OK, so I'm a bad blogger and I didn't alert you to all the American music we played on July 4. But here's an alert: July 7 is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Gustav Mahler. For the occasion, we're going to broadcast his first, seventh and eighth symphonies at various points in the day, and Bill McGlaughlin is still looking into the Mahler symphonies on Exploring Music at 7 p.m. every weeknight. You can find full listings for July 7 here.
They talked me into writing a feature for the latest Tucson Weekly. I agreed, but just this once.
Dear friends,
In these first days of our new fiscal year, I’d like to update you on several projects, and to thank you for your outstanding support of public media from The University of Arizona.
Strategic Plan On Thursday, May 6th the Community Advisory Board (CAB) voted to endorse the framework of our new strategic plan. The planning process included an assessment of where we are now, where we plan to be in 2015, and detailed steps we’ll take over the next 18 months to get us moving in the right direction with greater focus and potentially, greater results. Nearly 30 percent of our staff, across all levels -- are involved with developing the plan that is the direct output of our CAB Strategic Planning sessions.
TV ratings The May Nielsen ratings indicated that the Prime Time audience totals for Channel 6 were unchanged from May 2009. Good news in a highly competitive media environment. Prime Time viewing frequency on the other hand increased by 7% overall, with Friday night experiencing the largest growth at +119% over Friday night last May. It looks like Create and PBS Kids continue to lead the pack in our digital multicast channel lineup, after PBS-HD. I am very proud of our recent efforts to provide gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Kagan Confirmation Hearings with Live and encore presentations on PBS World and daily wrap up programs on Channel 6 and KUAZ.
A new website and PlayPBS The online and new media team has re-launched AZpublicmedia.org with better navigation and more opportunity for visitor involvement. PlayPBS as I hope you already know, launched earlier this year providing full-length programs from PBS and AZPM.
Membership funding I hope many of you have seen or heard the terrific spots featuring community volunteers encouraging viewers and listeners to help AZPM reach its fiscal year-end goal. I am pleased to report that we met and surpassed our FY’10 membership revenue target thanks in no small part to these volunteers and the thousands of families who annually provide financial support to this enterprise.
With gratitude Thank you for your continued support of AZPM. We are all here because we believe in the power of public media to make a difference in our community. It is evident in the work that we do to produce meaningful programs from right here in Tucson and in the audience growth that we continue to experience on all our stations.
Candidly, our work would not be possible without you. I want you to know how much I appreciate your continued support of AZPM as we begin our journey into FY’11.
Have a great summer!
Jack Gibson
We've had our comments module active sitewide for a number of weeks now and I thought I'd bring you a few in this space.
Just for fun, I'll let you figure out where the comments originated and I won't respond here. Think of it like a game. Here are some excerpts:
Keep the comments coming. I hope you enjoyed this little game.
Blogger and critic Lisa Hirsch wonders why on earth performers would care to read reviews:
What if you get a bad or equivocal review? I'm convinced that performers don't benefit from reading these. I've been on stage enough times myself, as a chorister or flutist, to know perfectly well that most performers have a very good idea of how well they did on a given night. I am always more aware than anyone in the audience of the errors I've made or that the chorus or orchestra has made or where somebody really missed a cue badly (including conductors who forget to throw a cue the chorus is expecting). Is a performer going to learn much from reading a critic who says the tenor blew the high note or the bass has a wobble or something else like that? I think not. A couple of people have said things to me along the lines of, well, a performer might learn something and change from reading reviews. I don't buy that. Reviews are not pedagogical. A review is one person's perception of what happened in a particular theater or concert hall at one performance. It's a snapshot, and that's it. It has real value as a bit of history.
She's largely right, but I do know of a couple of instances when a performer has taken my reviews to heart. It helps that I try not to be mean-spirited, which lessens the entertainment value but is more constructive in the long run. An actor once told me, "Most of us respect you, except for the people who hate your guts." I'm satisfied with that balance.
I'm reminded of the famous English actor--I can't remember which actor--who said that it's perfectly acceptable never to read negative reviews ... as long as you don't read positive reviews, either.
