Nashville Public Television productions received four nominations when The Nashville/Midsouth Chapter of The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) announced the nominations for the 24th Annual Midsouth Regional Emmy Awards at a reception November 20 at BMI headquarters on Music Row.

Garnering nominations were Next Door Neighbors: Somali (Suzy Hence, Will Pedigo) in the documentary-topical category; Next Door Neighbors: Hablamos Espanol (Kevin Crane, Matthew Emigh, Suzy Hence, Will Pedigo) in the public affairs category; and Next Door Neighbors series (Beth Curley) in the community service category.

Also nabbing a nomination was Underage and Under the Influence (Kevin Crane, Barry Cross, Steve Hall, Ken Tucker), a co-production with the Renaissance Center, in the community service category.

The 24th Midsouth Emmy Awards, hosted by NASCAR champion Darrell Waltrip, will take place on January 30, 2010 at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville.

[Updated 11/20/09 9:55 a.m. with additional rebroadcast info]
[Updated 9:52 p.m. with rebroadcast info]

Due to technical difficulties this evening, Thursday, November 19, many cable subscribers were unable to see video during a large portion of our broadcast of Next Door Neighbors: Bhutanese. We sincerely regret this, and are currently seeking a rebroadcast time and will rebroadcast the documentary tonight (Thursday, November 19) at 11 p.m., tomorrow (Friday, November 20) at 7 p.m. and Saturday, November 21 at 6 p.m. on NPT-Channel 8. The entire documentary is also available now for free viewing on our website at wnpt.net/nextdoorneighbors.

The Friday, November 20 broadcast at 7:00 p.m. pre-empt MODEL T’S TO WAR, which will air NPT2. The Saturday, November 21 at 6:00 p.m. will pre-empt WILD CHRONICLES and TENNESSEE’S WILD SIDE.

Thank you.

http://www.wnpt.org/productions/nextdoorneighbors/

Our latest Next Door Neighbors documentary, featuring Nashville’s newest refugee community (the Bhutanese) premieres tonight, Thursday, November 19th at 8:00 p.m.

Each of the Next Door Neighbors programs includes original music composed by two Nashville studio musicians, Shane Roberts and Kyle Jones. Azal Khan provides his recording expertise and use of his home studio.

Shane and Kyle usually record all the music for each program within 5 or 6 hours, which with instrument changes, and the time it takes to tune, mean many songs are first takes. The two musicians watch a clip of the documentary, we talk about the information being conveyed and they play.

The above clip highlights their contribution to the Next Door Neighbors series. As the Next Door Neighbors series producer, it’s always a pleasure to see how the finished music Shane and Kyle create heightens the production quality and experience of the documentaries. It’s pretty awesome to see it come together and I hope you enjoy the above clip.

The music Shane and Kyle perform layers additional meaning as the Next Door Neighbors series ultimately blends the strong musical traditions of Nashville, with the culture of our city’s newest Neighbors.

Following tonight’s premiere broadcast of Next Door Neighbors: Bhutanese at 8:00 p.m., be sure to stick around for encore broadcasts of the Next Door Neighbors installments, Somali and Hablamos Español.

From the NPT Pressroom:

*** Fourth Installment in NPT’s Original Documentary Series Explores Nashville’s Emerging Bhutanese population; Premieres Thursday, November 19 at 8:00 p.m. ***

Each year, new refugees with different backgrounds flee a variety of struggles to arrive in cities such as Nashville. They face an utterly new environment and a demanding sacrifice of their history, culture, friends and family. Every refugee community resettled to Nashville brings a changing combination of assets and challenges, but they are unified by a common aspiration. They all seek a better life, a permanent solution and a new home.

The Bhutanese are Nashville’s newest refugee community, and Nashville Public Television offers viewers a chance to see the city through this new community’s eyes with NEXT DOOR NEIGHBORS: BHUTANESE premiering on Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 8:00 p.m. on NPT-Channel 8. The documentary is the fourth installment in NPT’s four-part NEXT DOOR NEIGHBORS series, a recipient of a 2009 My Source Community Impact for Engagement Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Previous installments focused on the Kurdish, Somali and Hispanic populations.

“The ideals of refugee resettlement are sometimes at odds with reality,” says series writer, director and producer Will Pedigo. “The isolation and new environment can be harsher than imagined and the resettlement process can deliver less than expected. For new arrivals, every day is a race against time. After eight months the federal funding ends and the health insurance disappears. In Nashville and across the US, newly arrived refugees often go unnoticed, until they emerge as contributing residents and eventually Americans.”

