Programs/Content

PBS press tour highlights Downton, Nas on Finding Your Roots

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The stars of Downton Abbey aren’t the only luminaries whom journalists will chat with during PBS’s portion of the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour today and Wednesday. Other big names at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif., include rapper and songwriter Nas, director Spike Lee, Oscar winner Geena Davis, actor Nathan Lane and television legend Dick Cavett. The twice-yearly tour is a chance for broadcasters to woo more than 200 reporters with news of their upcoming schedules, deploying sizzle reels, high-profile appearances, question-and-answer sessions and, of course, food and drinks. PBS President Paula Kerger will greet journalists during her executive session at 10 a.m. Pacific time. Later today, the press conference for Season 5 of Downton Abbey, PBS’s blockbuster series on Masterpiece, will feature Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael), Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), Anna Bates (Joanne Froggatt) and Tom Branson (Allen Leech), as well as Executive Producer Gareth Neame and Masterpiece’s Rebecca Eaton.

Programs/Content

Final Poirot episodes reach U.S. via on-demand service

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Three of the five final episodes in the Hercule Poirot detective series, a longtime favorite on Masterpiece Mystery!, will debut in the U.S. next month as an on-demand series available exclusively through online British content distributor Acorn TV. Masterpiece’s Mystery strand will present the broadcast debut of two detective stories, The Big Four and Deadman’s Folly, July 27 and Aug. 3, respectively. British drama fans who want to catch the series finale will have to sign up for Acorn TV, the subscription-based streaming service specializing in British drama. The distributor will provide the episodes via its website and Roku channel. RLJ Entertainment, which owns Acorn Media Group and Acorn TV, also controls a majority share in Agatha Christie Ltd., the company that manages Christie’s literary works.

Programs/Content

Frontline receives nearly $6 million in two grants

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Frontline, public television’s investigative news showcase, announced two major donations Wednesday, including the largest grant from individuals in its 30-year history. Most of the $5 million from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler, longtime supporters of producing station WGBH, will create a reporting endowment for the program to ensure the series’ long-term sustainability. The remaining $1.5 million will support existing programming and digital efforts over four years. Meanwhile, a two-year, $800,000 gift from the Ford Foundation will back a new cross-platform Enterprise Journalism Group. The funds will pay for initial recruits for the in-house group of digital journalists and producers.

Programs/Content

Five New York pubcasters team up for CPB-backed regional newsroom

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Five public media stations in New York will create a regional newsroom with a $375,000 grant from CPB, announced today. The two-year backing will support Upstate Insight, which CPB called “an innovative model for covering news across a large geographic area.” Principal partners are WXXI, Rochester; WSKG, Binghamton; WRVO, Oswego; and WMHT, Troy. WBFO in Buffalo is an associate partner. In the announcement, CPB said the stations “will develop news data capability and adopt content sharing and communications systems to support connectivity between organizations.”

Programs/Content

Pubcasters pick up 32 national Murrow Awards

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Public broadcasting outlets and nonprofit news organizations took 32 of the 98 national Edward R. Murrow Awards presented this year by the Radio Television Digital News Association to recognize the best in electronic journalism. 
Chicago’s WBEZ and the Texas Tribune stood out among the field of public media winners announced June 11, taking top honors for overall excellence among  large-market radio stations and small online news organizations, respectively. KNAU in Flagstaff, Ariz., which like other local pubcasters rose to the national Murrows through RTDNA’s regional competitions, received three trophies in the division for small-market radio stations. It was the only public radio station to receive multiple trophies in divisions for local broadcasters. NPR and New York’s WNYC topped two or more categories in the network radio and television division. 
The majority of pubcasting winners were local radio stations, and pubcasters took national Murrows in the small- and large-market divisions in multiple radio categories — investigative reporting, news documentary, news series, best writing and best website. In the competition among small online news organizations, the Texas Tribune took a second trophy for online video.

Programs/Content

CPB backs new episodes of Hinojosa’s America By The Numbers

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The Corporation for Public Broadcasting awarded an $850,000 grant for eight new half-hour episodes of America By The Numbers, a series featuring journalist Maria Hinojosa that had a pilot run as a PBS election special. Programs in the series, which will air on PBS and the World Channel, will cover topics such as health disparities revealed by infant mortality rates, military service by residents of non-voting territories of the Pacific Islands and the effects of the domestic oil boom on Native American lands. “Consistent with the mission of public broadcasting – to give voice to the extraordinary diversity of this country – I am excited that PBS and the World Channel will premiere America by the Numbers,” said Maria Hinojosa, series host and project leader, in a statement. “This eight-part series is the first national TV program dedicated to documenting massive and historic demographic change in the US using hard data and powerful storytelling.”

