LOCAL VALUE
WTIU is an integral part of south central Indiana’s advancement. We’re a trusted, community-based convener and facilitator for public dialogue, a multiplatform content and information provider, a valued partner, and education service provider that helps raise awareness and address local issues.
Localism: We are partners with organizations in all the communities we serve.
Quality: We serve viewers, not advertisers.
Respect: We respect the intelligence of all our viewers.
Knowledge: We encourage a sense of
discovery and wonder through learning.
VISION:
Children: We produce children’s television
not to make a profit, but to make a difference.
Citizenship: We are committed to provid-
ing a forum for discourse, a voice for the underserved, and a platform for analysis and understanding. There should be no cost of admission to participate in our country’s democracy.
Community: We promote understanding
through preserving the past, enlivening the present, and preparing for the future.
Culture: We are a museum, theater, con-
cert hall, and library all in one. We inspire, enlighten, and entertain.
Knowledge: We challenge the mind, ed-
ucate and inform—from teaching children their numbers and alphabet to providing college credit classes. We recognize that learning is not limited to a classroom.
KEY SERVICES In 2014, WTIU continued to use media to tell the stories of people, places, and events in south central Indiana that make the area an outstanding place to live. Elementary school-aged children, parents, and teachers across the state watch The Friday Zone, our Emmy-award winning children’s program that features STEM based content aligned with Indiana’s curriculum standards presented in a fun, lively, format. The Weekly Special is WTIU’s award-winning local cultural affairs program that celebrates the people, places, and events that make Indiana a unique place to live and work. Recurring segments include Indiana Spotlight, tank trips, musical acts, and artist showcases. When viewers want to know more about the economy, politics, education or the environment, they turn to Indiana Newsdesk, our weekly news program that focuses on stories that affect our community, state, and region. Last September marked the first anniversary of Indiana Newsdesk completing one year of producing a news show every week. In March we premiered Bill Cook: A Heck of a Ride, a WTIU documentary about Bill Cook, visionary founder and leader of the medical devices company Cook Group. In May we aired O’Bannon Institute: Cultivating Leadership – Food For Thought. This program featured General Colin Powell along with experts, and presented Hoosiers talking and learning about their local involvement and the politics of food supply. In August we premiered Indiana Motoring: Concours d’Elegance at French Lick. Shot at the prestigious Concours d’Elegance car show, the program explored Indiana’s rich automotive manufacturing history with such luxury models as the Auburn, Duesenberg, and Studebaker.
KEY SERVICES (continued) We aired several programs throughout the year that celebrated Indiana’s rich basketball heritage. Hoosier Rising: The Past and Present of Indiana University Basketball explored IU’s history and the rise to national attention. Bobby “Slick” Leonard: Heart of a Hoosier showcased the inside story of a seminal figure in Indiana history. Independent Lens: Medora was the gripping, critically-acclaimed documentary about one high school basketball team’s determination to compete, and the challenges facing American small towns.
IN THE COMMUNITY The year 2014 saw a great strengthening of WTIU Kids’ partnership with a regional children’s museum: The WonderLab Museum of Science, Health and Technology. In March, WonderLab and WTIU Kids co-presented a special weekend event, WTIU Kids Presents TV Technology. The event featured hands-on activities related to television production, including green-screen digital effects, scriptwriting and teleprompter, audio recording and podcasting, and special-effects make-up. In July, WTIU co-hosted WTIU Kids TV Tech WonderCamp, a week-long half-day camp for twenty-two 4th to 6th graders, culminating in a WTIU studio tour and an appearance on an episode of WTIU’s weekly state-wide children’s program The Friday Zone. Out of over a dozen camp sessions offered by WonderLab, the WTIU Kids TV Tech WonderCamp session was the highest-rated by both kids and parents. In August, WTIU again partnered with WonderLab at Bloomington’s 4th Street Art Festival, co-presenting the Kids Tent that included individual and cooperative art projects for kids.
WTIU Kids increased its participation in area events overall, adding appearances at the Project School Carnival, the Stinesville Stone Quarry Festival, Indiana University’s Statewide IT Conference Robot Rumble (where the WTIU Kids team advanced to the semi-finals), the WYIN Curious George BooFest, and the Owen County YMCA Halloween to its roster of events attended in 2014. The largest event added in 2014 was WTIU Kids day at the Monroe County Fall Festival in Ellettsville. It built on our success hosting our annual large-scale summertime event, WTIU Kids Day at the Monroe County Fair. The event attracted more than 400 elementary school students in attendance. WTIU Kids increased state-wide distribution of its weekly children’s series The Friday Zone by adding two more Indiana PBS stations: WIPB Muncie and WNIT South Bend.