In January 2007, the U.S. Department of State announced it would host the resettlement of 60,000 Bhutanese over the next several years to cities across the U.S. The first reached Nashville in July 2008, but most arrived in the middle of 2009. After their first year in Nashville, almost all of the Bhutanese lived in one southeast Nashville apartment complex.

When refugees first arrive in the U.S. they come with less than fifty pounds of baggage and an airplane ticket they have to repay within three years. Acceptance into the country is secured by the U.S. Department of State, but the local resettlement process is provided through volunteer agencies like. In Nashville, that includes Catholic Charities and World Relief. Placing new refugees in a tight geographical location like a single apartment complex has shown to speed up the resettlement process.
NEXT DOOR NEIGHBORS: BHUTANESE provides a picture of initial refugee resettlement, and examines the birth of a community. Viewers will learn about the resettlement process through the stories and challenges the Bhutanese face.

In addition to the NEXT DOOR NEIGHBORS series, Pedigo’s other notable writing, directing and producing credits include the NPT original productions Beautiful Tennessee: Our Scenic Waterways; Living On: Tennesseans Remembering the Holocaust and Tennessee Town Squares. Next Door Neighbors: Little Kurdistan won the 2008 MidSouth Regional Emmy Award for best Historical or Cultural Program Special.

The NEXT DOOR NEIGHBORS series includes in-depth web content at http://wnpt.org/productions/nextdoorneighbors, public forums and panel discussions after each of the four programs.

NEXT DOOR NEIGHBORS: BHUTANESE is made possible through a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s My Source initiative and is supported by the Nissan Foundation and The HCA Foundation on behalf of HCA and the TriStar Family of Hospitals. A partnership with the Vanderbilt University Center for Nashville Studies provided valuable research and community outreach.

The 40th Anniversary of Sesame Street has NPT Media Update Children’s Programming Correspondent and Sesame Street enthusiast Erin McInnis thinking again. This time, it’s about the plethora of OTHER great PBS children’s shows over the years. She’s compiled her favorites. Let the reminiscing (and debating) begin!

By Erin McInnis

Sesame Street kicked off its 40th year yesterday, sponsored by the number 40 and the letter H (I choose to believe the “H” is for “Happy Birthday”). If you didn’t know that Sesame Street was experiencing a milestone this year, you must be living under a rock. Even if you didn’t know an exact date, thanks to a multiday parade of Sesame Street Google images, appearances on daytime shows such as Today, and articles dedicated to the show’s relevance and staying power, Sesame Street is once again part of the public conscious. Not that the show has ever really not been, it’s just pushed to the side, particularly for those of us who don’t have small children in our immediate everyday lives.

There is no denying the staying power, the charm, or the relevance of Sesame Street. But all this attention has me thinking about all the other great children’s programming PBS has had over the years. Many of them obviously will not have the staying power of Sesame Street — how can a couple of seasons compare to generations of influence — but they carry on Sesame’s tradition, educating thousands of children in literacy, science, math, history, and literature. In honor of Sesame Street’s 40th Anniversary, I have come up with a list of what I feel are the top 10 PBS children’s shows of all time, present company excluded and in no particular order, of course. I’ve dug up clips for each. Feel free to correct me or add your own!

If you’re on the blog home page, click “read more” below to access clips. If not, they’re right here:

1. The Magic School Bus (1994 – 98)

2. 3-2-1 Contact (1980 – 88)

(Bloodhound Gang – part of 3-2-1 Contact)

3. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (1991 – 96)

4. Wishbone (1995 – 98)

5. The Electric Company (1971 – 77)

6. Ghostwriter (1992 – 95)

(Check out this clip, with Samuel L. Jackson as the dad)

7. Reading Rainbow (1983 – 2009)

8. Square One TV (1987 – 92)

(ok this is Mathnet – a section of Square One. My FAVORITE. I just had to put it in here)

9. Mister Rogers (1968 – 2001)

10. Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993 – 2002)

Come early at 2:30 for a light reception and origami craft led by Emily Winckler of the Consulate-General of Japan in Nashville.

