Published in 170millionamericans.org
170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting is a collaboration of public radio and television stations, national organizations, producers and our viewers and listeners throughout the country in favor of a strong public media in the United States. This project receives no government funding.
Published in Current, Nov. 21, 2011
By Karen Everhart
In four years that include the deepening recession, fiscal 2008 through 2012, public broadcasting stations in 24 states have lost a total of $85 million in financial support from state governments, according to a study released last week by Free Press, a progressive media-reform group.
Those states reduced spending on public media by 42 percent of their 2008 amount.
Free Press, which has joined the defense of federal and state aid to public media, gave the study a timely release date, one week before the congressional Super Committee’s Nov. 23 [2011] deadline to cut vast sums from the federal budget and deficit.
Josh Stearns, Free Press“As federal lawmakers are considering making further cuts to public broadcasting nationally, we wanted to make sure they understood the full picture of public broadcasting in their states,” said Josh Stearns, co-author of the study and associate program director of Free Press. “We thought if they could see that public broadcasters are already doing so much more with so much less in their state, it would help them defend the funding.”
Although some state legislatures provide no direct appropriations to pubcasting whatsoever, state funding historically has been a key source of revenue for many public TV operations. The cutbacks, like the recession itself, hit the country very unevenly. While public stations at large got 12 percent of their revenues from state governments in fiscal year 2009, state aid to stations:
* has been cut in half since 2008 in Alabama, Indiana, Kansas and South Carolina;
* was completely zeroed-out in New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida (though in Florida, Gov. Rick Scott’s veto preserved subsidies for statehouse coverage — related story).
The spending cuts took a cumulative sum of $202 million from system revenues during the four years.
The damage was most severe in rural states where state legislatures have given extra support for statewide public TV networks that have high transmission costs for reaching relatively sparse populations.
But state funds likely have been slashed even more deeply than the study indicates because its figures don’t include all cutbacks in state universities’ support for public radio stations. Two-thirds of pubradio stations are licensed to universities, and the cash and in-kind support the stations receive are most often at the discretion of university administrators, not state policymakers.
Stearns said the researchers included only spending lines identified in state budgets, including all of those for public radio that they could find.
The study’s totals also looked at only 24 states, omitting the smaller cutbacks in states where they amount to less than 5 percent.
The report, On the Chopping Block: State Budget Battles and the Future of Public Media, compares the reductions in states’ general ledger funds with huge cuts imposed on pubcasters over four years.
The authors, Stearns and graduate research fellow Mike Soha, argue that “public broadcasters are bearing the brunt of both tough economic times and misguided attacks.” They contend that elected officials in many states were politically motivated to cut pubcasting funds.
The analysis highlights states where pubcasting funds have dropped by 25 percent or more, despite the beginnings of recovery in some state budgets. In Florida, for example, where the governor’s last-minute veto in June zeroed out a $4.8 million appropriation to public TV and radio stations, the state’s general ledger spending increased nearly 34 percent this year.
“In general, the cuts to public media are extreme when compared to budget cuts generally, meaning that public broadcasters are being forced to shoulder more than equal weight in these tough economic times,” the authors write. “The result is that local public media risks becoming less local in their content and services to communities.”
The authors also point to states where lawmakers from both parties worked together to preserve pubcasting funds.
Republican-dominated legislatures in Indiana and South Carolina are among those that resisted proposals to eliminate pubcasting subsidies.
Mystery in the funding puzzle
Because of wide variations in the ways that state governments fund and in some cases operate pubcasting networks, these tax-based subsidies are extremely difficult to track.
“Every state looks different, every budget process is different in how the money flowed to public broadcasting,” Stearns said. “That makes it really hard to generalize on the impact of the cuts.”
“We wanted to see what the impact is when you put all the cuts together,” Stearns said. “There’s been so much attention to public broadcasting cuts at the national level, we wanted to look at what was happening at the state level.”
Skip Hinton, executive director of the Organization of State Broadcasting Executives, closely follows how public TV stations fare in state budget battles. His tally of funding cuts during the same time period had reached $80 million, an estimate that he noted is “pretty close” to what Free Press researchers found.
But Hinton questioned whether Free Press had “oversimplified” its claim that public stations suffered disproportionately large cutbacks compared with other pieces of state budgets. For example, he said, a state government struggling with high health care costs, would have to make deeper cuts from other spending lines. Also, he observed, public TV and radio networks that are part of state governments may not be as vulnerable to cuts as the independent stations run by nonprofits, he said.
