Report. to the Community. Nashville Public Television wnpt.org

Transcription

1 Report to the Community 2013 Nashville Public Television wnpt.org

2 From left, Julie Dunfey, producer, The Dust Bowl, Dayton Duncan, writer and producer, The Dust Bowl, Beth Curley, NPT president and CEO, and Kevin Crane, NPT VP of content and technology. A Letter from the President Each year, our Report to the Community marks the end of another fiscal year, surveying a dozen months of achievements in programming, community engagement, digital strategies and service to the Middle Tennessee community. It s also an opportunity to hint at what s coming next. This time, we not only celebrate one year of NPT, but 50 years, and look ahead with an even deeper understanding of who we are -- inward at our role as a non-profit community licensed public television station, and outward at the needs of the city we represent. That s why in the pages ahead you find us reminiscing about how far we ve come, from our beginnings as a school-board licensed station named WDCN. But not too much. There s work to do in the Nashville that we live in now. So you ll read about our continued work on the Children s Health Crisis and Next Door Neighbors projects. You ll discover our new documentary uncovering disturbing domestic violence statistics, and be introduced to a new initiative designed to engage the public in discussions about aging. Contemporary public media means telling stories like these, but also engaging historians to help us understand now, the ramifications of what happened then, as our Tennessee Civil War 150 series does so well. It also means documenting the vibrant travel, art and cultural scene in Nashville, as our signature shows like Tennessee Crossroads and Arts Break do better than anyone else. We re proud of where we ve been. And excited about where we re going. And honored you re joining us. Thank you for making the journey possible. Beth Curley President and CEO Nashville Public Television NPT Officers & Directors Richard F. Warren, Jr., Chair Beth Curley, President and CEO Robert V. Dale, Treasurer Frank E. Gordon, Secretary Scott E. Becker Jeffrey W. Buntin, Sr. Gloria Churchwell Thomas G. Cigarran Anne Davis Howard Gentry William W. Hastings Jack D. Lowery, Jr. Cheryl W. Mason Debby Dale Mason Charlie McCarter Susannah Scott-Barnes Timothy J. Walsh Peggy Warner Cristina Welhoelter Emeritus Charles W. Cook, Jr. Ben R. Rechter NPT Community Advisory Board Bob Loflin, Chair NPT Senior Management Beth Curley, President and CEO Kevin Crane, VP of Content and Technology Kathy McElroy, VP & Chief Financial Officer Daniel Tidwell, VP of Development and Marketing Nashville Public Television 161 Rains Avenue Nashville, TN wnpt.org On the front cover, top left, clockwise: Minnie Pearl and Roy Acuff on Live from the Grand Ole Opry, March 1978, 1979 & Tennessee Crossroads production shoot, circa A Word on Words with John Siegenthaler premiered in January Volunteer Gardener started in 1991 with Malcolm and Mary Rust. Fran Powell in Jellybean Junction, 1974 and Teleteacher Ms. Henderson on set. Back cover, top row: Medical Town Meeting, a live call-in show, circa Starting in 1972, WDCN covered the Metro Council meetings live for over two decades. Middle row: Pat Sajak on Action Auction in Robin Roberts and Demetria Kalodimos on Action Auction in Al Gore on Action Auction. Bottom row: Oprah Winfrey on the public affairs show Symposia: Episodes in Black hosted by Gale Choice. A musical taping prior to 1973.

