Some of you may have seen Wisconsin Public Television's coverage of Governor Walker's State of the Budget Address on Tuesday. Behind the scenes it was anything but business as usual. The extremely tight security at the Wisconsin State Capitol presented extra challenges for the production crew trying to bring cameras, lighting equipment and other gear into the second floor Assembly Parlor where we set up our mini studio. Each entry required passing through 2-3 checkpoints of security.

30 minutes before the Governor's speech thousands of noisy, angry protesters converged on the police barricade just outside the Assembly windows. That is also the exact spot where our director, producer and technical support team are working to bring you the live broadcast from our production truck.

In one ear we heard chants of "This is what democracy looks like" in the other ear "standby in 3, 2, 1. The viewers at home only saw the quality production they are accustomed to getting from Wisconsin Public Television... despite that it was one of the more bizarre, challenging – and perhaps memorable live productions we may ever encounter.

***in the category of full disclosure the employees of Wisconsin Public Television are state employees.

Though I had not watched regularly for years, I was sad to see "At the Movies" end. The fact that I still thought of the program as "Siskel & Ebert" no matter who filled the chairs in the later years indicates what an impression it made on me in its early years as a public television program.

It's certainly the most successful public to commercial television crossover (where is Bob Vila today?). It may have succumbed to schtick in its marketing-- the two critics played up their rivalry but were in fact friends--but, like a lot of public television, the idea was an original.

There was Gene Shalit on "Today", and Leonard Maltin for a time on "Entertainment Tonight" and many local newscasts had an entertainment critic (I remember WRC's Arch Campbell from my days in DC), but it was pairing two combative critics that was the show's genius.

You can watch a nice remembrance of the show's history on the At the Movies Web site presented by the most recent hosts A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips (a University of Minnesota classmate of my office mate Laurie Gorman, I've just learned) here.

National Public Radio is no longer calling itself National Public Radio, opting instead for just the initials NPR, reports the Washington Post, saying it's more streamlined and modern.

If you've downloaded an NPR podcast or gone to npr.org to read a news story, you know that NPR is much more than broadcast radio, which was clearly a motivation for the name change.

It is, perhaps, a bit too easy to poke fun at this type of rebranding. "NPR used to stand for something, but now..." The most infamous is Kentucky Fried Chicken's change to KFC, as if removing "fried" from their name would remove any concern about nutrition.

I looked into this a little bit and it turns out KFC is bringing back the full Kentucky Fried Chicken title at new locations, and trying to emphasize its Southern roots. I'll raise a wing to that.

Maybe one day, when NPR content is somehow being beamed directly to our brains, they'll bring back National Public Radio as a quaint reminder of a bygone time.

After all, nothing beats the original recipe.

This is cool: Wisconsin Public Television's LZ Lambeau event in Green Bay has prompted three other states to likewise honor Vietnam veterans in their own similar celebrations. Organizers in Michigan, Oklahoma and Texas plan welcome home events after seeing the huge turn-out for the Wisconsin venue. About 70,000 veterans, relatives and supporters took part in Landing Zone Lambeau the week-end before last.

Take a look at the newly introduced video portal from PBS - video.wpt2.org This new site takes episodes, collections and specials from all of our locally produced programs and puts them in one place. We are adding new content daily so check back frequently to explore new content and re-experience some of your favorites from the past.

Can't find what you're looking for? There are a variety of ways to search our video content. If you're looking for something specific you can choose a particular program that you're interested in and sort through the videos by topic.
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If you're trying to find out as much as possible on a particular subject, you can select from a list of topics or use the search function to find video from all PBS programs.