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Some changes may be coming to Insight’s cable access programs.
This from Rick Redding:
Shows like DotCom, with Bob Sokoler, and the lineup of sports programming (Red and Blue Review, Page One Sports) as well as a diverse group of programs including Villionaire, Our Kids by JCPS, Kentuckiana 2day and the Scott Davenport Show (Bellarmine’s coach) are all carried on Channel 2.
No one, including Sokoler, that I talked with knew what the plans are. There are about a dozen freelance production personnel who work on the local programming at the company.
Jason Keller, an Insight spokesman, acknowledged the company is working with TV consulting company Frank Magid Associates (which has done work with WHAS-TV) and is considering changes for the station.
“Insight is focused on making all our products better,” he said. “We are reviewing ways Louisville families can receive expanded news and entertainment about our community.”
I’m a big fan of cable access programming. I don’t like it ironically, I genuinely like it. The wide-array of quirky and flat-out bizarre programs available in St. Louis brightened my Saturday afternoons when I was a kid. Insight’s shows are much more professional than a lot of what I used to watch, but I wonder if this change will make everything even more slick. I kind of miss the madcap shows (with names like The St. Louis Beach Report and Worldwide Magazine) of my hometown. What should I be watching locally to see that “Let’s put on a show!” spirit?
This report comes from WFPL arts and humanities reporter Elizabeth Kramer
WFPL aired two reports this week that showed how the recession has hit artists and arts organizations. The feature that aired Monday told the story of how the costume shop at Stage One, the Louisville children’s theatre, was shut down and its employees laid off. It also had the voice of a painter from Lexington who has seen the sale of his work plummet and, therefore, his own earnings. In the midst of reporting on this story, the Kentucky Arts Council announced that it would be cutting several grant programs for the coming fiscal year because of the precarious state of Kentucky’s budget. This report told how council officials don’t want to have these programs, which had approaching application deadlines, be shut down from lack of funds in the midst of the granting process.
The next two graphs here give a closer look at the programs the council has temporarily suspended, so you can see how their funding levels have diminished since the economy began to deteriorate. The grants in this first graph show previous funds for programs that benefited nonprofit arts and community organizations statewide and required those organizations to put up matching funds in their applications.
The feature that aired Monday focused, in part, on a study by a nonprofit called Leveraging Investments in Creativity. It showed how artists are faring in the recession. The group’s executive director, Judilee Reed, talked about how among all artists, it’s often visual artists who work independently, that have a harder time in general but especially when the economy nosedives. Reed said, “The impact of this is, of course, less income, barriers to affordable health insurance and health care, and a lack of resources to obtain a professional development and training that artists require.” Well, that point become a bit more salient when I looked at one of the area’s the arts council is putting on hiatus. It’s the individual artist professional development grant, which provides artists up to 50 percent of funding needed to attend a seminar, take a class, or what have you, to boost their skills. This graph shows how that program has been funded in recent years, but unfortunately, it doesn’t illustrate how the development participating artists got have helped them continue to make their art and contribute to communities throughout Kentucky.
Meanwhile, the Kentucky Arts Council is keeping in place one of its largest programs — and one that benefits individual artists. That’s the Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship Awards, which isn’t a grant but an award program. In 2008, eight artists received the award, which included $7,500, and an additional 15 received $1000. But that program, too, has fallen off sharply with the recession.
Another program provides artists with employment — and furthers arts education. The Teacher Initiated Grant Program once had strong funding, but, like other areas, has fallen. To qualify, its teachers and their schools that apply for the grant, must also put up matching funds, to have an artist in residence at the school for one to four weeks. Less funding in this program means less for artists and students.
By far, the largest grant program is now knows as Kentucky Arts Partnership Grants. This is the first year for these grants, which replaced a mix of grant programs (Challenge and General Operating Support grants) for nonprofits that provide arts programs and services throughout the year. Last year, it provided 90 organizations with operational funding. This included groups from as far and wide and VSA Arts of Kentucky to the Montgomery County Council for the Arts. (The grantees getting the most funding in FY 2009 were, in order, Actors Theatre of Louisville with $157,690; the Speed Art Museum with $144,465; and The Louisville Orchestra with $86,166). Five years ago, the funding level of grants got a significant boost. Now, the recession has that level falling back toward the 2004 level.
The annual Safe Schools Data Project Report came out today. Here’s the WFPL story, and here’s a link to the study (PDF).