3 Celebrating 50 Years This fiscal year marked a milestone -- Nashville Public Television s 50th anniversary. It was in September 1962 that we, then WDCN, signed on the air. Plenty has happened since, including a shift from channel 2 to 8 in 1973 with a little help from Morgan Freeman and Big Bird and a rebranding of the station as NPT at the beginning of the new millennium. And who can forget the digital transition in 2009? We certainly can t. Middle Tennesseans who grew up watching WDCN will remember national kids productions like Sesame Street, Mister Rogers Neighborhood, Electric Company and Reading Rainbow. But they will also remember locally produced shows like Mrs.Cabboble s Caboose and Music FunFactory, hosted by the inestimable Fran Powell. Kids and adults alike will remember Tennessee Outdoorsman, which premiered in And then there was Action Auction, an on-air auction to raise funds for WDCN that became a yearly event until 2001, and included such notable guests as Good Morning America s Robin Roberts and Nashville s own Demetria Kalodimos. Tennessee native Oprah Winfrey, then Miss Black Tennessee, hosted a local health call-in show. In the late 70s, WDCN and WSM worked together to bring Live from the Grand Ole Opry to households across the country. The program still ranks as one of PBS mostwatched programs. In 1980, WDCN was the first Nashville station to bring closed-captioning for the hearing impaired. NPT has always been dedicated to broadcasting quality arts programming, bringing the art world into the lives of Nashvillians, and bringing Nashville to the world. Over the years, through programs such as Great Performances, American Masters, Live from the Lincoln Center, Simon Schama s Power of Art, Masterpiece Theatre, the Newport Jazz Festival, Art 21: Art in the 21st Century, Renoir to Rothko: The Eye of Duncan Phillips, How Art Made the World, Frida Kahlo, Sylvia Hyman: Eternal Wonder, John Baeder: Pleasant Journeys and The Gift, NPT has served more arts patrons on a yearly basis than any other arts organization in the area. Local productions of Christmas at Belmont and the Nashville Symphony s Opening Gala at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center showed the nation what Nashville is capable of. Our local series have become renowned throughout the nation for consistently drawing some of the strongest viewership in public television. Tennessee Crossroads celebrated its 25th Anniversary this year. A Word on Words wrapped its 41st year, making it the longest-running book discussion show on television, by far. Volunteer Gardener celebrated its 21st season in NPT has come a long way in 50 years, and so has the community it serves. Who would have thought back Installation of satellite dish, Live broadcast of Metro Council meeting. WDCN signs on from its Rains Avenue building, then that Nashville would have one the nation s largest Kurdish populations, and a diverse, thriving community made up of new arrivals from Somalia, Bhutan, Egypt, Mexico, South America and Sudan? NPT profiled them all on its Emmy Award-winning Next Door Neighbors series, with the same respect it s reserved for celebrating the region s more-established cultural connections to country music, bluegrass, and the natural beauty of the state. We marked our 50th in a number of ways. We produced a highlight show, NPT: The First 50 Years, complete with rare program clips and interviews with favorite NPT personalities. We made a wish for longtime viewers come true with the release of a DVD of some of Powell s favorite episodes from Mrs. Cabobble s Caboose. And we used Facebook s timeline feature to publish dozens of photos and tidbits from our history. Be sure to browse through. It s a wonderful trip made possible by you, and for you. 2

4 Programming American Graduate This past year, NPT continued its role as a part of American Graduate: Let s Make it Happen, a national public media initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to help Nashville and other communities across America address high school dropout rates. We broadcast our first original documentary as part of the project in October Produced by LaTonya Turner, NPT Reports: Translating the Dream takes an in-depth look at the graduation rate among ELL and immigrant students in Tennessee, the challenges they face that can prevent them from graduating on time, how schools and teachers are trying to address this increasingly demanding need, and how all of us are impacted when students drop out of school. In January, our second documentary aired. NPT Reports: Graduation by the Numbers examines the efforts in Nashville to keep students in school until they graduate. The initiative was enhanced with numerous screenings, both in the community and online. In September 2012, NPT was one of dozens of public stations across the country participating in American Graduate Day an unprecedented, simultaneous seven-hours of special programming focusing on education. produced by the Renaissance Center, premiered in May. It explores how transportation by water and steel brought great prosperity to the state just before the Civil War, only to give the invading Union Army a highway directly into the Deep South, eventually helping force the Confederacy to its knees. Tennessee Explorers Tennessee s history began with exploration, and that same adventurous spirit lives on today. In July, we premiered Tennessee Explorers, a partnership between Vanderbilt University and NPT funded by The National Science Foundation, that focuses on world class explorers across our state who are doing amazing research in many different types of science creating