East Tennessee PBS

Fun stuff shared by East Tennessee PBS Communications Coordinator Paige Travis.

Taping of the 31st season of Scholars’ Bowl concluded earlier this week. A record number of high school teams from East Tennessee and Kentucky competed for the championship title with teachers, parents, and longtime Scholars’ Bowl scorekeepers and judges in the audience. And at least one upstairs colleague who had to shut her door during taping so she wouldn’t yell out answers. The 2015 season of Scholars Bowl will begin airing in early January, and that’s how you can find out which school won!

We’re excited to unveil a new part of our website, and a new service to our community!
We were chosen as one of four PBS member stations in the nation to work with a planned giving expert and a website builder on a pilot project. With our input, they...

We’re excited to unveil a new part of our website, and a new service to our community!

We were chosen as one of four PBS member stations in the nation to work with a planned giving expert and a website builder on a pilot project. With our input, they built a microsite that localized a metric ton of information about the many, many ways people can donate to their favorite charities. It’s a win-win: we get to provide our community with important info about estate planning and lay the groundwork for members who may want to include East Tennessee PBS in their estate plans.

And ducks are just so cute!

You don’t have to be a certain age or a certain tax bracket to think about what kind of legacy you want to leave or what you want your family to do with your assets when you’re gone. We hope you’ll check out our Estate Planning site and request your free guide. And watch the encore presentation of Nature: An Original Duckumentary, on Wednesday, November 26, at 9 p.m.

How much do I love working at East Tennessee PBS? Let me count the ways starting with a sneak preview DVD of Death Comes to Pemberley on Masterpiece Mystery!

How much do I love working at East Tennessee PBS? Let me count the ways starting with a sneak preview DVD of Death Comes to Pemberley on Masterpiece Mystery!

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Blackberry Farm looms large in my imagination. 

It shouldn’t as much as it does. Some of my close friends play music there—for weddings and various other private gatherings and corporate events. I’ve even been there in person a loooong time ago when I was a cub reporter at my first real newspaper job.

But that was before concepts like heirloom vegetables, farm-to-table dining, James Beard-award winning chefs, and luxury resorts in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains were even invented. Right?

I hear stories of the fabulous meals and luxurious accommodations and prize-winning wine programs that have put Blackberry Farm on the map (like the maps of Bon Appetit and Garden and Gun magazines and famous people with private jets and weddings like Kelly Clarkson’s), and I think, “When will my chance come to experience this heaven on Earth?”

While I save my nickels and dimes (and figure out how to get hired as a roadie by my musician friends), I’ll live vicariously through Chef Garrett Scanlan, who helms our show A Fork in the Road. His recent visit goes behind the scenes with the stars of Blackberry Farm: Chef Joseph Lenn, Master Gardener John Coykendall and Garden Manager Jeff Ross. These guys work hard and smart to make guests and diners at Blackberry Farm enjoy an unforgettable stay in East Tennessee. Huzzah!

Watch A Fork in the Road with Chef Garret’s Blackberry Farm episode online here.

biomorphosis:
“ Colugos are little-known, forest-dwelling animals that have huge gliding membranes, similar to flying squirrels. This enables them to make spectacular leaps from tree to tree.
Baby colugos are born tiny and helpless, and are carried...

biomorphosis:

Colugos are little-known, forest-dwelling animals that have huge gliding membranes, similar to flying squirrels. This enables them to make spectacular leaps from tree to tree.

Baby colugos are born tiny and helpless, and are carried on the mother’s belly for six months until they are developed enough to strike out on their own. 

Sooo adorable! Makes me want to go home and lick, uh, I mean, hug my cat.

Unsubscribed. Permanently.

One of my duties as a social media manager is to find out why people unsubscribe from our weekly eblast.

Our eblast client, Constant Contact, offers subscribers the option to tell us why they’ve clicked the “unsubscribe” button and decided to cease receiving my informative electronic missives. Few people give reasons, but when they do, it’s frequently of the emphatic “I get too many emails!” or pragmatic “I moved out of your viewing area” variety.

Today I read a reason I’ve never seen before.

“Grant died suddenly and unexpectedly June 6, 2014.” It was signed, simply, Sharon.

That I knew the name Grant Fetters speaks volumes about how small Knoxville can be. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence that I recognize him as someone–a writer in a wool captain’s hat–that I’ve been connected to via LinkedIn for several years but never met in person.

Sharon’s short message told a brief, heartbreaking and thoroughly modern story. When your husband or wife (even parent or child) dies, you will be called upon by necessity to access his online accounts, log into his email to pay bills, respond to ongoing conversations, and, yes, unsubscribe him from email newsletters. On top of everything else that must be done in the wake of death, I can’t even imagine how hard it must be to do this.

Barely a week after Grant’s death, Sharon chose to inform some anonymous person behind the East Tennessee PBS eblast the reason for unsubscribing. In the same circumstance, I don’t know that I’d have the strength to type those crushing words and send them out into the internet void, not knowing whether they’d reach anyone who cared. Why would anyone care why someone doesn’t want to get an email newsletter anymore?

This is what touches me the most: Sharon gave a reason when she had every reason not to. Maybe it’s her way of carrying on her loved one’s digital legacy, speaking when he can speak no more. I just want her to know that I’m here, on the other side of that email message, and her small gesture made a difference to me.

