Current (https://current.org/tag/wttw/page/2/)
Intelligence Squared U.S., the nonpartisan public policy debate series airing on public radio and some public TV stations, is coming to PBS Plus in January, with Chicago’s WTTW as the presenting station.
Leila Fadel, Cairo bureau chief for the Washington Post, signs on as NPR’s Cairo-based correspondent in July. She covered the Iraq War for almost five years and won a George Polk Award in 2007 for her reporting from Baghdad. She replaces Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, who will report from Kabul, Afghanistan, and then Berlin. Gregory Warner, a senior reporter for American Public Media’s Marketplace, will join NPR as East Africa correspondent, based in Nairobi, Kenya, in December. Warner now covers the economics and business of healthcare, but he’s previously reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the DR Congo.
No, there won’t be any windfall of Obama and Romney Super PAC gazillions for public stations this year. By a 2–1 vote, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco did indeed rule April 12 that public broadcasters can carry political and public-issue commercials, but the decision is unlikely to take effect any time soon, even in the Ninth Circuit states of the West. Neither side in Minority Television Project v. FCC got everything it wanted in the decision, so one or the other could ask the appeals court for a review by a larger panel of its judges even before the District Court implements the appeals court’s order. For Minority Television Project, licensee of San Francisco pubTV station KMTP, the court decision left standing the main legislation that bars untrammeled advertising on public stations. The low-profile non-PBS station, which fills much of its four DTV multicast channels with German, Chinese, South Korean and other imported or foreign-language programs, went to court after the FCC fined it $10,000 for violating that law 1,900 times between 1999 and 2002.
A multimedia news organization committed to public service journalism will begin producing regional coverage of the Chicago area and Illinois for The New York Times next month.
Bill McCarter, who headed Chicago’s WTTW for 27 years before retiring in 1998, died of complications from cancer April 21. He was 81. Newton Minow, a former FCC chair and WTTW trustee, recruited McCarter from WETA in Washington, D.C., to run WTTW in 1972. “I have a very high opinion and respect for Bill,” Minow once said. “He is everything you could want in a person, a broadcaster and leader.
WTTW and PBS say they’re baffled by the FCC’s proposal to fine the Chicago station $5,000 for airing four underwriting spots, including one that aired nationally on Wall Street Week. The commission sent a “notice of apparent liability” to WTTW [text of notice] earlier this month, saying that spots aired in November 1996 for Zenith, Amoco, Prudential Securities and Sun America insurance violate FCC rules against advertisements for for-profit companies. Under the rules, public broadcasters can air credits for corporate underwriting but only for the purpose of identifying backers. The credits are not supposed to promote their businesses. Specifically off-limits are comparative and qualitative descriptions, price information, calls to action and inducements to buy.
In 1997, the FCC fined Chicago public TV station WTTW for violating commission standards for underwriting credits (Current coverage). More than two years later, the commission found that three of the four contested credits were permissible, and reduced the fine (text of March 2000 order). Federal Communications Commission Washington, D.C. 20554
In reply refer to: 1800C1-KMS 97040529
December 2, 1997
Released: December 3, 1997
CERTIFIED MAIL — RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED
Window to the World Communications, Inc.
Licensee, Station WTTW(TV)
5400 North St. Louis Ave. Chicago, IL 60625
Dear Licensee:
This letter constitutes a NOTICE OF APPARENT LIABILITY FOR A FORFEITURE pursuant to Section 503(b) of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (the “Act”), for violations of 47 U.S.C. Section 399B and Section 73.621(e) of the Commission’s Rules.