new technologies and mentoring the next generation of explorers. The first episode, produced by Ed Jones (Tennessee Civil War 150, Visions of the American West), looks inside some of the brilliant Tennessee minds leading us into the future: bio-anthropologist Tiffiny Tung, astrophysicist Keivan Stassun, and physician Rhea Seddon, one of NASA s first female astronauts. Tennessee Civil War 150 Begun in 2011 to coincide with the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, our original series Tennessee Civil War 150 continued this year. Created in partnership with the Renaissance Center, topics include the role of women, rivers and railways, music, the African-American experience and the Battle of Shiloh. In 2013, we produced two new episodes. In February, we premiered Looking Over Jordan: African-Americans and The War. Coproduced by series producer Ed Jones and LaTonya Turner with a musical score by the team of Joey Hodge and Joe DelMerico (HD Productions), the documentary includes in-depth interviews with Civil War scholars, historical reenactments, and moving songs of faith and hope, illustrating that despite continued oppression and violence, African Americans worked tirelessly to rebuild families torn apart by slavery, to educate themselves, and to claim their rightful place as American citizens. Rivers and Rails: Daggers of the Civil War, 3 NPT Reports: Public Affairs Documentaries on Today s Most Important Topics NPT Reports is our public affairs brand for timely public affairs documentaries. This year, we continued explorations into children s health, took an unflinching look at domestic violence and took steps toward a new initiative on senior health. With 35 percent of U.S. children living in a single parent household and one in 20 children in Tennessee being raised by a grandparent, it is clear the typical American family is no longer typical. In NPT Reports: Children s Health Crisis: Family Health the seventh installment in NPT s Emmy Award-winning series we explore the role shifting family structures play in the health of Tennessee children. Produced by Will Pedigo and hosted by actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley (Father of the Bride, According to Jim, and Nashville), the documentary premiered in June Focusing on early childhood, it examines non-traditional families overcoming

5 Programming Tennessee Crossroads As Tennessee Crossroads wraps up its 25th year, it continues to be the most-watched locally-produced PBS program in the United States. We thank you, the viewers, for introducing us to new artisans, restaurants, festivals and attractions that help make the show the Tennessee adventure that it is. Other PBS stations continue to approach us about what makes the show work. Our response? A great team of producers/writers with outstanding storytelling abilities mixed in with some Emmy Award-winning videographers and editors. challenges and demonstrates the importance of parents in child development. In particular, it takes a close look at the impact fathers have in the overall wellbeing of children. The documentary was previewed the morning of its premiere at the Fatherhood Summit, an inaugural event hosted by the Metro Public Health Department s New Life Program. Recognizing that the number of incidents and severity of domestic violence has been a public safety crisis in Tennessee for a decade, NPT, in March 2013, took a significant step toward educating the public and confronting the issues with NPT Reports: Domestic Violence: Living in Fear. In a new documentary, produced by Emmy Award-winning Greta Requierme (No Going Back: Women and the War), we learn about the survivors, the perpetrators, and the witnesses to these criminal acts of violence, through candid interviews with Nashville domestic violence experts and survivor advocates. This program is just one part of our Women and Girls Lead effort. In the spring, as a precursor to the new multi-year documentary series and initiative Aging Matters that we launched in September 2013, we worked with Alive Hospice to gather community members and professionals in Studio A to tape End of Life Decisions: An NPT Reports Town Hall Special. Broadcast in April and always available online at wnpt.org/agingmatters, the conversation focuses on the disparity between what we say we want at the end of life and what actually happens, how we can remedy that, and options for care at the end of life. This year, Crossroads gave fans 45 new stories, from the off-the-beaten-path studio of a master chairmaker in Athens to the five-star Hermitage Hotel in Nashville and the farm that supplies its restaurant. We met the official artist for Elvis Presley Enterprises and learned a few moves from a world-renowned buck dancer in Murfreesboro. We visited historic sites The Bluebird Café and United Record Pressing in Music City, caught up with a banjo ukulele craftsman in Sommerville, and spent time with artists who create everything from beautiful couture dresses from recyclable materials (Chattanooga) to sweet confections (Paris). To celebrate our 25th Anniversary, we revisited the archives for stories from Janet Tyson, Al Voecks and the late Jerry Thompson, aired the special, Tennessee Crossroads: The Early Years, and commissioned a special limited edition Hatch Show Print for our Keep Crossroads Traveling fundraising campaign. Light: Bruce Munro at Cheekwood Using an inventive array of materials and hundreds of miles of glowing optic fiber, light artist Bruce Munro transformed Cheekwood s beautiful gardens into an enchanting, dream-like landscape in the summer of 2013, and NPT was there to capture it with our own documentary, Light: Bruce Munro at Cheekwood. This beautiful profile of the exhibit by the British artist, only his second in America, includes gorgeous photography and in-depth interviews. 4