Tonight’s live pledge is going to be a hoot! Starting at 8 p.m. we’ll broadcast the My Music special ‘50s and '60s Party Songs hosted by eternally cheerful Chubby Checker. Joining us in the studio to talk about their memories of classic songs like...

Tonight’s live pledge is going to be a hoot! Starting at 8 p.m. we’ll broadcast the My Music special ‘50s and '60s Party Songs hosted by eternally cheerful Chubby Checker. Joining us in the studio to talk about their memories of classic songs like “The Twist” and “Louie Louie” will be Frank Murphy of Classic Hits 93.1 and Hubert Smith, who hosts his own shows on Community TV and WUTK 90.3 FM. We’ll be dressed up in period attire and encouraging everyone to #pledgeETPBS by calling the number on your screen or donating online. I’m hoping one of these guys can explain the difference between the dances The Jerk and the Mashed Potato.

What the Kickstarter success of “Reading Rainbow” means for PBS member stations

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I was 10 years old when Reading Rainbow premiered on pbstv. This was the same age at which I was giving full-blown, no-notes-necessary book reports on Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew mysteries in front of my fifth grade class. I don’t recall how this went over with my classmates or teacher, but I do remember having absolutely no fear of standing at the blackboard and regaling 30 kids with the plot points of a 30-year-old novel.

In all likelihood, my moxie was inspired by Reading Rainbow. To this day, seeing those enthusiastic kids give their book reviews followed by the “ba-da-dah!” sound effect makes me feel so proud to be a reader. We’re in the same tribe, me and those kids. We love books and stories and sharing them. (Did I tell you how much I loved Grapes of Wrath?)

Fast forward to this week. I’m still an avid reader, and LeVar Burton has raised $2 million (and counting) to launch Reading Rainbow as an interactive website accessible to kids in homes and classrooms all over the world. The iPad app is already the best-selling kids’ app on the market. The website would add even more reading material and be available to all kids with internet access. The campaign video (above) sets out the whole plan.

Reading Rainbow is an idea whose time is now and forever. Burton is a superstar as the show’s host and as Geordi from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Kickstarter gets the attention of media outlets and people alike. And people? They like to back good ideas—especially when it involves kids. And contributing online is as easy as bidding on eBay for something you don’t really need or one-click buying yet another ebook on Amazon.

It’s perfect storm of winning variables. A sure thing. Did I mention it’s raised $2 million in two days? It’s raised $70,000 in the time I’ve been writing this blog.

Inside this success story, there’s a lesson for PBS member stations, and PBS at large. It has to do with a nostalgic and quality property. A demand for its renewal and survival. A need that can be met through many small donations by people who are invested in meeting that need. A belief in our ability to come together to help make something good happen. The ease of donating with just a click. The power of being a part of something bigger than ourselves. 

Our summer pledge drive begins tonight, and for the next 13 days, we’ll be asking our viewership of 1 million households to help us pay for the programs, old and new, that they love to watch, like Sesame Street, Downton Abbey, and News Hour; programs like Peg + Cat that educate kids about math; shows like Sewing with Nancy and Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting, which you can’t find anywhere else on television.

From its beginning in 1983 to its end in 2009, our station’s managers, employees and volunteers asked viewers to support Reading Rainbow, an example of quality children’s programming that’s even more rare in the market today than it was five years ago. Clearly, the need for non-commercial, trustworthy programming for kids hasn’t changed—only the ways we’re all asked to support it. And, yes, RR makes me feel fuzzier inside than, say, Motorweek, but there’s a need for that show too.*

Show us there’s a demand for these programs—that you support them, that you don’t want to live without them. That you want to keep them around now without having to watch them go, mourn their loss, then clamor to bring them back in 2025. And you can do that with just a few clicks.

— Paige

* Sorry, Motorweek fans! Let me hear from you and your cash money!

pbstv:

The PBS Online Film Festival returns June 16 showcasing diverse films from public television producers including independentlenspbs and POV, in addition to multiple PBS member stations. #PBSolff

Get ready to watch 25 new documentaries that will amaze, move and excite you! Learn more. 

Can’t wait to check these out!

Our summer pledge drive begins May 29, and I wanted to come up with a special theme for our social media campaign. I landed on #myETPBS.
Inspired by PBS’ Station Products & Innovation’s use of the #LocalPBS tag and our own long-running on-air tagline...

Our summer pledge drive begins May 29, and I wanted to come up with a special theme for our social media campaign. I landed on #myETPBS.

Inspired by PBS’ Station Products & Innovation’s use of the #LocalPBS tag and our own long-running on-air tagline “We’re your East Tennessee PBS,” I want to focus on the local personalities who not only make our station unique in Knoxville but also stand out among PBS member stations across the country. After all, who else has a singing cowboy? You bet yer spurs we’re proud of Marshal Andy and Riders of the Silver Screen, airing Saturday mornings. And we’re excited to have Stephanie Aldrich as the host and producer of Up Close airing Sunday mornings. And that Irish jokester Chef Garrett Scanlan is a born TV star.

#MyETPBS is a gateway to great national PBS programs, but it’s also a locally owned, locally operated television station presenting the stories of interesting East Tennessee residents. We host events to get our community members together to discuss issues and learn from—and about—each other. We help support the educational missions of local programs like Project GRAD.

If you value East Tennessee PBS’ on-the-ground commitment to our community as well as our on-air programming, I hope you’ll donate during the summer pledge period and share your own #myETPBS statement! You can see a few examples I made on our Pinterest page or watch for them starting later this week on our Facebook page. Get social!