When you look at a piece of paper, what do you see? If your answer is a flat, two-dimensional square, then BETWEEN THE FOLDS will astound you. Blurring the mysterious lines between art, science, sculpture and math, the film is an exhilarating adventure into origami, or paper folding, featuring works of art whose emotional expressiveness and engineering complexity defy logic. The eccentric artists and scientists in BETWEEN THE FOLDS envision the three-dimensional possibilities of paper and change the mundane into the poetic and magical—all without scissors, tape or glue. Ultimately, the medium of paper folding itself—a blank, uncut square—emerges as a resounding metaphor for the creative potential in us all.

ITVS Community Cinema in Nashville, a free documentary screening series presented by Nashville Public Television, Nashville Public Library and Hands On Nashville, is proud to present an exclusive screening of BETWEEN THE FOLDS with special partners Zeitgeist Gallery and the Consulate-General of Japan in Nashville. The screening will take place Sunday, November 15, at 3 p.m. at the downtown branch of the Nashville Public Library and will be followed by a panel discussion with Lain York, local artist and gallery manager at Zeitgeist Gallery in Hillsboro Village, Dr. Victoria Greene, professor of physics and executive dean, Vanderbilt University College of Arts & Sciences, and Malachi Brown, local computer programmer/origami artist. Andy Miller, Belmont University Math Professor, will moderate.

Participants are invited to come early at 2:30 for a light reception and origami craft led by Emily Winckler of the Consulate-General of Japan in Nashville .

Directed, written and produced by Vanessa Gould, BETWEEN THE FOLDS will premiere on Nashville Public Television on the PBS series Independent Lens in December.

BETWEEN THE FOLDS chronicles ten people whose lives have been transformed by paper folding. From artists to physicists to educators, many have abandoned careers and hard-earned graduate degrees—all to forge unconventional lives as modern-day paper folders.

While they may have come to origami through different experiences and for a variety of reasons, common threads emerge; paper folding consumes them, they talk about it in musical terms and many of these provocative and highly intelligent people practice paper folding because, well, it’s fun!

The film opens with three of the world’s foremost origami artists—a former sculptor in France folding caricatures rivaling the figures of Daumier and Picasso; a hyperrealist who walked away from a successful physics career to challenge the physics of a folded square instead; and an artisanal papermaker who folds impressionistic creations from the very same medium he makes from scratch.

However, as the film progresses, the artists become less conventional, and the post-modern concepts of abstraction, minimalism, deconstruction, process and empiricism take root —mirroring modern art itself. Abstract artists emerge with a greater emphasis on process and concept, rattling the fundamental roots of realism that have long dominated traditional paper folding. Eventually science emerges as another front in the exploration of folded paper—featuring advanced mathematicians and a remarkable scientist from the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT who won the MacArthur “Genius” Award for his computational origami research.

While debates arise on issues of technique, symbolism and purpose, the film ultimately culminates with the notion that art and science are two different interpretations of the very same world around us.

Next week marks the 40th Anniversary of Sesame Street. As NPT’s Erin McInnis points out, that’s two generations, at least! There’s no understating the educational and cultural impact of the show over the years, and to prove the latter point, I guarantee that you saw at least one Sesame Street costume this past Halloween, and not necessarily on children. A quick gander around Flickr illustrates that Elmo, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie and the gang are alive and kicking — in Times Square; on the streets of New York; at house parties and more.

Here are a few we liked on Flickr. Enjoy! Happy Birthday Sesame Street!

It was 35 years ago when a self-described “rag tag bunch of long-haired hippie public television types” caught Willie Nelson on video camera and produced the very first episode of Austin City Limits. To celebrate the show’s anniversary and his new record, Nelson returns with Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel for a very special “Willie and the Wheel” episode on Saturday, November 14 at 11:00 p.m. It’s just one of several special episodes this month, highlighted by a complete hour with Pearl Jam. It’s been 18 years since the band’s seminal debut, Ten, and in a sign that it may be a strong as ever, the band’s latest, Backspacer, just hit number one. Catch the show that Billboard describes as, “Vedder and the band…riffing with the crowd as if everyone was mingling at a party rather than at the taping of a legendary TV music series,” on Saturday, November 21 at 11:00 p.m.

Got a request for John Fogerty? Here’s your chance to make it. Saturday, November 7 at 8:00 p.m. NPT offers a very special broadcast of John Fogerty – Live By Request. Just like it sounds, Fogerty will be performing live and taking requests from you and other PBS viewers around the nation who call into the special toll-free number. If you want to experience Fogerty even more live, scroll down for a chance to win tickets to his performance at the Ryman on November 22.