Say so long to Waiting for God
It's time to say so long to some old friends. While some viewers leave for the summer, there are plenty who stick around. We decided to take a look at our schedule and refresh it for those of us staying in town.
So long, Waiting for God. We aired you! Some viewers love this series. Some asked me to get it off the schedule. Well, it's off for now but not due to a few calls. The contract is up with the BBC. June 26th is the last night for at least a year and we moved some of our other BBC shows to new slots. Do you love Waiting for God? Let me know. I may just buy it again in a year or two.
So what's going to be on? Let's focus on primetime (7 to 10 PM) this blog entry, shall we?
Sundays are reliably the same. Nature @ 7 PM followed by Masterpiece @ 8 and then Sherlock Holmes immediately following.
Mondays we have History Detectives launching their new season at 9 PM. Some interesting cases come their way but that's not the reason I'm writing about it in this blog! The series isn't all new. Some of the episodes are like a "best of" that you may find interesting. After months of production, from my standpoint, seeing a few repeats isn't so great. I want to bring you all new episodes but do see the value of bringing on pertinent segments of the show when its warranted. We will also have a few Mondays with back-to-back History Detectives shows. They offered it this way and since we love History Detectives in Southern Arizona, I am keeping the schedule as is!
Tuesdays you will see some changes at 10 PM once Frontline takes the summer off. They will have an important show on the 5th anniversary of Katrina but that's not till August 25th. In it's place, I'm repeating Secrets of the Dead on Tuesdays at 10 PM.
Wednesdays will be all about Baseball in July. It's Ken Burn's Baseball and I highly recommend recording it. After Baseball ends it's three week run, Great Performances is returning to Wednesdays. They aren't offering new shows but some of their "best of" for the summer.
About Thursday. You may want to sit down but then you may jump back up. I'll cut to the chase...MI-5 is not airing on Thursdays at 10 PM anymore. It will move to Saturdays at 10 PM. Why? WHY? Well, I've gotten a lot of complaints about that 10 PM timeslot on a work night. And after this last season, I'm having a hard time of it myself. Due to the language, the topic and the content flags, I cannot air it earlier in the evening so I chose a night that perhaps you won't mind staying up late for! Thursday's lineup is now "Nature and Science"-type shows from 8 PM to 11 PM. We will have some new stuff, shows from the vault, and programs about to disappear from my library forever.
Fridays you may have noticed that we are no longer strictly public affairs the whole night. For more on this, read my previous blog. I've received a lot of calls on the Masterpiece programs I've selected to air on Friday nights at 9:30 PM. A lot of suggestions have come across my phone and email box. Keep the suggestions coming! By the way, I'm also interested in Saturday Night movies and many of you LOVE that idea. There is something about staying in on a Saturday night with an old Hollywood movie. We like it and I'm looking into it.
Saturdays will be fun this summer! We are rolling out with a few new-to-AZPM BBC comedies in the fall so we need to phase out some old shows this summer. So here's the lineup for you—Keeping Up Appearances @ 8 PM; As Time Goes By @ 8:30 PM; Monarch of the Glen @ 9 PM; MI-5 @ 9:50 PMish (immediately following Monarch) followed by Austin City Limits @ 11 PM. Not drastic but enough changes that will take some getting used to. If you are an MI-5 fan, tell all your friends to check out this show. I am hoping that it's new night will bring in new fans. There's too few of us out there!
By the way, one of my seasons of Sherlock Holmes is going away. We purchased several seasons and the early ones are expiring. The seller may let me buy the old seasons back. I'm looking over my budget to see if I can afford it once we start our new fiscal year. As a salute to our favorite sleuth, I am giving him a lot of play. More on this in a later blog. For now, chew on these changes, and let me know what you love, like and dislike.
So there's your summer lineup for PBS HD Ch. 6. Create, Kids and World will keep it's core programming and in the fall, those channels will have some great new shows that I'll be happy to keep you in the loop about!
Stay Tuned!
Susie