6 Programming Volunteer Gardener Volunteer Gardener s 21st season continued to provide solid gardening advice for Tennessee growers, with 20 fresh half-hour episodes and a new segment host, landscape architect Bryan Obara. Segments this season included advice on varied plant problems, expanding the plant palette by pushing the climate zone and raising beds for both vegetables and ornamentals. The show also continued to highlight the gardens of do-it-yourselfers and designers, and visited places of special gardening interest, such as the trial gardens of two renowned daylily hybridizers. A Word on Words One on One with John Seigenthaler In his 41st season, A Word and Words host John Seigenthaler set a new record for shows, taping 48 episodes in 12 months! Highlights of the season included an careerspanning discussion with Margaret Atwood, 2012 Nashville Public Library Foundation Literary Award recipient, as well as interviews with R.L. Stine (Red Rain: A Novel), Stephen Mansfield (Lincoln s Battle with God and Mormonizing America), Al Gore (The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change) Evan Thomas (Ike s Bluff), Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg (Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of JFK), Jon Meacham (Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power), Buzz Bissinger (Father s Day: A Journey into the Heart and Mind of an Extraordinary Son) and David Maranniss (Barack Obama: The Story). Seigenthaler also sat down this year with prominent Nashvillians to discuss current events of interest to the city for the show One on One with John Seigenthaler. Episodes this year included Dr. Jesse Register, Director Metro Nashville Public Schools and Tasha French Lemley, Executive Director of The Contributor. Mark Shriver, left, and John Seigenthaler on A Word on Words. 5 Arts Break Nashville s growth as an arts destination has exploded in the last few years, with several neighborhoods hosting monthly art crawls, local museums hosting major exhibitions and public art sprouting up everywhere. For years, Arts Break, produced by Linda Wei, has been documenting this growth, and introducing viewers on-air and online to all that the city has to offer. This year we produced 25 new Arts Breaks. Highlights included visits to The Larry Keeton Theatre s Youth Summer Camp, the Tennessee Performing Arts Center production of The Nutty Professor, The Musical (with a guest spot by Jerry Lewis), Nashville Shakespeare Festival s Much Ado About Nothing, Nashville Symphony s Mahler s 8th Symphony of a Thousand, Nashville Public Library s Courtyard Concerts, Dance Theatre of Tennessee s Ballet in the Park production of Carmen, Studio Tenn s Smokey Joe s Café (featuring Melinda Doolittle), Circle Players production of The Color Purple, Centennial Youth Ballet, Blackbird Theater s Amadeus and Tennessee Repertory Theatre s production of The Columnist. ArtQuest hosts Dajiah Platt, left, and Joseph Lopez. ArtQuest Art education has always been an essential part of the curriculum that accompanies much of children s programming. In October of 2012, NPT and the Frist Center for the Visual Arts announced a new partnership designed to encourage children to be more involved in the arts. ArtQuest: Art Is All Around You is a series of short broadcast segments focusing on developing children s creativity and fostering a love for the visual arts through an interdisciplinary approach. Titled after the Frist Center s interactive learning gallery for children of all ages, and produced by Linda Wei and edited by Matt Emigh of NPT, the segments are geared toward viewers ages 7-9, air on NPT between 4-6 p.m. and are available at youtube.com/nptarts. The first season was made up of 18 episodes, hosted by teens Dajiah Platt and Joseph Lopez, focusing on art in architecture, public art and nature.

7 Digital Engagement As part of our continuing Next Door Neighbors project, NPT held its first Storyteller Boot Camp in July Led by NPT producer Will Pedigo and production assistant Soraya Salam, local immigrants and refugees spent three days learning digital storytelling skills, from writing a script to using a camera to picking a story idea to create a video destined for the Storytellers blog (wnpt.org/storytellers) and YouTube channel. The bootcamp attracted participants from numerous backgrounds, including Bhutan, Mexico, Kurdistan, and Rwanda and resulted in a vibrant collection of thoughtful, personal stories sharing insights on Bhutanese refugee camps, Mexican second-generation identity, Nepali food traditions, urban gardening and more. NPT continues to be a leader in the OVEE online screening platform created by ITVS. As a testing station, we held over a dozen digital screenings, including a nostalgic compilation of Mrs. Cabobble s Caboose and Jellybean Junction in September 2012, our American Graduate documentary, Translating the Dream, in January, and Living On: Tennesseans Remembering the Holocaust in April. The NPT Media Update blog is now one of the most visited sections of our web site. In addition to posts on NPT programming and news, visitors got an exclusive interview with Nashville resident and award-winning author Gary Slaughter, a young naval communications officer on the USS Cony during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Daniel Cohen, director of Space Shuttle Columbia: Mission of Hope. In an unprecedented blog initiative, we partnered with