The nonprofit board that operates NJTV is merging with the fundraising Foundation for New Jersey Public Broadcasting, reports the Star-Ledger. The move comes nearly a year after the state government closed its New Jersey Network and outsourced the state's pubTV service to Public Media New Jersey, a subsidiary of WNET in New York (Current, June 13, 2011).
WNET spokesperson Kellie Specter told NJBiz that two administrative positions at PMNJ will be eliminated. Steve Priolo, foundation president, will be employed by WNET as an underwriting rep for NJTV, and NJ Today host Michael Aron will become an employee of PMNJ.
Jun 14, 2012
University Station Alliance asks for input on economy's effects
Public radio’s University Station Alliance is asking people in the field to take an 11-question survey about the economy’s impact on stations. The survey is available here and can also be found on the USA’s website.
US Ignite partnership will push for apps using a faster, smarter Internet
The state-operated Utah Education Network and several municipalities are among about 100 members of US Ignite, a new partnership creating services for future broadband networks running up to 100 times faster than today’s Internet.
This White House announced the partnership this morning, and President Obama will sign an executive order streamlining the approval process for building broadband infrastructure on and under federal property and coordinating excavations. It will reduce costs, for instance, by permitting broadband construction during highway-building.
For a vivid demo of the power that the new networks make possible, John Underkoffler of Oblong Industries, showed off a video of G-speak, a commercially available human-machine interface based on Oblong's design for the Wii-like technology used in the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report.
The press conference kicked off a day-long series of sessions and other events.
Subra Suresh, director of the National Science Foundation, the lead agency in US Ignite, said the government wants to "jump start the next revolution in networking" for the public interest, including education, advanced manufacturing, medical monitoring and emergency preparedness.
NSF published a Dear Colleague letter today, urging researchers to develop the apps while it announced Mozilla Ignite, a competition open to nonprofessionals as well.
The Mozilla challenge, sponsored by the open-source software group Mozilla and NSF, aims to spark development of new public-interest apps that use a much faster, upgraded Internet. Prizes in three rounds will total $500,000. The first round, with entries due Aug. 23 and $15,000 in prizes, is just looking for the best ideas. (Register for email updates.)
NSF itself will allot an additional $20 million to its GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovation) “virtual laboratory” for networking research involving more than 300 researchers at dozens of universities. (GENI will hold its annual engineering conference July 9-11 in Boston.)
With NSF money, for example, researchers at the University of Missouri in Columbia are developing a telemedicine system with unobtrusive sensors that helps maintain the health of senior citizens living in their own homes.
A map shows many of the US Ignite members. One member is from public media -- the Utah Education Network, operated by public TV station KUEN, sister of KUED-TV in Salt Lake City. UEN is expanding to serve 780,000 kids in Utah schools by December. UEN received an earlier $13.6 million federal grant to upgrade and extend its network to 130 schools and other community institutions.
A number of US Ignite members are municipalities, including San Francisco and UTOPIA, a consortium of Utah cities. Santa Monica, Calif., already operates a 10 gigabit fiber optic network that attracts and keeps media, tech and gaming companies. Wilson, N.C., a city near Raleigh that operates its own Greenlight fiber network, will develop apps for such services as smart-grid electrical power monitoring.
Cleveland researchers showed off Surgical Theater, an app that allows surgeons to rehearse difficult surgeries using interactive 3-D computer models while consulting with colleagues in other cities who can see the same simulation.
Many partners in US Ignite are private telecom companies. Verizon will experiment with 20 Philadelphia households, raising their Internet speeds from about 20 megabits per second to 300 Mbps.
US Ignite also includes:
This White House announced the partnership this morning, and President Obama will sign an executive order streamlining the approval process for building broadband infrastructure on and under federal property and coordinating excavations. It will reduce costs, for instance, by permitting broadband construction during highway-building.
For a vivid demo of the power that the new networks make possible, John Underkoffler of Oblong Industries, showed off a video of G-speak, a commercially available human-machine interface based on Oblong's design for the Wii-like technology used in the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report.
The press conference kicked off a day-long series of sessions and other events.
Subra Suresh, director of the National Science Foundation, the lead agency in US Ignite, said the government wants to "jump start the next revolution in networking" for the public interest, including education, advanced manufacturing, medical monitoring and emergency preparedness.
NSF published a Dear Colleague letter today, urging researchers to develop the apps while it announced Mozilla Ignite, a competition open to nonprofessionals as well.
The Mozilla challenge, sponsored by the open-source software group Mozilla and NSF, aims to spark development of new public-interest apps that use a much faster, upgraded Internet. Prizes in three rounds will total $500,000. The first round, with entries due Aug. 23 and $15,000 in prizes, is just looking for the best ideas. (Register for email updates.)