CPB’s system revenue report for fiscal year 2009 — two years old, the most recent available — demonstrates how much more public TV stations depend on state government aid. States provided 16.6 percent of TV’s total revenue, compared with 3.7 percent of public radio’s.
Radio, in contrast, relied more heavily on state universities and colleges, which gave 10.5 percent of their revenues, compared with 6.9 percent of public TV’s.
Stearns and Soha see bright spots for public media to recover and potentially reverse the funding losses. They point to states in which lawmakers worked on a bipartisan basis to preserve aid to pubcasting — and call for reforms at the state level to strengthen firewall protections.
“[R]ecent events illustrate that while our public media system still enjoys support across affiliations at the local level,” the report said, “it needs new structures and policies to protect it from extremists’ political meddling.”
Source: The Washington Post, November 25, 2011
Robert Samuelson’s otherwise sensible Nov. 7 column, “Busting the budget myths,” unfortunately and mistakenly characterized federal support for public broadcasting as among “unaffordable frills.” It is neither.
Public broadcasting represents a little more than one-hundredth of 1 percent of the federal budget. Public broadcasting costs about $1.35 per citizen per year in America, a tiny percentage of comparable figures, among them $31.13 in Canada, $67.34 in Japan, and $85.52 in Great Britain. This modest federal investment makes possible not only great television but extraordinary educational resources and other public services.
Reams of peer-reviewed research have proved the educational value of public television to preschool children, helping them get ready to learn and ultimately to compete in a global economy. Local public television stations have been deeply engaged in kindergarten through 12th grade education for years, through such initiatives as Maryland Public Television’s Thinkport online interactive learning platform.
And now comes PBS Learning Media, which will bring thousands of digital learning objects — created from the best of 40 years of public broadcasting and the best of what we do going forward — to K-12 classrooms nationwide.
Public television also is putting its infrastructure to incorporate public safety and homeland security, job training and other essential public services.
These aren’t frills. They help create a well-educated, well-informed, cultured and civil society capable of fulfilling the responsibilities of citizenship in the world’s most important democracy. It doesn’t get much more essential than that, and that’s what we do in public broadcasting, on a remarkably modest budget.
Patrick Butler, Arlington The writer is president and chief executive officer of the Association of Public Television Stations.
Source: Current.org
CPB gave its top honor for individual service, the Ralph Lowell Award, to Rep. Earl Blumenauer, the bowtie-wearing, bike-riding Oregon Democrat who chaired and helped create the Public Broadcasting Caucus in Congress.
“Rep. Blumenauer is dedicated in his support of public media,” said CPB President Patricia Harrison in the announcement Nov. 18, timed for an evening ceremony in Washington, D.C. “He understands the value delivered to every American citizen through public service media, on air, online and in the community, and the important role that each public television and radio station – locally owned and operated – plays in strengthening our civil society.”
“Not only do our public broadcasting stations provide us with valuable information, but they also directly support 21,000 jobs in hundreds of communities across America,” the representative said, making a point seldom heard in recent years. “I am honored to receive this award and will continue to fight for the future of this treasured institution in American media.”
The Portland resident served in the state legislature 1972-78, was elected to terms in local government 1978-96, and served in Congress since then. He is now a member of the House committees overseeing taxes and the federal budget.
From NPR Communications:
The Peabody Award-winning news quiz show to make its TV debut with a “2011 Year in Review” special on BBC AMERICA
New York – November 16, 2011 - BBC AMERICA and NPR announced today that the Peabody Award-winning radio quiz show, Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, will make its television debut on BBC AMERICA with a “2011 Year in Review” special on Friday, December 23, 8:00pm ET/PT. The year-end special will also broadcast on NPR stations on that weekend, December 24 and 25.
Host Peter Sagal, along with official judge and scorekeeper Carl Kasell, will lead a panel of both US and UK talent, including comedians Paula Poundstone and Alonzo Bodden, through 2011’s biggest events. The special will look back at the year’s top stories from an American and British perspective and will also include listener contests and celebrity guests from both sides of the pond. The show will tape in front of a live audience at the Chase Auditorium in Chicago on December 2.