America By The Numbers is a collaboration between Hinojosa’s Futuro Media Group and Boston’s WGBH. CPB backed the production through its Diversity and Innovation Fund, according to its June 5 grant announcement.

Programs/Content

Pubcasting programs spark anthology of ‘Poetic Responses’

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While public broadcasting covers poets and their work, a new anthology may be the first book of poems inspired by public media stories. Poet Robbi Nester of Lake Forest, Calif., edited The Liberal Media Made Me Do It: Poetic Responses to NPR & PBS Stories (Lummox Press), featuring works of 56 poets reacting to segments and programs aired by public stations. Nester answered a few questions by email. This exchange has been edited. Where did the idea for this book come from?

Programs/Content

Downton Abbey creator calls PBS delay in season scheduling ‘madness’

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Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes has weighed in on PBS’s decision to delay airing the Masterpiece megahit for months after each season premieres in Britain. And as his countryfolk might say, he is cheesed off. “I want to have simultaneous transmission in America and Britain,” he tells the Telegraph of London. “The difficulty that we have is that people are discussing the series as it happens online before America’s seen it and on the internet we’re all in the same company. It’s madness.”

Then he adds: “It’s what I’d like, but who cares what I think?”

Scheduling Downton is a tricky subject for PBS. The blockbuster costume drama has always premiered in January on PBS, two months after the British airing.

Programs/Content

Aviators distributor scrutinizing show after revelations of apparent product placement

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The public TV program The Aviators has come under increased scrutiny from its distributor after Current revealed apparent product placement in the show’s on-air segments. Executive Producer Anthony Nalli removed a sponsorship page from the program’s website earlier this month after Current inquired about promises that sponsors could “expertly integrate their brands directly into the content of the show in a subtle, non-invasive and very effective manner.” Other pages on the site made similar offers. Nalli said the matter was a misunderstanding over wording. “I used the language of advertising, not of public television,” Nalli said.

Children's programming

PBS’s live-action Odd Squad aims to ‘make math relevant’ for kids

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PBS Kids will expand the footprint of its math-focused programs with Odd Squad, a live-action TV series for school-aged children. The new show, which follows the fall 2013 debut of Peg + Cat, a preschool series presenting math concepts, will debut Nov. 26. Creators Tim McKeon and Adam Peltzman, who previously collaborated as television writers on another PBS Kids series for school-aged children, The Electric Company, are producing Odd Squad through Toronto-based Sinking Ship Entertainment and the Fred Rogers Company (which also produces Peg + Cat and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood for PBS). Odd Squad stars sleuths Olive and Otto, members of a detective agency who use math concepts to solve unusual mysteries around their town.

Ken Burns

Masterpiece Trust secures $3 million gift from San Diego donor

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SAN FRANCISCO – Amid previews of upcoming programming at the PBS Annual Meeting, including a groundbreaking 14-hour series on the Roosevelt family from Ken Burns, came extraordinary news of a record-setting donation for Masterpiece. Executive Producer Rebecca Eaton told attendees that the icon strand, through its Masterpiece Trust, will receive $3 million from longtime supporter Darlene Shiley on behalf of herself and her late husband Donald. Shiley’s local station, KPBS in San Diego, will share a portion of the contribution. The gift triples Shiley’s previously unprecedented $1 million donation in 2012. Since its inception in 2011, the trust has raised nearly $10 million for Masterpiece and local stations designated by donors.

Programs/Content

NewsHour sticks to founding mission: “Allow the audience to reach its own decisions”

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In the first installment of our interview with Linda Winslow, outgoing e.p. of PBS NewsHour, she discussed her early start in broadcast journalism and working with Fred Friendly, a founding father of public broadcasting. In this, the second of three parts, she discusses the start of the NewsHour, working as a woman in media, and the NewsHour’s commitment to its mission. Part three will be posted next week. This transcript has been edited. Current: What did you do next after Public Broadcasting Laboratory?