Social Media

WGBH team offers social media tips at SXSW

By |

Public media professionals who work in social media took to the stage at a South by Southwest session Friday to give real-world examples of engaging with audiences while relying on small staffs and little funding.

System/Policy

Media-watchers check in on PBS/Harper’s kerfuffle

By |

The dustup, or at least perceived dustup, between Harper’s and PBS is getting more attention, with the magazine’s publisher sharing more details with the Columbia Journalism Review. Last week, the New York Post first reported that PBS yanked ads from upcoming issues of Harper’s after an essay critical of the network ran in the magazine’s October issue. Today CJR reports that PBS confirmed it pulled an ad from this month’s issue, but the network declined comment on whether it yanked the other ads. “[T]o have done such a petty thing does make me suspicious,” MacArthur says. CJR’s David Uberti adds: “Pulling advertisements is an age-old tactic for businesses facing media criticism to seek retribution.

System/Policy

Former PBS Distribution executive accused of embezzling $2.1 million

By |

The former finance director of PBS Distribution, a partnership between PBS and Boston’s WGBH that handles digital and video sales, is accused of embezzling some $2.1 million in a lawsuit filed Monday. Christopher C. Morris of Chelsea, Mass., allegedly deposited 202 checks in his personal account at Citizens Bank from 2008-13 that were payable to PBS, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts. The lawsuit does not say how long Morris worked for PBSd. Morris forged PBS’s endorsement on the checks, the lawsuit contends. Federal Insurance Co.

Tech

In maintaining towers, stations face higher costs, lack of space

By |

If any part of the broadcast plant ever merited the label “necessary evil,” a top nominee would be the tower. Expensive to maintain, fraught with potential hazards, bound by an ever-growing web of regulations, unloved by neighbors and often located inconveniently far away, a pubcaster’s tower still serves as the essential link between its program service and its audience. In the early years of public TV and radio — before streaming and podcasting and cable and over-the-top video delivery — pubcasters and their audiences depended completely on the reach of the signals their towers could deliver. When broadcasting was a new and developing communications medium, those towers were much easier to build. As long as they weren’t in an airport flight path, the NIMBY factor was rarely a concern as public TV and FM stations spread across the country from the 1950s into the 1970s.

Programs/Content

NEH awards $2 million to pubmedia projects

By |

Seven public media projects got a boost July 21 with the announcement of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which included almost $2 million for pubcasters. The largest grants, each for $600,000, will support documentaries from WGBH in Boston and Firelight Media in New York. WGBH will use the grant for a two-hour American Experience episode, “Into the Amazon: The Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition.” The documentary, produced by American Experience Executive Producer Mark Samels, covers a 1913 expedition to an unmapped territory of the Amazon led by Theodore Roosevelt and Brazilian colonel Candido Rondon. Firelight Media, whose documentaries frequently air on PBS, will use the grant to fund Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Firelight founder and filmmaker Stanley Nelson is leading the project to produce the two-hour documentary.

System/Policy

There once was a public radio station from Nantucket…

By |

A public radio station in Nantucket, Mass., that previously aired a simulcast of Boston’s WGBH has recast itself as a full-fledged service hyperfocused on the resort island. Nantucket Public Radio’s 89.5 FM WNCK signal had aired WGBH’s classical music programming for the better part of a decade. When talks broke off over increasing WGBH’s payments to the station’s operator, the parties decided to walk away amicably. “We thought, so what do we do with the station now?” said Jeff Shapiro, owner of Nantucket Public Radio.