public television

With commercial networks largely bereft of fresh material beyond reality shows, sports and game shows, PBS has a fall schedule of new programming, including a heavy dose of nonfiction, led by Ken Burns’ look at The American Buffalo.

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, has been named moderator of Washington Week on PBS. The Atlantic joins NewsHour and WETA Washington as an editorial partner on the program, which will be renamed Washington Week with The Atlantic.

Piano-playing comedian and political satirist Mark Russell died on Thursday, March 30. For more than 50 years, Russell took shots at all sectors of the political spectrum with stand-up monologues and song parodies. He was best known for his PBS specials, which he taped six times a year from 1975 to 2004. His routines, which he sang and performed on piano, covered the latest political news with timely lyrical updates of classic songs. He was 90. (Photo courtesy of Gary Hahn)

Despite concerns over a looming recession, sales leaders see signs of recovery in sponsorship sales.

ITVS veteran Tamara Gould has been named chief content officer of PBS SoCal, KCET and Link TV. She will lead a team of content producers across multiple platforms to amplify the voices and stories of the communities within and beyond Southern California. Gould will report to Andrew Russell, president-CEO of the Public Media Group of Southern California, the parent of PBS SoCal and KCET.

Yamiche Alcindor, the veteran Washington correspondent who has moderated PBS’s Washington Week since the spring of 2021. is stepping down from the show, according to a memo sent to staffers Monday. Alcindor “has now decided to conclude her tenure with the program as she focuses full-time on her work at NBC and on her forthcoming book,” said Sharon Rockefeller, president and CEO of WETA Washington, the PBS station that produces the program, in a memo. No replacement for Alcindor has been named yet.

WLJT, West Tennessee Public Television, has chosen Peter Noll to be the station’s new general manager and CEO, effective immediately. He joins from WNBJ, the NBC and CW affiliates in Jackson, Tenn., where he was GM.

The long-running PBS NewsHour, which has its roots in broadcast-TV coverage of 1973’s Watergate hearings, is preparing itself to tell stories in some very new media frontiers, which include places like TikTok and YouTube.

Judy Woodruff will step away from the PBS NewsHour anchor desk on Friday, ending a chapter as one of the most trusted and well respected figures helming a newscast.

Beginning Jan. 2, the long-running PBS NewsHour will debut with new co-anchors and a new approach. “We don’t make change often here at PBS, so this is a big moment for us.”

Bruce Christensen, who led PBS from the mid-1980s to the early ’90s amid attacks on public TV for airing controversial documentaries, died Nov. 19 at his home in Orem, Utah. He was 79. PBS President Paula Kerger called Christensen “a giant of public television.”

PBS NewsHour made the official announcement on Wednesday that Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett would succeed Judy Woodruff as co-anchors of the newscast. Nawaz has been chief correspondent for NewsHour and Bennett as been chief Washington correspondent and PBS News Weekend anchor. They will start in their new roles on Jan. 2.

Shirley Baskin Familian, who co-founded Los Angeles public TV station KCET and served on its board for more than 60 years, has died. She was 101. Baskin Familian, whose brother and late husband launched the Baskin-Robbins chain of ice cream stores in 1945, died Sunday.

Noncommercial TV stations are telling the FCC that consolidation of MVPD headends is cutting off access to some of their audience and could threaten their carriage rights altogether. PBS and Americas Public Television Stations made that point in a filing with the commission in response to its proposed rulemaking on how to determine a TV station’s designated market area for must-carry purposes.

Blue Ridge PBS in Roanoke, Va., plans to launch an all-digital television service for Southwestern Virginia, a rural, mountainous region that lacks access to local public TV signals. PBS Appalachia Virginia will be the first of its kind for public television, delivering the full PBS schedule and original local programming as a streaming service accessible through Wi-Fi and broadband connections. Above: PBS Appalachia Virginia staff will work from studios being built inside the Southwest Virginia Cultural Center, a tourist destination featuring artisan crafts and live music performance in Abingdon, Va.

The on-air staffers long have been represented by the union, but they now are joined by 69 reporters, producers, editors, production assistants and others who not only report and produce the show but also create NewsHour’s expanding digital footprint and one-hour primetime documentaries. NewsHour Productions, which produces the show, has officially recognized the bargaining unit, of which more than 70% of the program’s workers signed on to a petition to unionize.

PBS on Wednesday revealed its programming plans for the coming year, including a second season of Native America and the premiere of the American Masters documentary about Anthony Fauci.

TVNewsCheck’s Michael Depp talks with Erika Dilday, executive producer of PBS’s POV documentary series as the show enters its 35^th season, looking at what makes potent documentaries work and how local TV stations can make successful forays into the space by drawing on their strong community ties. A full transcript of the conversation is included.