New Primetime Home for Indie Series Emerges From Independent Strategy Task Force Meetings

ITVS President and CEO Sally Jo Fifer Applauds Year-Round Monday Slot on PBS Core Schedule to Help Meet First-Order Mission of Public Broadcasting

I’m pleased to report that the Independent Strategy Task Force has emerged from months of conversation to deliver a new 10 p.m. primetime slot on Monday nights for Independent Lens and POV.  This is great news for our series filmmakers and audiences, but more importantly it affirms the partnership and mission that independents and public broadcasting steward together: amplifying diverse voices to strengthen our democracy.
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Tags: Independent Lens, indies, ITVS, P.O.V., PBS, primetime, Sally Jo Fifer

New York Women in Film & Television Honors ITVS President

ITVS President and CEO Sally Jo Fifer was awarded the Loreen Arbus Award for Those Who Take Action and Effect Change on Wednesday, December 7 in New York City. ITVS was recognized for spearheading public media’s Women and Girls Lead campaign.

Each December, New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT) presents the Muse Awards for Vision and Achievement, honoring women who have made significant contributions to the field.

Some 1,200 industry guests gathered to celebrate the accomplishments of the 2011 Muse Award recipients: actors Claire Danes and Christine Baranski, TV celebrity Martha Stewart, Sony Pictures Classics co-founder Marcie Bloom, and Budd Enterprises president Nadine Schramm. At the same luncheon, Sally Fifer accepted the Loreen Arbus Award on behalf of ITVS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and PBS and expressed great appreciation for the independent filmmakers who provided the powerful stories at the core of Women and Girls Lead.

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Tags: Awards, ITVS, muse awards, New York City, new york women in film & television, Sally Jo Fifer, women and girls lead

Murdoch Meltdown Solidifies the Value of Public Media

By Sally Jo Fifer

ITVS President & CEO Sally Jo Fifer calls on public media leaders to put “new technology to work for a public interest free from the gravity of profit.”

Sally Jo Fifer, President & CEO of ITVS

Information is valuable.  It’s valuable to those of us working in public media and it’s valuable to Rupert Murdoch, who started out owning a single Australian afternoon tabloid newspaper and ended up building the $33 billion News Corp empire by acquiring information, often at great cost, and packaging it to maximize profits.  Yet for Murdoch, perhaps no information in recent memory was as costly as the phone messages his staff allegedly stole, toppling the 168-year-old News of the World despite a circulation of 7.5 million.

On the surface, it would seem that there could be no two beasts as dissimilar as public media and tabloid journalism. One strives to serve the public with the information and tools it needs as citizens; the other hawks sex scandals, celebrity secrets, and other entertainments.

It might seem like they are the yin and yang of media, defined by their contrasts yet containing surprising elements of one another.  Public media, after all, must plumb the public’s obsessions — some dark, some trivial — in order to compete in the media marketplace and serve its audience. And tabloid journalism often invokes “the public interest” in its defense, as the National Enquirer does in ferreting out the untrustworthiness of public figures like John Edwards.
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Tags: indies showcase, ITVS, public media, rupert murdoch, Sally Jo Fifer

The FCC Report on Information Needs of Communities: A Moment of Truth, Part II

By Sally Jo Fifer

ITVS President & CEO Sally Jo Fifer explores how the FCC’s latest report on media and technology affects ITVS, independent producers, and the public media ecosystem.

Sally Jo Fifer, President & CEO of ITVS

In Part One of this post, I talked about the Federal Communication Commission’s significant report on the impact of technology on the media landscape, ending with the question: What should we do?  And how does this debate directly impact ITVS, independent producers, and the public media ecosystem?

Other voices have already chimed in on these questions, including think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, echoing some of the FCC’s findings (universal broadband) and differing on others (restructuring public media funding).  However, few are considering the big picture with the work and role of independent filmmakers in mind — despite the fact that the FCC report emphasizes the important role of deeper reporting, storytelling, and media making in our democracy, quoting news directors like Matthew Zelkind of WKRN in Nashville:  “Long-form stories are dying because they’re not financially feasible. … It’s all economically driven.”

Independent documentary filmmakers work outside of the newsrooms and stations whose decline and challenges the FCC report describes.  Yet their role in long-form storytelling — in digging deeper into immigration through films like Welcome to Shelbyville or capturing the soldier’s experience of the battlefield and returning home in Hell and Back Again — continues to grow alongside their capacity and ability to innovate with new media: games for Garbage Dreams, The Revolutionary Optimists and Half the Sky; interactive experiences for The Way We Get By and Deep Down; interactive online chats and screenings; and the list goes on.  The fact is, these professionals already work in the shifting space between commercial and non-profit media, moving back and forth between worlds.
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Tags: fcc, independent filmmakers, PBS, public media, Sally Jo Fifer

The FCC Report on Information Needs of Communities: A Moment of Truth for Public Media: Part I

By Sally Jo Fifer

ITVS President & CEO Sally Jo Fifer responds to the FCC’s significant report on the impact of technology on the media landscape.

Sally Jo Fifer, President & CEO of ITVS

How will 21^st century media serve the public interest and local communities?  That’s the question a number of recent reports have tackled, most significantly the summer publication of the Federal Communication Commission’s 465-page The Information Needs of Communities.

In the report, the FCC takes a hard look at what’s happening on the media landscape and provides a deep context for today’s transformation, referencing the words of Founding Fathers and Google executives alike alongside a huge mine of data and myriad anecdotes about court reporters, carrier pigeons, camera phones, and just about everything else under the sun.