Perry Simon, General Manager, Channels, BBC Worldwide America says: “The comedy panel show has been a staple of British television and Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! is the gold standard of the format on radio in the US. This year-end special offers the perfect opportunity to join forces with our friends at NPR and is a great addition to our new original programming development stable. As a long-time listener of Wait Wait Don’t… Tell Me!, I think its television debut is long overdue and I can’t wait to see what Peter, Carl and the team look like.”
Doug Berman, creator and benevolent overlord of NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! and Car Talk, says: “It’s going to be pretty much what we do every week, except NPR has to add a budget line for pants.”
Host Peter Sagal says: “This is terrific, because I always assumed that the only way I could get on the BBC would be to have David Attenborough narrate my mating rituals. Glad this happened instead.”
Now in its 14th season, Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! has an audience of more than 3.2 million listeners weekly on 595 NPR member public radio stations. Its audience has grown in every ratings period since its premiere in January 1998. The radio show is produced by NPR and WBEZ.
Spokane Public Radio airs Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me:
KPBX 91.1, Saturdays, 2-3pm
KSFC 91.9, Saturdays, 11-12am & Sundays 10-11pm
Denver Post Opinion Section
11/09/2011
On a recent stop in Washington D.C., our band, DeVotchka, had the opportunity to meet with some members of Congress and discuss the importance of National Public Radio. We got to tell our story and explain how NPR has given us, and many like us, an audience and a chance at a career.
Telling our story to policymakers was empowering, but we felt a need to take it a step further. Several weeks ago, we sent a letter to the Colorado Congressional delegation, expressing our concern and amazement that America’s elected officials would even consider eliminating support for such an important platform for American musical culture.
Many current musicians, who do not fit into a major-label industry, have a strikingly similar story which emphasizes how noncommercial radio helped shape their early influences, played their music when they were getting started and opened the door to a larger audience as they continued. These locally-rooted stations are loved by artists and fans alike because their programming is based on a passion for music and a desire to create a shared experience between listeners.
And that’s what we told Congress. Unfortunately, some members have yet to tune in.
Over the last few months, House Republicans signaled their intent to significantly cut back funding for public radio while placing other dramatic restrictions on noncommercial radio stations who want to air programs produced by NPR. While we personally do not feel this is a wise budget cut, professionally this is clearly not helpful to the music community, which depends on noncommercial and public radio to thrive.
In fact, DeVotchka’s own musical path took a turn that we can largely credit to National Public Radio.
A little more than five years ago, the filmmakers Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris were listening to one of their favorite radio stations, Santa Monica’s beloved KCRW, when they heard our music on the air.
They thought our sound and aesthetic could be a perfect fit for a new movie they were shooting, and came out to one of our shows to meet and discuss the film with us. From there, we agreed to help score their movie, Little Miss Sunshine, which ended up receiving a nomination for best picture at the Oscars. The movie brought our music to a universe of fans who had never heard us before.
Now the need to convey the importance of public radio in our personal and professional lives has compelled us to join the growing network of musicians and artists that are writing letters and visiting Congress in support of this crucial broadcast sector.
Ultimately, policymakers need to recognize that local, over-the-air broadcast radio remains a vibrant medium for music discovery. Even in this era of online taste making and subscription music services, radio retains an almost mystical allure.
Radio connects people to culture and community in a way that other media cannot. To be moved by a song over the airwaves is a very powerful thing. It’s happened to us as listeners, and we’ve benefited from it happening to others. We want to preserve that dynamic for artists and fans everywhere, especially those who have yet to come on to the scene.
The public and noncommercial sector remains committed to providing a platform for the widest range of American art and culture imaginable.
To limit or eliminate this vital infrastructure would result in serious harm to the sustainability and growth of today’s music industry. As music lovers and music makers, we can’t let that happen.
Tom Hagerman, Shawn King, Jeanie Schroder and Nick Urata are members of Denver-based band DeVotchka.
WNYC's Radio Lab honored
Documentary, Gold Award: “The Wisdom of Jay Thunderbolt,” by Nick van der Kolk and sound designer Brendan Baker, with Nick Williams, a Love + Radio podcast “for mature audiences.” (On the Nieman Journalism Lab blog, Annie Gilbertson discusses van der Kolk’s podcast about a Detroit strip club, which features profane language and dark subject matter.)