NSF itself will allot an additional $20 million to its GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovation) “virtual laboratory” for networking research involving more than 300 researchers at dozens of universities. (GENI will hold its annual engineering conference July 9-11 in Boston.)
With NSF money, for example, researchers at the University of Missouri in Columbia are developing a telemedicine system with unobtrusive sensors that helps maintain the health of senior citizens living in their own homes.
A map shows many of the US Ignite members. One member is from public media -- the Utah Education Network, operated by public TV station KUEN, sister of KUED-TV in Salt Lake City. UEN is expanding to serve 780,000 kids in Utah schools by December. UEN received an earlier $13.6 million federal grant to upgrade and extend its network to 130 schools and other community institutions.
A number of US Ignite members are municipalities, including San Francisco and UTOPIA, a consortium of Utah cities. Santa Monica, Calif., already operates a 10 gigabit fiber optic network that attracts and keeps media, tech and gaming companies. Wilson, N.C., a city near Raleigh that operates its own Greenlight fiber network, will develop apps for such services as smart-grid electrical power monitoring.
Cleveland researchers showed off Surgical Theater, an app that allows surgeons to rehearse difficult surgeries using interactive 3-D computer models while consulting with colleagues in other cities who can see the same simulation.
Many partners in US Ignite are private telecom companies. Verizon will experiment with 20 Philadelphia households, raising their Internet speeds from about 20 megabits per second to 300 Mbps.
US Ignite also includes:
- equipment manufacturers such as Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard;
- medical institutions such as the Mayo Clinic, which has been leading the expansion of a regional telemedicine network in southeast Minnesota;
- nine federal agencies such as the Agriculture Department’s Rural Utility Service, which released $14.6 million for more than 50 distance-learning and telemedicine projects serving rural residents; and
- philanthropies including the Lyndhurst Foundation, a backer of the Gig City initiative that made Chattanooga, Tenn., the first city in the hemisphere to offer 1 Gig Internet service to all of its residents. Another member, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, gave US Ignite a planning grant for workforce training and other projects in its hometown, Flint, Mich.
"Car Talk" led the way to homogenization of noncom radio, writer says
"Car Talk is the exemplar for consolidation and homogenization on the noncommercial end of the dial," writes Paul Riismandel, adviser to WNUR-FM at Northwestern University, on Radio Survivor. Riismandel notes that "as syndicated programming has taken over the programming schedule of public stations, local news, information and culture is pushed off. Car Talk is a program which pushed the frontier of this movement." He cites the 1997 uproar when Wisconsin Public Radio canceled its popular local About Cars program to carry Car Talk, which culminated in a hearing before the state legislature (Current, March 17, 1997).
UPDATE: For a nuanced view of the About Cars vs. Car Talk controversy, see the transcript for This American Life from April 25, 1997. And thanks for that tip to the helpful blog reader who chooses to remain anonymous.
UPDATE: For a nuanced view of the About Cars vs. Car Talk controversy, see the transcript for This American Life from April 25, 1997. And thanks for that tip to the helpful blog reader who chooses to remain anonymous.
Letter threatened JPR Foundation with "expensive" lawsuits
Southern Oregon University's law firm threatened the Jefferson Public Radio Foundation board with "expensive" lawsuits in a letter addressing issues of ownership and control of the pubradio stations, the Mail Tribune in Medford, Ore., reports.
More than 12 phrases in a six-page March 22 letter from the Portland firm of Miller Nash LLP, obtained by the newspaper, suggest or threaten potential legal action, and describe "in great detail," the newspaper said, possible legal strategies against JPR Executive Director Ron Kramer and the board — including the potential of dissolving the JPR Foundation entirely.
Kramer oversees both JPR and the foundation; OSU terminated his station duties on March 25, effective June 30 (Current, April 9). The parties reached a tentative agreement this week following mediation on the issues, which surfaced during an OUS audit calling for greater separation between JPR and its fundraising foundation.
More than 12 phrases in a six-page March 22 letter from the Portland firm of Miller Nash LLP, obtained by the newspaper, suggest or threaten potential legal action, and describe "in great detail," the newspaper said, possible legal strategies against JPR Executive Director Ron Kramer and the board — including the potential of dissolving the JPR Foundation entirely.
Kramer oversees both JPR and the foundation; OSU terminated his station duties on March 25, effective June 30 (Current, April 9). The parties reached a tentative agreement this week following mediation on the issues, which surfaced during an OUS audit calling for greater separation between JPR and its fundraising foundation.
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