It’s a semi-monumental report that raises many questions with few answers.  But the way it asks the questions tasks all of us to put our heads together — and our resources and goodwill — to figure things out. And fast.  As the report reminds us: “Americans need to at least come together around one idea: that democracy requires, and citizens deserve, a healthy flow of information and a news and information system that holds powerful institutions accountable.”
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Tags: fcc, independent filmmakers, PBS, public media, Sally Jo Fifer

ITVS at 20: Grateful and Hopeful for Independent Filmmakers

In celebration of ITVS’s 20^th anniversary, President & CEO Sally Jo Fifer introduces the ITVS Indies Showcase. The online festival, which runs from July 25 through September 23, will stream 20 groundbreaking documentaries by award-winning independent filmmakers.

Independent filmmakers, compelled to reckon with meaning and truth, often surface opposition to the general order of things, hoping to make our democracy better.

At ITVS, we are proud and grateful to work with some of society’s most vital storytellers, and very proud to celebrate their legacy with an online showcase of films spanning our 20-year history.

Each of these works — culled from the more than 1,000 that ITVS has supported over the last two decades — represents a personal vision in service of the public good.

The artistry and innovation of independent filmmakers drive ITVS — thanks to them, our audiences, and our partners in public broadcasting, we have become the most productive funder and presenter of independently produced public interest documentaries in the country.

Mandated by Congress and incorporated in 1991, ITVS took up its mission after a decade-long effort by independents and their supporters to ensure that Americans would experience diverse stories otherwise unseen and unheard on commercial and public television broadcasting.

Independent documentary producers emerged en force in the 1960s from a resolute determination to set the record straight on the new, all-powerful medium of television — a medium suddenly made approachable by a new technology: the Sony Portapak camera.

Without the ballast of studio cameras or sponsoring advertisers, independents swarmed the streets to find their stories — not unlike the 19^th century Realism painters who dispensed with royal portraits to capture farmers in the fields. Public television provided the distribution strategy that encouraged foundations to invest in these storytellers as agents to invigorate and inform our democracy.
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Tags: film festival, independent films, independent producers, ITVS Indies Showcase, Sally Jo Fifer

From “Television’s Independent Voice” to “Public Media’s”

By Sally Jo Fifer

ITVS President & CEO Sally Jo Fifer explains why the times call for a new tagline.

Since 1991, the work and mission of ITVS has been reflected in our simple tagline: “Television’s Independent Voice.”  Twenty years later, after careful consideration, we have made a small but important change, becoming “Public Media’s Independent Voice.”

The most obvious reason for this change is that what we once called television now intermingles and crossbreeds with video media on countless devices: desktops, laptops, tablets, smart phones, gaming consoles.  The most important reason, however, has less to do with the devices than with a moment of truth for public media in the brave new 21^st century world.
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Tags: CPB, independent producers, ITVS, new media, PBS, public broadcasting, public media, Sally Jo Fifer

Fighting for the Public Square

By Sally Jo Fifer

ITVS President & CEO Sally Jo Fifer explains why — now more than ever — our democracy depends on the in-depth, diverse, and nuanced stories of independent filmmakers.

Beyond the Box trumpets the work of independent filmmakers, and rightly so.

Amid the posts, an occasional report from the organization about the organization seems in order — and not just because ITVS is rolling into its 20^th year.  We all have a stake in the health of the public institutions that serve us and for which we fought hard to make possible.

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Tags: CPB, democracy, filmmakers, Independents, PBS, public television, Sally Jo Fifer

From the President’s Desk — Welcome to the New ITVS Website!

After a year of thinking and building, coding and tweaking, I’m thrilled to show you our online remodel of www.itvs.org.

If you’re new to ITVS, what you’ll find on our new site is the full sweep of the work we do: the award-winning documentaries and new media we present on television and online; the many ways we help viewers, communities, and educators access social issue programming to connect with one another; the funding and services we provide to empower independent producers to create programming that serves the public interest.

For those of you who know ITVS, you’ll see that our redesign reflects the impact of the changing media landscape — a world that is more digital, more global, more user-centered, more networked, and more impact-oriented than before. Here’s what’s new and what it means for you:

• More, better, and more accessible video: A new section contains a wealth of high-quality formatted and embeddable video, including film trailers, clips, and other interviews and behind-the-scenes content.

• New media showcase: Experience ITVS’s interactive games, websites, and other new media features.

• 21^st century catalog: Search, sort, and browse our nearly 800 programs by topic, region, zip-code-based broadcast listings, online availability, or nearby theatrical screenings.

• Film profiles: Find detailed synopses, filmmaker bios, viewer comments, and up-to-the-minute viewing info along with press kits, reviews, and awards, and film-specific engagement resources.

• New tools for social media, community engagement, and educators: Integrated social media tools, expanded Community Cinema and Community Classroom sections, and specialty engagement resources, video modules, and lesson plans make it easier for audiences, filmmakers, and communities to connect and engage.

• Filmmaker resources and support: Find the optimal initiative for a project, apply online, and access special reports about the media landscape.

• And more: Learn about series such as Independent Lens and international initiatives like the Global Perspectives Project.

Whether you’re a viewer, producer, educator, or partner, we’ve built this site to give you more access, more control, more information, and more input. We hope you’ll use it, enjoy it, participate, and help us make it better in the weeks to come.

Sally Jo Fifer
President and CEO

Tags: film funding, ITVS, Sally Jo Fifer, website