The Best of @PubMediaFans — Edition #8
Need this week’s news in public media? Well… you got it.
If you follow public media very closely, then this should be your resort. Your resort of the latest news in public media from this week. News comes from various sources but its all delivered here in one place, without wasting more time to find more. Without further ado, here is this week’s news.
News:
So did StoryCorps get a Union? As of Friday, we currently don’t know but on Tuesday, the members voted as to whether or not to unionize, effectively forming a StoryCorps Union for its employees.
WUFT in Gainesville, Fla. has developed a new podcast that focuses on the commercial television news industry, not the non-commercial and the changing aspects and trends that brings with it. It’s called Broadcast Bits and is hosted every week as a short podcast by WUFT’s Multimedia News Manager and Division of Media Properties, Harrison Hove.
The first episode talks about the Independent News Network, based in Little Rock, Ark., which provides local news to cities across the country including St. George, Utah; Jonesboro, Ark.; Lafayette, Ind. and even right in Gainesville.
96.5 WDBO-FM in Orlando is the most listened-to news/talk station in Central Florida. But that doesn’t mean its beloved. The news/talk station that’s more beloved in the market is 90.7 WMFE, the NPR News source for Orlando and all of Central Florida. It won third place overall in the Best Local Radio Station for Best of Orlando 2017 by Orlando Weekly.
If you live in Tampa Bay, be aware by now that WUSF-TV 16 is signing off October 15th at Midnight. It leaves a definite question: where will Create and PBS Kids go? That was answered (somewhat) this week when WEDU 3 was announced that it would pick up Create and PBS Kids somewhere on its subchannel network from WUSF-TV.
No word as to where WEDU would put both subchannels but expect them to be available starting October 16th once WUSF-TV signs off for good. And remember, 89.7 WUSF or 89.1 WSMR will not go off-air, keeping NPR and classical music programming alive for Tampa Bay.
Last year’s Dallas Shootings received nominations for NPR and KERA in Dallas this year. NPR received 3 nominations and KERA is a finalist for this year’s National Online Journalism Award for the coverage.
It was a year ago when NPR discontinued users from commenting on its website. It could’ve been a temporary move as well as an upgrade of its servers. But now, we’re learning that a year later, NPR won’t be bringing those comments section back. So posting comments on NPR’s website will be unavailable for whatever long NPR decides to keep it away.
This year, 88.1 WYPR in Baltimore is celebrating its 15th anniversary that it became owned by Your Public Radio Corp. 15 years since WYPR was sold by John Hopkins University (as WJHU) to YPR Corp. Overall, the station’s been around since 1979, almost 4 decades (38 to be exact).
SCETV posted a weird image on its Twitter page on Saturday of a .4 got antenna?, which led us to believe what SCETV may put on its DT4 subchannels. We later learned that this upcoming Tuesday, SCETV will add the PBS Kids subchannel on DT4 on all of its stations, becoming one of the few last markets to receive the new PBS Kids channel.
After broadcasting from the same antenna for 37 years, mainly since Day 1: July 14th, 1980, 90.7 WMFE in Orlando is ready to replace its almost 4-decade old antenna in favor of a new one. The process will take place this upcoming week and will be the first time in the station’s history that they’re replacing their antenna with a new one.
While this takes place, a new back-up antenna will be used in order for WMFE to continue broadcasting. However, this doesn’t carry HD Radio operations, therefore, the Classical music service on HD2 will be going off-air. During this time, the Classical music service will only be available online at WMFE.org or on the WMFE Radio app (DISCLAIMER: Yours truly has that app.)
It’s an amazing nearly 40-year run for Wayne Bledsoe hosting Bluegrass for a Saturday Night for 88.5 KMST in Rolla, Mo., now owned by the station who makes up St. Louis Public Radio, 90.7 KWMU. On Saturday, he ended his long run hosting the program.
Tropical Storm Harvey continues to hit Southeast Texas, especially the Houston-area hard. 88.7 KUHF in Houston simulcasted KHOU 11, the CBS affiliate in Houston for its coverage the majority of the day even though it did simulcast KTRK 13, the ABC affiliate in Houston, for a brief while. KUHF even gave its facilities to KHOU for its broadcast since KHOU’s studios were flooded out from the first floor and before moving to KUHF, it broadcasted from the second floor.
The simulcast of KHOU was available on 88.7 KUHF and on KUHT subchannel 8.6.
Programming Changes:
On Monday, public radio stations across the country were interrupted at 9:00 p.m. ET / 6:00 p.m. PT for LIVE NPR News coverage of President Donald Trump’s address to the nation on his strategy on Afghanistan. We received first word about this from 89.1 WUFT-FM in Gainesville, Fla.