American Masters profiles Woody Guthrie. Independent Lens shares the emotional roller coaster ride of Roque Wave drummer Pat Spurgeon as he awaits a kidney transplant, and for those who missed it when it was pre-empted earlier this year, Great Performances offers an encore broadcast of Harlem in Montmartre.

It’s another great month of music programming on NPT.

Read the Rest of the NPT Music Monthly November 2009 on the wnpt.net news page. It’s the complete listing of all the music programming coming to NPT this month, including all the above mentioned artists, plus The Beatles, Jackson Browne, Elvis Costello, Sugarland, Celtic Woman, OneRepublic and plenty more. Subscribe for free at wnpt.net. Tell your friends!

Congratulations to our winners, Sheila Lawrence and Steve Morley, who each get a pair of tickets to see John Fogerty at the Ryman. We also wanted to give a nod to Michael Davis, who gets an honorable mention. Thanks!

Winners:

Sheila Lawrence
Wish i had a dollar for every time i’ve been told
“Your song’s gonna be a hit, if we can get it ‘on hold’!”
And for every time of closing sunset grill
Talking music and drinking gin
Oh lord, stuck in nashville again…..

Steve Morley
I’m singin’ in a bar on Broadway, back home they think I’m doin’ okay
But they don’t know that Music Row might as well be a world away
And you won’t hear no country now from the stage at the Exit/In
Oh, Lord, stuck in Nashville again

Honorable Mention:

Michael Davis
When I was just seventeen
I thought I had made my plans -
I’d be a big hit down South,
Surrounded by my fans.
The bus dropped me off on Broadway -
Nobody knew my name.
Oh, lord; stuck in Nashville again.

*******

[UPDATED: We've updated language to clarify how long the verse should be. Basically, just write a new verse to the song]

*******

Enter Our “Stuck In Nashville, Again” Lyric Contest and Win Tickets to See John Fogerty at the Ryman Auditorium

John Fogerty will not only be on NPT on Saturday, November 7 at 8:00 p.m., with John Fogerty: Live By Request, he’ll also be at the Ryman Auditorium on November 22, and NPT wants you to be there. We’ve got (2) pairs of tickets to the concert. To enter to win the tickets, we’d like you to imagine that the classic Fogerty-penned Credence Clearwater Revival song “Lodi” is really about Nashville, and then write a four-line new verse that fits the melody and ends with the line, “Oh Lord, stuck in Nashville again.”

To enter, budding lyricists must email their entry to tv8@wnpt.net with “Stuck in Nashville” in the subject line.

Entries will be accepted beginning on Monday, November 2 through 5:00 p.m. November 13. Winners will be notified on November 15 on how to get their tickets. Winning entries, and several honorable mentions, will posted here on the NPT Media Upate blog (http://www.npt08.wordpress.com) on Monday, November 15.

Be creative. Put some landmarks in there. Keep it clean. Good luck!

And don’t forget to tune in for John Fogerty: Live By Request on Saturday, November 7 at 8:00 p.m. on NPT. Just like it sounds, Fogerty will be performing live and taking requests from you and other PBS viewers around the nation who call in to the special toll-free number.

Beth Curley and Meigs Magnet Middle School Principal Jon Hubble Taking Care of Business

“She was pleased to learn that this academic magnet school offers five foreign languages, including Chinese,” says NPT producer Greta Requierme, who has a 5th grader at the school. “She looked right at home in the principal’s office, sitting behind the desk.”

JoAnn Scalf, director of education at NPT, also has a daughter at Meigs.

“I got to see a lot of technology in the classroom,” Beth tells us, “which is great, because NPT provides a lot of material for classrooms. I was excited to see technology being used in real classroom situations.

“I love kids, and it was a really fun day. Thumbs up to principal Hubble and everyone at Meigs for the fantastic work they do, and a big thank you for inviting me to be a part of it.”

*Contrary to some published reports, Beth DID NOT interrupt the morning announcements to thank the students for listening, remind them of the value of the morning announcements, and offer to thank them for their support with a gift of an NPT water bottle and the complete collection of NPT’s Memories of Nashville series. She DID tell them, however, that Meigs Magnet School is THEIR magnet school.

Beth Curley and Meigs Magnet Middle School Principal Jon Hubble Walking the Halls.