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We are stepping back from original plans for Arizona Week's debut program on Friday. We will reserve exploring the issue of the state budget deficit for a program in the near future.
Instead, Friday's program will focus on the aftermath of the tragic shootings two days ago in which six people were killed and 14 injured, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
We are exploring a number of options for the program, and likely we will spend at least a couple more days listening to and learning from the public discourse as it continues unfolding. Then we will begin setting in place the topics we will cover and the guests we will invite for interviews.
Readers of this blog and viewers of Arizona Public Media are invited to send thoughts and ideas, via comments on this blog or e-mails to me, mchihak@azpm.org.
Arizona Budget Deficit
Tucson-shootings,
January 10th 2011 at 12:26 —
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posted to Inside TV by Susie Hernandez
“No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine.”– Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
A few months ago, I decided to make Friday nights a drama night. Encores of Masterpiece Theater were placed along with mysteries from the BBC. I enjoyed watching the movies on Fridays but didn't know till last week when the ratings came in that so many others were too! I was working on January and February schedules in November and December. With so many stresses in the world, I realized I had built two months worth of escapism dramas every Friday. I think we all need a little romance and yearning and who better than the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen?
Sense & Sensiblity
Listed below are the great films coming every Friday! Please let me know what you think!
January 7th @ 9:30 PM Northanger Abbey- When one suitor takes her to his family estate, Northanger Abbey, Catherine becomes mired in a world of fact and fantasy.
January 14th @ 10 PM Jane Eyre Part I - A governess goes to work for a moody employer, captures his heart, a dark secret intrudes.
January 21st @ 10 PM Jane Eyre Part II
January 28th @ 10 PM Miss Austen Regrets
February 4th @ 10 PM Sense & Sensibility Part I - Sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood have opposite approaches when it comes to the pursuit of love. One is tempered and rational, the other impulsive and full of youthful passion.
February 11th @ 10 PM Sense & Sensibility Part II
February 18th @ 10 PM Wuthering Heights Part I - The Earnshaw children expect gifts from their father when he returns to Wuthering Heights after a trip, but are instead greeted with the arrival of Heathcliff, a young Gypsy boy who has come to live with them. Quiet and mysterious, Heathcliff is befriended by Cathy Earnshaw, and the two become inseparable.
February 25th @ 10 PM Wuthering Heights Part II
"Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones." – Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
“It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.” – Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
Olivia Williams stars as Jane Austen in Miss Austen Regrets.
January 6th 2011 at 13:52 —
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When it comes to broadcasting, I can find NPR on the car radio and have almost mastered the TV remote control, fully capable of setting it to digitally record and eventually play back a wide range of programs. Those skills were the extent of my broadcasting experience, until very recently.
"We can teach you the broadcasting part," Arizona Public Media News Director Peter Michaels said in our early discussions about my taking on the Arizona Week gig.
Indeed, the teaching and subsequent learning are big, big parts of it, all designed to bring good journalism to the fore.
Each day, I spend considerable time in front of the camera and lights practicing being natural as I read my scripts on the Teleprompter. Each day, a patient studio crew critiques, coaches and encourages me en route to the program's debut on Jan. 14.
Today, we added a new element. I spent nearly an hour in a closed-loop radio booth wearing a headset that allowed me to hear my voice the way others hear it. I worked to replace my monotone with inflection and the somewhat leisurely cadence of my speech with something approaching the subtly urgent tone that newscasters have. I read the script over and over, until my voice was on the edge of hoarseness.
All the practice has as its goal my ability to put my best face and voice forward when we go on the air a week from Friday.
January 6th 2011 at 0:00 —
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We have been planning the first Arizona Week program for a good while, lining up interviews, journalistic expertise and a myriad other details. From Day 1, the program's topic was signed and sealed as the state budget crisis.
That's a no brainer, because with the program debuting Jan. 14, we knew we would have a week's worth of developments, starting on Monday with Gov. Jan Brewer's State of the State speech and the convening of the Legislature. Later in the week -- perhaps Wednesday or Thursday -- the governor would release her budget proposal, including plans for dealing with $2.25 billion in deficits spread over the next 18 months.
Lo and behold, the governor's office has announced that the budget proposal will be released on Friday, Jan. 14, the day of our first program. To have that kind of news for our debut program seems kismet, and we plan to make the most of it.
Look for in-depth reporting on the budget, followed by reactions of legislative leaders and finally the analysis of knowledgeable journalists.
It ought to be an auspicious start to Arizona Week.
Arizona Legislature
State-of-the-State-speech,
January 5th 2011 at 13:26 —
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Each Friday night edition of Arizona Week will conclude with the reading of selected comments from viewers. We will air what you have to say that is relevant to the topic at hand.
Comments will be taken from among those we receive over the course of the week between editions. We want criticism as well as compliments, and we will plan to proportion what we air based on overall numbers. For example, if a given program or topic receives six comments, with four critical and two complimentary, we likely will air two critical comments and one complimentary.
Like the letters to the editor section of newspaper editorial pages, our airing of viewer comments will serve as an added forum for discussion of the important topics we plan to cover. And, at times, the comments may become fodder for conversation in this blog.
Keep your comments on topic, and make them civil and suitable for television. Please sign your name, although not doing so won't necessarily preclude the airing of a relevant comment.
E-mail comments to me at mchihak@azpm.org or go to www.azpm.org and click "about" in the gray bar, then click "contact."
Letters-to-the-editor
viewer-comments,
January 4th 2011 at 12:00 —
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Arizona Week premieres with in-depth news and analysis from across Arizona
I’m very excited to announce Arizona Week, AZPM’s newest public affairs series, which premieres on Friday, January 14, 2011. The series will air each Friday evening at 8:30 p.m. on PBS-HD6, following Washington Week and preceding Need to Know, the new online/broadcast public affairs series from PBS. The series will encore at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday morning together with Washington Week (10:00 a.m.), on PBS-HD6 in addition to numerous other broadcasts throughout the weekend on PBS World (Channel 27-3, Cox 83, Comcast 203), the UA Channel (Cox 116, Comcast 76) and VOD online anytime at Play PBS.
Veteran newsman Michael Chihak will go one-on-one with newsmakers and then host the best journalists in the state, bringing depth and perspective to the top issues of the week. This program will fill a unique niche of “going deep” on critical topics on the air, and even deeper with its on-line components. AZweek.org and Michael’s blog are up and running with behind the scenes information.
One of the significant challenges for this series will be to engage audiences online, providing opportunities for you, the viewer, to help select topics and perhaps even ask a guest or journalist questions on topics of interest to you. We are committed to developing more than a traditional television experience for our audiences.
Michael Chihak has a distinguished career in journalism and knows the issues facing Arizona residents. For the bulk of the last decade, Michael was the editor and publisher of the Tucson Citizen and held editorial positions at The Californian in Salinas, CA (1992-2000) and USA Today (1984-1992). He began his career at the Tucson Citizen in 1982.
Arizona Week promises to have state-wide appeal. AZPM is in discussions with KAET Channel 8 in Phoenix to air the program, and journalists from across the state will be invited to participate on the panel based on their area of expertise.
I look forward to your comments and suggestions as we build this program to deliver the information you need on the important issues facing our community and state. Please tune-in at 8:30 p.m. on Friday, January 14th to PBS-HD channel 6 and let me know what you think.
On behalf of all of us at AZPM, thank you for your continued support. Please accept our very best wishes for 2011.
January 4th 2011 at 8:48 —
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