Documentary, Silver: “Finding Emilie,” about a profound human disconnection suffered by a young art student, Emilie Gossiaux, broadcast on WNYC’s Radiolab, by Jad Abumrad with Robert Krulwich and Soren Wheeler. More on Emilie’s blog. Gossiaux and her boyfriend, Alan Lundgard, attended the award ceremony with Abumrad.
Documentary, Bronze: “Patriot Games,” by Ben Calhoun, for This American Life, about two friends who formed a Tea Party chapter in Petoskey, Mich. Edited by Ira Glass and Julie Snyder.
Documentary, Honorable Mention: “Heel, Toe, Step Together,” by Katie Burningham (U.K.) about an octogenarian East End London dancer, broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
Directors’ Choice: “Children of Sodom and Gomorrah,” by English-language producer Sharon Davis and original German-language writer/producer Jens Jarisch, about a hellish, toxic computer waste dump in Accra, Ghana. English version broadcast on Australia’s ABC Radio National. Presented by 360 Degree Documentaries, Australia.
New Artist: “Kohn,” by Denver-based indie Andy Mills, an exploration of the mind of his slow-talking friend Kohn Ashmore, which aired on Radiolab. Musical collaborator: Hudson Branch.
News Feature: “Deportations Before Reform: Anatomy of an Immigration Bust,” by Marianne McCune for WNYC, New York. McCune is founder of WNYC’s project with young producers, Radio Rookies.
Radio Impact Award: “The Five Percent Rule,” by Sally Herships for Marketplace, about the government’s discount tobacco prices for military smokers. Edited by John Haas.
Dear Colleagues,
Michele Norris’ announcement that she’ll temporarily step away from the ATC host chair through next year left us with a critical role – and some very special shoes – to fill. That’s why I’m delighted to tell you that we’ve asked Audie Cornish to take on a one-year assignment as co-host of All Things Considered. Audie will move from Weekend Edition Sunday to ATC in early January.
While it was a tough decision to move Audie (albeit temporarily) from a program she has quickly made her own, her skills and experience make her the ideal person to step in. She is a warm and familiar voice to NPR audiences and an outstanding journalist and storyteller. Audie will be a wonderful complement to Robert and Melissa. And, in an Election year, her experience covering Capitol Hill and the 2008 presidential election will be a huge plus.
We know this is a loss for the Weekend Edition Sunday audience and for a production team that has done a remarkable job reimagining the show with Audie as host. But we’re confident we’ll find a top-notch person to fill the Sunday chair. We’ll do an internal search for a one-year host; the job will be posted this afternoon.
Finally, I want to fill you in on our hosting plans for ATC for the rest of the year. Guy Raz has already stepped in to host the show along with Robert and Melissa for the month of November. Lynn Neary will be part of the December lineup. When Guy is hosting ATC, Laura Sullivan, Jackie Lyden, and Rachel Martin will each step in over the course of the month to host WATC.
Best,
Margaret Nutter
Director of NPR Station Relations
Article by: PAUL WALSH and PAMELA MILLER, Minnisota Star Tribune
A quirky, iconic, uniquely Minnesotan voice — and creator of an astounding array of captivating, hilarious, bawdy sounds — has fallen silent.
Tom Keith, longtime master of radio sound effects for Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” and cohost of “The Morning Show,” died of a heart attack on Sunday at his Woodbury home, Keillor said on Monday. The St. Paul native was 64.
Keith provided sound effects and voices for the nationally syndicated show, which is produced by Minnesota Public Radio and American Public Media.
He last performed Oct. 22 at St. Paul’s Fitzgerald Theater with the show’s cast and guest John Lithgow, playing “a zombie and a beery Elizabethan bartender, [doing] sound effects for ‘Lives of the Cowboys’ … and a wonderful and shocking sound effect of a grade-school teacher being shrunk from 6 feet to 3 inches,” Keillor wrote in a statement.
The week after that show, Keith complained of shortness of breath but put off going to see a doctor, Keillor said. He collapsed at his home on Sunday evening and died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. MPR and American Public Media CEO Jon McTaggart broke the news to staff members on Monday morning.
“Tom was one of radio’s great clowns,” said Keillor, who had worked with Keith since 1976. “He was serious about silliness and worked hard to get a moo exactly right and the cluck, too, and the woof. His whinny was amazing — noble, vulnerable, articulate. He did bagpipes, helicopters, mortars, common drunks, caribou … garbage trucks backing up, handsaws and hammers, and a beautiful vocalization of a man falling from a great height into piranha-infested waters.”