Violations of board of education rules were on the rise in Jefferson County schools (law violations were down). And if you turn to page 47 of the study, you can see the racial disparities in violations statewide. Center for School Safety director Jon Akers says the violations mirror crime rates outside of schools, but the data could be skewed in the report. For example, he says multiple incidents with students could be reported individually, and a misbehaving or frequently punished student could drive the rate up.
So it seems possible there’s a gap in punishment for students based on race, if some students are punished or reported less or more frequently than others. There’s not data for this, though.
In case you missed it, Stephanie Crosby did a report on the rise in requests for early labor in Kentucky. You can listen to it here.
Some excerpts:
When the March of Dimes released its annual report card on the frequency and causes of premature births in November, Kentucky got an ‘F’.
[edit]
A number of medical conditions can cause a woman to go into labor before she’s carried a baby a full forty weeks. But the thing doctors have been noticing over the last several months is more women asking to go into labor early.
“Can’t you get this over? I’m just so uncomfortable. My back hurts, my legs hurt, etc. etc. etc.,” says Dr. Jeffery King, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Louisville and Director of Maternal Fetal Medicine there.
He’s seen it in his own practice. He says many doctors can feel pressured to comply.
[edit]
Pulmonary infection, temperature instability, jaundice, hypoglycemia, and long-term behavioral problems are more likely for what doctors are now calling late, pre-term babies, infants born between 35 and 40 weeks.
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has recommended for the past ten years that doctors and hospitals refuse elective labor and delivery before the 39th week of pregnancy, for these very reasons. But Dr. Ruth Shepherd with the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Human Services says a growing number of doctors are ignoring those guidelines.
Maybe that’s the idea they had at Papa John’s central when they were brainstorming the new Super Bowl ad.
The Super Bowl is a big pizza delivery day, but rather than advertise before the game–like Pizza Hut will–Louisville-based Papa Johns will run a documentary-style ad two minutes into the game. And it apparently won’t look like a regular ad.
From the New York Times
The spot, scheduled to appear near the two-minute warning of the first half, will feature John Schnatter, the company’s founder, delivering pizzas to the people behind the scenes at Super Bowl XLIV on Feb. 7 — the on-field line painters, for example.
The commercial will be filmed on Sunday during the Pro Bowl by NFL Films for that in-the-game look. Because the Super Bowl will be played in the same venue as the Pro Bowl, when the commercial appears during the Super Bowl it may seem as if it is taking place live.
That may not look like a the other Super Bowl ads, but don’t all the recent Papa John’s ads follow Schnatter as he delivers pizza to unsuspecting customers? Has anyone ever ordered and had Schnatter come to the door with cameras? They’re created by the Zimmerman Advertising of Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Kentucky Space is an interesting organization doing some fascinating science work in the commonwealth. Now, Business First reports that their work is getting national attention.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has selected a Kentucky-built satellite, called KySat-1, to fly in its Glory mission in November.
Ky-Sat-1 will fly as part of NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites, or ELaNA, mission., which calls for the launch of small research satellites for universities.
Satellites from Colorado and Montana will also be sent up.
From WFPL’s environmental reporter Kristin Espeland-Gourlay
On Wednesday, WFPL announced the launch of a new, regional environmental news service called the Ohio River Radio Consortium. We’ll be commissioning stories from public radio reporters throughout the Ohio River Valley – from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Cairo, Illinois, and points in between, including here in Kentucky. And then stations throughout the network will be able to air them. It’s our effort to broaden and deepen news coverage of our watershed, mainly because environmental issues don’t stop at state borders.
We’re not only talking about water stories here. True, the river connects us—geographically, socially, historically, and economically. But that’s only part of a watershed that’s home to one of the nation’s largest concentrations of people. Pesticide run-off from a farm near Pittsburgh rushes past the drinking water pipes for Cincinnati. Mountaintop coal mining is changing the landscapes of Appalachia, and questions now confront us about our energy future. But there other kinds of environmental stories to tell in our region, about cities reconnecting residents with their waterfronts, biologists saving endangered species, local farmers getting more food on local tables—and so much more. In short, telling the environmental stories of a region connects the dots, and may ultimately help us all make more informed decisions about where we live.
So listen for stories from around the region, and let us know what you think. We hope to start a conversation, and that you’ll be a part of it. (And by the way, our new website is almost ready – and we’ll let you know about it right here.)
