charged in connection with 2011 cyberattacks on PBS, other entities

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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.

Programs/Content

Output: PBS’s first-ever Online Film Festival screens 20 short films, gilded applause for The Moth, public education through Indian humor, and more

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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.

Programs/Content

Downton gives public TV a ratings blockbuster

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The Season 2 finale of Downton Abbey on Masterpiece Classic, aired Feb. 19, won the biggest audience for a PBS program since the premiere of Ken Burns’s National Parks: America’s Best Idea in September 2009. Nielsen estimated that 5.4 million viewers watched the two-hour finale, giving PBS a 3.5 household rating. That doesn’t include the additional viewers of rebroadcasts, DVR recordings and online streams, PBS said. For the seven-week season, broadcast viewing was double the PBS average in primetime and 25 percent higher than in Downton’s first season.