Keith’s death is “just one of those things that you can’t believe,” said actor Tim Russell. “We loved working with him.”
Along with soundmaking, Keith voiced recurring characters, including weird Larry from the basement, Maurice the maître d’ from Café Boeuf and Timmy the teenager.
“Prairie Home” wasn’t the only show on which he was a popular presence. In 2008, he wrapped up 25 years as “Jim Ed Poole” on MPR’s “The Morning Show” with Dale Connelly. At the time, Keith said the show was never the same after it moved to The Current (89.3 FM), which leans toward a younger demographic.
On Monday, Connelly was among those in mourning for his longtime friend. Keith “was a very generous spirit, an extremely creative man,” he said. “We spent almost every weekday morning together in a small room for 25 years, and I loved working with him — so inventive and easygoing, and never a harsh word.”
Connelly said Keith was a kind man “who could be gruff sometimes, but for the most part, that was an act.
“As someone who works in radio, you can become rather jaded about the audience after a while, and he might act like he was, but I always took care to notice what Tom did rather than what he might say,” Connelly said. “Whenever a listener wanted something — a song, a question answered — he took extra time to provide it.”
Local boy makes good
Keith grew up in West St. Paul and played football, baseball and basketball at Sibley High School, said his twin sister, Terry Green of Woodbury. His quiet, dry humor was popular with his peers, and he was student council president and MC of many school events.
After a year at the University of Minnesota, he served four years in the Marines, after which he returned to the U, graduating in 1972. “He was looking for broadcasting jobs and sat one day in the foyer at MPR until one of the higher-ups came by,” Green said. “He stepped up and asked the guy for a job, and next thing, he was working nights there.”
Green said the death of “a wonderful, kind brother, uncle and great-uncle,” comes as a great shock.
“For those who listened, he connected in a strong way,” Connelly said. “Radio can be like that — people adopt you — and he became friend and family to so many people.”
Wrote Keillor: “Whenever Tom came onstage … I could see the audience’s heads turn in his direction. They could hear me, but they wanted to see Tom, same as you’d watch any magician. Boys watched him closely to see how he did the shotgun volleys, the singing walrus, the siren, the helicopter, the water drips. His effects were graceful, precise, understated, like the man himself.”
In addition to his sister, Keith is survived by his wife, Liu, and two brothers, Dave of Syracuse, N.Y., and Jeffrey of Wilton, Wisconsin.
From Current.org
October 29, 2011
A freelance web producer for The Takeaway, a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International, has been fired for her reported participation in the Occupy Wall Street protests.
Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Caitlin E. Curran wrote a first-person piece Friday (Oct. 28) on the Gawker website detailing what happened during an Oct. 15 protest in Times Square, and her subsequent termination. Curran’s plan was to have her boyfriend hold a sign, and she would observe reactions to its message and post reports on her personal Twitter account. When her boyfriend “developed sign-holding fatigue” Curran wrote on Gawker, she “took over momentarily.” A photographer snapped a photo of her holding the sign, and posted it to Twitter.
“I thought all of this could be fodder for an interesting segment on The Takeaway,” Curran wrote. She pitched the idea to producers in an e-mail. “The next day, The Takeaway’s general manager fired me over the phone, effective immediately. He was inconsolably angry, and said that I had violated every ethic of journalism, and that this should be a ‘teaching moment’ for me in my career as a journalist.”
Jennifer Houlihan, spokesperson for WNYC, provided this response to the Atlantic Wire blog:
“Caitlin Curran was a freelance news producer for The Takeaway, a morning news program co-produced by WNYC and Public Radio International (PRI). In that capacity she was expected to observe the general standards of journalistic practice and more specifically WNYC’s editorial guidelines which require that editorial employees be free of any conflict that might compromise the work of the show overall. The Takeaway has covered the Occupy Wall Street story since its beginning through active reporting on the protests and the positive and negative responses to those events. When Ms. Curran made the decision to participate in the protest and make herself part of the story, she violated our editorial standards. At that time the program made the decision to no longer use her services as part of the production team.”
Curran’s firing comes in the wake of Lisa Simeone’s Oct. 19 termination from Sound Print for the freelancer’s role as spokesperson for “October 2011,” an anti-war group aligned with the Occupy Wall Street movement. NPR also subsequently dropped distribution of World of Opera, which Simeone hosts.