the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing s nurse midwives to give fans of the show Call the Midwife a morning-after analysis every Monday morning following the previous night s episodes. In the fall of 2012 and spring of 2013, the midwives provided historical and contemporary context on the shows and shared their own takes on the moving, intimate, funny and true-to-life series about midwifery and families in London s East End in the 1950s. NPT s social media channels continue to be excellent tools for engagement, with our Facebook and Twitter channels actively engaging with more than 5,000 and 7,000 fans and followers, respectively. Tennessee Crossroads reaches more 7,000 fans on Facebook. Collectively, our YouTube channels for NPT, Volunteer Gardener, Tennessee Crossroads and Arts Connection have had more than two million views as of this report. Education From its humble beginnings 50 years ago, education has always been the primary goal of NPT, whether it s pre-k children just opening their eyes to the world around them, or adults yearning to better understand the world they live in. NPT s education department is the command center for much of this work, maintaining relationships with community partners and conducting numerous workshops with teachers, students and families throughout the year. In addition to ongoing work, this year featured a number of special projects. As part of NPT s partnership with the Tennessee Department of Education s Race to the Top initiative, we are producing a collection of online digital media modules called Road to the Common Core: Reading Grades K-3 for teacher professional development. The collection is part of the free PBS LearningMedia website tn.pbslearningmedia.org a media-ondemand service developed for Pre K-12 teachers and students. NPT was one of five stations across the country partnering with the CPB on the RTL Transmedia project, a Ready to Learn grant. The grant is aimed at improving the math and literacy skills of children ages two to eight from low-income families. Together with Nashville Promise Neighborhood, we worked to address the digital divide and provide online learning content to families, schools, and afterschool programs. As part of the American Graduate: Let s Make it Happen initiative, NPT hosted a screening of 80 Days in an American High School and discussion with Nashville principals of alternative schools. This film is an intimate portrait of life for the first graduating class of Washington Metropolitan High School (DC Met), a public school in Washington, D.C, where only seven percent of students are deemed proficient in math and only 19 percent in reading. For NPT s Children s Health Crisis project, we conducted Healthy Habits Family Nights at schools with low income and high immigrant populations. For Next Door Neighbors, we conducted 30 Family Literacy Trainings in Davidson and Rutherford Counties. Through a WNET grant, NPT partnered with the Nashville Shakespeare Festival to present a number of events and activities promoting the series Shakespeare Uncovered. These included Shakespeare Allowed readings at the Nashville Public Library and a Shakespeare birthday celebration event. 6

8 Special Events/Partnerships/Screenings NPT continues to believe in a 360 approach to delivering our content and engaging with our community, whether it s on-air, online or on-the-ground, and that often means hosting screenings, partnering with other organizations and being part of special events. In fiscal year , we again partnered with ITVS and the Nashville Public Library to bring the community free Community Cinema screenings of Independent Lens documentaries. From September to June, one Saturday a month, this meant receptions before, and engaging panels and discussions after, documentary films that focused on a variety of issues. Additionally, in September 2013, we partnered with the Lipscomb University HumanDocs series to co-present the documentary Nostalgia for the Light, and kicked off our partnership with the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing, and its support of the British drama Call the Midwife, with a free screening at Sarratt Cinema of the first episode. December saw an event our members have come to expect, the sneak peek look at the first episode of the new season of Downton Abbey. The Frist Center for the Visual Arts hosted the screening, which drew a packed audience. We continued our partnership with the Nashville Film Festival in April, by awarding the NPT Human Spirit Award to a filmmaker s work that best explores and captures the human spirit. This year it was Remote Area Medical, directors Jeff Reichert and Farihah Zaman s document of the annual three-day pop-up medical clinic organized by the non-profit Remote Area Medical (RAM) at the Bristol, Tennessee NASCAR speedway. In January, the opportunity to give our members a sneak peek of the new Ken Burns documentary The Dust Bowl found us partnering with the Tennessee State Museum for a special evening of film, commentary from The Dust Bowl writer Dayton Duncan and producer Julie Dunfrey, and music by singer-songwriter and notable Woody Guthrie interpreter James Talley. Singer-songwriter James Talley and Dayton Duncan, writer and producer, at our screening of Ken Burns The Dust Bowl. Awards Two NPT productions, both from our Tennessee Civil War 150 series, were awarded Emmys this year, raising our total to 42 wins since Crisis of Faith won in the Documentary/Cultural category, earning statuettes for Justin Harvey, Paul Mojonnier and Kevin Crane, while No Going Back: Women and the War won in the Historical/Cultural Program category, handing