LOCAL IMPACT WTIU’s local services had deep impact in south central Indiana in 2014. This has been an award-winning year for WTIU. Two WTIU productions were awarded a bronze award in the 35th Annual Telly Awards. The Weekly Special: Thanksgiving Tidings episode, produced by Sarah Curtiss and directed by Jay Kincaid, received the bronze award in the TV Program – Cultural category. Spirit of Brown County, produced by Jim Krause, was awarded a bronze award in the TV Programs – Documentary category.
IN THE COMMUNITY (continued) Locally, WITU Kids produced a series of seven locally-branded anti-bullying PSAs featuring children’s author and classroom speaker Brad Tassell. WTIU Kids participated in new, non-traditional methods of outreach in 2014. In February, WTIU Kids hosted a visit from the Indiana University chapter of College Mentors for Kids, an organization that pairs college students with at-risk elementary and middle-school students. More than 100 kids participated in a studio tour and videotaping of a special segment for The Friday Zone. In May, WTIU Kids was approved for a small grant to paint three utility boxes as a part of the Bloomington Utility Box Project. The artworks selected to be painted on the boxes were reproductions of children’s work submitted to the PBS KIDS Writers Contest. Each child’s first name, grade, and title of his or her story was included on the boxes along with the WTIU Kids logo. WTIU Kids’ partnership with Monroe Smart Start and Riley Physicians also grew, adding the main pediatric offices of Bedford and Martinsville to our Pediatric Waiting Room Monitor Program, which puts WTIU Kids content and messages from local pediatricians on dedicated branded screens in pediatric waiting rooms.
STORIES OF IMPACT Literacy Labs
In 2014 the WTIU Literacy Labs program expanded its scope. A $15,000 grant from Boston Scientific enabled us to purchase five new Literacy Labs. The grant also enabled us to hire an Outreach Associate whose main responsibility will be getting the Labs out into the communities of Southern Indiana. The primary goal of the initiative is to provide no-cost educational
resources to parents of preschool children at venues where their families already have a relationship. With these new Labs, we anticipate reaching hundreds of families.
Early Childhood Excellence Awards In April we held our first Early Childhood Excellence Awards. We partnered with Monroe County Smart Start to recognize early child care providers and organizations working to improve quality child care in Monroe County. We were thrilled to recognize more than 60 providers and organizations that are helping to prepare young children for school and for life.
News Coverage
The WFIU/WTIU News Bureau won an unprecedented number of awards in a single year. These included seven prestigious Edward R. Murrow Awards from the Radio Television Digital News Association for its on-air and online reporting, one of which won first place nationally. The awards make ours the most-recognized small-market broadcast operation this year, and, following WBHM in Birmingham, Alabama, the second-most-decorated radio or TV newsroom in America. The News Bureau was also honored in this year’s Society of Professional Journalists contest, collecting 25 awards. Shadows of Innocence, our documentary about the high rate of sexual assault among Indiana’s teenage girls, won an Emmy nomination and prompted legislation to study the problem of sexual assault in Indiana among teenagers. That study will be discussed during this legislative session. We have focused this year on following stories from start to finish. Examples include HJR3, Peter Kassig, Pre-K expansion, the Affordable Care Act, Bloomington deer hunting, Kirkwood development, and many others.
STORIES OF IMPACT News Coverage (continued)
We have increased our focus on investigative reporting. Recent examples include the decline of defense contracts in Indiana, the lack of regular inspections at funeral homes, logging in the back country of state forests, and the rise of PTSD among National Guard members. We produced a half-hour special for Indiana Newsdesk in June when Indiana’s ban on same sex marriage was lifted. We produced a great deal more digital content. We treated digital users as an audience distinct from our radio and TV audiences by giving them more in-depth articles, opportunities to interact, and by presenting stories in a way that can only be done online. We expanded our statehouse reporting by both adding a part-time reporter and by getting more content on air through live shots on Indiana Newsdesk.
We expanded election coverage adding more live breaks during the primary and general election nights. Our delays/closings and severe weather special coverage continued on-air and online and grew with additional entities signing up for our delays service.
“There are so many excellent programs on WTIU that I very seldom watch commercial TV. I give so that WTIU can continue to provide both educational and entertaining programs.”
- Harriet from Bloomington
“WTIU is an essential local asset. Your programs are such a breath of fresh air compared to other programming on cable.”
- Pam from Columbus
We hired consultants and we are in the process of working with other Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations to develop a statewide plan to deliver news across all platforms. The news department along with the IU School of Journalism hosted the Radio in the American Sector Fellows. Two journalists from Germany divided their time between observing and working in our newsroom and lecturing in the journalism school. The News Bureau Chief guest-lectured in a number of journalism classes on reporting, writing, covering a beat, and public relations. We redesigned our graphics and background for newsbreaks to provide a consistent, clean look between Indiana Newsdesk and newsbreaks.
For more public information and reports, visit
indianapublicmedia.org/about