WNET.org to open new studio at Lincoln Center

Worldfocus and SundayArts, both new to the production slate at WNET.org, as the station’s licensee now calls itself, will be produced starting next spring in a new glass-walled, street-level production and broadcast studio at Manhattan’s Lincoln Center, the New York Times reported today. The studio is being built in cooperation with Lincoln Center at 66th and Broadway. Check out 360-degree photo of the intersection on Google Maps. The 15-year lease marks a return to the Lincoln Center area, where WNET was based for years, and an expansion of studio space, which it had reduced considerably when it moved its offices down to West 33rd Street. SundayArts also is rising in profile: Its co-hosts are cellist and former CNN anchor Paula Zahn and Philippe de Montebello, soon to retire as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here's an architect's drawing of the new studio's exterior. Click it for WNET.org's release.

Cash-flow woes seen at 1 in 4 pubTV stations, CPB finds

More than a quarter of pubTV stations are having problems with liquidity and almost as many with debt burden, with "some stations in dire straits," CPB station grants chief Kevin Martin told the CPB Board today. Martin said the financial distress “cuts across large, medium and small, urban and rural stations." Community licensees are over-represented among those in trouble, but little stations are not. “When you looked at financial strength versus size, there’s no indication that size matters,” says Walter Parsons of BMR Associates in Seattle, Wash., the lead consultant. “Strong stations are large and small, less strong stations are large and small.”

Proposal floated to extend federal funding "beyond broadcast"

It no longer makes sense for the federal government to fund a corporation for public broadcasting, writes David Sasaki, outreach director of the global citizen media project Rising Voices and contributor to the MediaShift Idea Lab blog on PBS.org. He proposes that President-elect Barack Obama create a National Journalism Foundation, modeled on the National Science Foundation and funded with some sort of tax on internet service providers or the giant telecom companies, to replace CPB. The foundation would fund PBS and NPR in addition to web-only journalism projects such as EveryBlock and FiveThirtyEight.com. "We need a federal body in charge of supporting the nation's journalism, communication, and information needs," Sasaki writes. "That is, in charge of supporting quality online content and mash-ups."

Linney new host of Masterpiece Classic

Laura Linney will be the new host of Masterpiece Classic, series e.p. Rebecca Eaton announced today in an online video release. Linney succeeds Gillian Anderson. Masterpiece Classic's second season as a distinct Masterpiece brand, separate from Masterpiece Mystery! and Masterpiece Contemporary, begins in January with a new adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Ubervilles. The season includes a special collection of Charles Dickens stories.