Another station dropping Car Talk as it ends in September. 88.7 WBFO in Buffalo aired it three times a week! Now, it will have different shows there. It will end the triple run on Saturday, September 23rd. It will be replaced at 6:00 a.m. on Saturdays by Marketplace Weekend, at 10:00 a.m. by Planet Money followed by How I Built This at 10:30 a.m. and at 11:00 a.m. on Sundays by the TED Radio Hour. Yes, 88.7 WBFO aired it three different times throughout the weekend.
New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR) is making programming changes as well, including a format change to one of its daily programs, with these changes beginning Saturday, September 2nd.
First off, its daily long-running newsmagazine show Word of Mouth is becoming a weekly program, airing Saturdays at 11:00 a.m. and replaying Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m. The program is hosted by Virginia Prescott.
These are changes expected to take place on September 2nd:
- A Prairie Home Companion with Chris Thile, a two-hour musical variety program from American Public Media (APM) and Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), will now air on Saturdays from 6:00–8:00 p.m. ET.
- Selected Shorts will air from 8:00–9:00 p.m. ET.
- The Big Listen, a show about podcasts from 88.5 WAMU in Washington, D.C. from 9:00–10:00 p.m. ET.
The following takes place on Sunday, September 3rd:
- To The Best of Our Knowledge (TTBOOK) from Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR), airs as a two-hour program and NHPR will air it from 6:00–8:00 p.m. ET.
Wednesday, September 6th will see the debut of Milk Street Radio, hosted by Christopher Kimball, formerly of America’s Test Kitchen. The hour-long radio program on cooking and food will air Wednesdays from 8:00–9:00 p.m. ET.
Another show that won’t begin until Friday, October 13th is NPR’s Hidden Brain hosted by Shankar Vedantam. The podcast that talks about ‘life’s unseen patterns’ and using science and storytelling to help tell the curious mind. It will air on Fridays at 2:00, heard again at 9:00 p.m. and one more time on Sundays at 10:00 p.m.
Also, it will air The Best of Public Radio on Saturdays at 10:00 p.m., replacing NEXT from the New England News Collaborative (NENC), which will play the best stories and content of public radio from the week.
Technical Problems:
Nebraska Educational Telecommunications (NET; not to be confused with the NET — National Educational Television from 1953–1970), which serves all of Nebraska with NPR News programming, had some difficulty with its HD Radio signals on Tuesday but by Thursday, the HD Radio signals came back. The normal (analog) signals were unaffected.
An HVAC failure prompted another, yet again, technical problem for West Virginia Public Broadcasting (WVPB), only affecting its Charleston station at 88.5 WVPB-FM. It ran at low power while, WVPB directed the Charleston listeners to 89.9 WVWV in Huntington (West), 88.9 in WVPW Weston (North) or 91.7 WVBY in Beckley (South). Two days later, the signal returned to full power and all is normal.
KUHT 8.2 in Houston is home to the Create network. It however had problems syncing audio with video. Engineers were working to fix the problem on Wednesday but as of Friday, they’re still trying to fix it. Bad timing considering that Hurricane Harvey is hitting their area this weekend.
One of New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR)’s low-power translators, 103.9 W280DG in Portsmouth, N.H. was doing some transmitter maintenance so it went off-air on Wednesday from 6:00 p.m. — 12:00 Midnight ET. It redirected listeners to tune in to 104.3 W282AB in Dover, N.H. or to the full-power flagship station 89.1 WEVO in Concord, N.H.
Hurricane Harvey really took a toll on Houston, but it wasn’t just Houston: Austin felt the effects as well. Case in point? 90.5 KUT went briefly off-air for a while because of its studio equipment. It did return back to the airwaves.
Birthdays:
On Sunday, 90.3 KBSU in Boise turned 40. The station, otherwise known as Boise State Public Radio and owned by Boise State University, has been serving listeners throughout the state of Idaho for 4 decades. That station is considered their music station, playing a mix including classical, jazz, folk and Americana music. 91.5 KBSX is considered their news and talk station, playing content from NPR, PRI, APM and BBC.
That’s it for this week. We’ll be back for more content and more news next week. If something was missed, please email me to roly4266@live.com and let me know. We’re still on Twitter too @PubMediaFans. We’re no longer delivering shoutout fun facts on Medium, but you’ll still find a shoutout of the day there to acknowledge great public media stations across the country who provide a valuable service to this country.
Have a great week!

