Programs/Content

Political news from Michigan’s WKAR goes mobile with new app

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WKAR-TV in East Lansing, Mich., will make content from a weekly state politics and public affairs show available via a mobile app funded by a grant from the Investigative News Network. The scope of WKAR’s proposed app helped it stand out among a pool of 48 applicants, said Kevin Davis, c.e.o. and executive director of INN. “What made it unique was that the app was focused more on a program rather than on general content,” Davis said. “It was quite niche.” (Disclosure: Current is contracting with INN for web development services.)

The weekly show, Off the Record, has provided coverage of Michigan affairs for 43 years, aided in part by WKAR’s location near the state capital. The half-hour broadcast is supplemented by OTR Extra, a live webcast featuring additional discussions among the show’s guests.

Programs/Content

APT’s Create and World gain carriage, audience

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Vme is not the only public TV multicast channel that’s gaining traction with viewers. Create and World, channels featuring how-to shows and public affairs programs, have the widest carriage and remain the most popular. Although audience data on PTV multicast channels is limited — in part because only 20 stations are able to subscribe to ratings services for their channels — viewership has grown 18 percent over the past four years, according to TRAC Media, which provides ratings analyses to local pubcasters. Lifestyle-oriented Create is the most dominant of the three channels. Since its national launch via APT distribution 10 years ago, it has secured carriage on 106 licensees and now reaches 78 percent of television households.

Programs/Content

PBS to test whether core series can bring in pledge dollars

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PBS has set the lineup for an upcoming fundraising test that will use a full week’s schedule of first-run National Program Service shows. Seventeen stations will take part in the experiment, running Nov. 28 through Dec. 5. PBS is trying to determine whether using core series, rather than pledge specials that veer from the regular lineup, will lead to a more stable member and donor base and perhaps even prompt more major gifts.

Programs/Content

APT offers MST3K episodes to public TV stations

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SAN DIEGO — Mystery Science Theater 3000 could be headed for public television. It’s one of some 75 shows that public TV programmers are previewing at distributor American Public Television’s annual Fall Marketplace, running here through Thursday. In the cult comedy series, janitor Joel Robinson (played by series creator Joel Hodgson) is forced to watch grade-Z movies on a remote space station as part of a psychological experiment devised by an evil scientist. Robinson creates robot pals Tom Servo, Crow T. Robot and Gypsy to watch with him, and they pass the time by making snarky yet erudite comments throughout each film. Their shadows are superimposed along the bottom of the screen so viewers see the movie while hearing their quips.

Programs/Content

Masterpiece expands hours with “gushing pipeline” of classics, mysteries

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Masterpiece will concentrate on bolstering its popular Classics and Mystery! strands with an boost in support from its main sponsor, Viking River Cruises. Executive Producer Rebecca Eaton is also working on developing a major new series. The WGBH icon program’s footprint will expand by 50 percent — around 20 hours — with additional episodes spread throughout the season. Extra hours will be scheduled Sundays at 8 p.m. or 10 p.m. Eastern time, before or after Masterpiece’s longtime 9 p.m. time slot.

Programs/Content

PBS weighs balance between free, premium access for launch of Plus

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PBS is preparing for a pilot run of Membership Video on Demand, a premium service for station contributors, under the new name PBS Plus. The service will be structured to preserve a window of free access to program streams on PBS.org and to protect stations’ member data, according to Tom Davidson, PBS senior director of digital strategies, during a session at the NETA Professional Development Conference, Oct. 20–22 in Dallas. PBS Plus will go into soft launch in the spring for existing members at seven test stations. Under the full kickoff scheduled for late summer 2015, stations nationwide can begin marketing it to new members.

Programs/Content

Jazz Ambassadors revisits time when Cold War diplomacy got hip

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It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing — and a handy role in a Cold War propaganda campaign. In the late ’50s, U.S. government officials eager to make a case for America’s superiority to Communist regimes found a new vehicle to deliver the message to a global audience. They staged a series of global tours of top jazz musicians to showcase the popular and inclusive art form, promoting the democratic values enshrined in the music while also offsetting the backlash brewing among African Americans fed up with discrimination. Those tours wound down in the ’70s, but a new film next year will revisit their legacy. Presented by New York’s WNET, the 90-minute Jazz Ambassadors will showcase the overseas adventures of jazz legends such as Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington.

Programs/Content

Downton popularity, Sprout sale contribute to $30.7 million budget surplus for PBS

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PBS is once again enjoying a budget surplus, thanks in part to the continuing success of Masterpiece’s hit British costume drama Downton Abbey. PBS Chief Financial Officer Barbara Landes told the board’s finance committee Monday that net income for fiscal 2014 totaled $30.7 million. This year, $10.4 million of that total is a one-time windfall due to the sale of PBS’s 15 percent equity share in the kids’ cable network Sprout. NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment Group acquired full ownership of Sprout, formerly called PBS Kids Sprout, in November 2013. PBS operations generated $20.3 million, thanks to better than expected returns on short-term investments, revenue-generating activities such as online sponsorship and mobile apps, and lower operating expenses, according to Landes.

Programs/Content

Clash over Poirot rights caps growing tensions between PBS, Acorn

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Acorn TV, the upstart streaming service specializing in British television, is still a tiny operation, with about 115,000 paid subscribers. Nonetheless, its fast growth is causing outsized concern at PBS and Masterpiece, public television’s longstanding home for British drama. Brewing tensions came to a head over rights to the final three episodes in David Suchet’s marathon 70-program portrayal of Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. As a result of the rift, Acorn TV premiered the episodes to its streaming subscribers in August and syndicated them directly to local public TV stations, with Masterpiece nowhere in the picture. The broadcast window for the finale’s broadcast opens Nov.

Programs/Content

MacArthur Foundation doles out $2 million in grants to documentary filmmakers

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At least three filmmakers affiliated with public media will receive part of $2 million in grants for documentaries announced today by the MacArthur Foundation. The foundation received nearly 400 proposals and is awarding 15 projects with cash ranging from $50,000 to $300,000. Filmmaker Robert Kenner, who previously directed the Academy Award nominee Food Inc., is receiving $200,000 to direct Command and Control for WGBH in Boston. The film is based on Eric Schlosser’s critically acclaimed book that examines the safety of America’s nuclear weapons arsenal. Chicago-based filmmaker Ines Sommer is getting $150,000 for Count Me In, which follows several residents in a “participatory budgeting” experiment that gives them direct say over portions of taxpayer spending in the city’s budget.

Maryland Public Television

Success in sharing arts content inspires new programming co-ops for public TV

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Public TV stations are starting two new programming co-ops modeled after the Arts and Culture Major Market Group project, which gathers and repackages local content for more than 30 stations nationwide. WNET, which handles the arts project, now has producers compiling station contributions for a new technology initiative as well. The local segments feed into SciTech Now, a half-hour newsmagazine hosted by PBS NewsHour’s Hari Sreenivasan that premiered Oct. 1 in New York, Houston and Seattle. Another program-sharing pilot aiming for small and midsize stations, based at Maryland Public Television, draws from the popular genre of outdoors shows.