Emmys to Greta Requierme, Ed Jones, Beth Curley and the show s narrator, Mary Chapin Carpenter. In February, NPT president and CEO Beth Curley received The Nashy Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Growth of the Nashville Film and Cultural Community. The award was presented by Nashville Mayor Karl Dean at the annual Nashville Film/Television Town Meeting at the Belcourt Theatre. Skip Hinton, left, NETA president, and Joe Pagetta, NPT director of media relations and online strategies. In October 2012, NPT picked up a National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA) award for the outstanding community engagement aspect of our Next Door Neighbors Storytellers project. One of our most important partnerships and events was in November, when we joined the Women s Fund Forum at the First Amendment Center for an educational event focused on human sex trafficking in the state of Tennessee. NPT reporter and producer LaTonya Turner moderated the event, which included a screening of segments from the documentary Half the Sky, as well as insight from the United States Attorney s office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Magdalene House and End Slavery Tennessee. The event was liveblogged on NPT Media Update, and video from the event was placed on our YouTube Channel. From left, Beth Curley, NPT president and CEO, Representative Marsha Blackburn, Aleta Trauger and Barbara Barton. 7

9 Nashville Public Television 2013 Operating Revenue & Operating Expenses Funding 27% 9% 16% State of Tennessee CPB Individual 17% 9% 59% Programming & Outreach Administration 5% 4 % 39% Corporate Foundations Earned Revenue 15% Fundraising Technology Total Operating Revenue $5,271,961 Total Operating Expenses $4,921,458 In FY13, community support made up 48% ($2,511,086) of NPT s operating revenue the largest source of funding in our $5,271,961 budget. Membership gifts from individual donors were the largest source of gifts to NPT, making up $1,963,388 or 37% of overall revenue. Corporate ($201,622) and foundation ($267,400) funding as well as a variety of special events also provided NPT with vital support for programs and services. NPT s signature projects also rely on the major support of community partners: A generous commitment from Cigna-HealthSpring made possible the launch of NPT Reports: Aging Matters in FY13. Other key partners for this new project include The West End Home Foundation, the Jeanette Travis Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Another year of NPT Reports: Children s Health Crisis was made possible by the generous support of the Healthways Foundation, the Nashville Health Care Council, The HCA Foundation, Metro Public Health Department and the Baptist Healing Trust. Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area and Tennessee Department of Tourist Development made possible another year of NPT s Tennessee Civil War 150 series. The Nissan Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting provided major leadership support in FY13 for NPT s Next Door Neighbors project, enabling NPT to further broaden the reach of the project. Major support for NPT Reports: Domestic Violence Living in Fear was provided by Waller, the First Tennessee Foundation and the Women s Fund of The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee. The Ingram Charitable Fund and the Tennessee Arts Commission made possible another year of NPT Arts Break while The Frist Foundation made possible a new arts education project for children: ArtQuest. Other major foundation support was provided by The Memorial Foundation and The Martin Foundation. NPT s literacy outreach efforts in the community were funded by The Dollar General Literacy Foundation and the Cracker Barrel Foundation. NPT raised vital operating funds with a variety of special events during FY13: In January, Downton Abbey fans dressed in period costumes and gathered in NPT s Studio A for a special viewing of the premiere of Downton Abbey s third season. Luscious Victorian fare was donated by B&C Catering, while Vicki Turner/VPT Ventures provided a selection of distinctive wines. Downton fans toasted the conclusion of the season at NPT s Downton Abbey Affair, held in March at the Cheekwood Mansion. Guests donned elaborate costumes and dined on a sophisticated period feast prepared by Kristen Winston Catering while enjoying live music from Jim Hoke and the Hot Three. A live auction of a Viking River Cruise and a costume contest rounded out the evening. Major sponsors for the event included HCA TriStar Health, Viking River Cruises and H Three Events, Vicki Turner/VPT Ventures and Phillipe Chadwick. More than 125 NPT members and viewers gathered at the Radisson Hotel at Nashville s Airport for NPT s Fine Arts and Appraisal Day in March. Noted appraisers from across the region donated their time and major sponsors included Radisson Hotel Nashville Airport, Case Antiques and GasLamp Antiques and GasLamp Too. At the second annual Big Yellow Bird Ball, fans wore their best yellow attire to Ruby Event Space and danced the night away to the tunes of DJ Nekos Barnes. Chef s Market generously provided an elegant themed buffet while PourTaste served up specialty cocktails to guests. Major event sponsors included H Three Events, Chef s Market, Lipman, PourTaste, Phillipe Chadwick, Visual Elements, Minuteman Press, Katy s Hallmark and DJ Nekos Barnes. Generous volunteers are instrumental in helping NPT provide outstanding programming and community engagement. We are extremely grateful to all those who gave their time this past year to help ensure the future of our mission to Middle Tennessee. 8