The Sunday night premiere of Call the Midwife, PBS’s eagerly anticipated limited-run drama series from the BBC, earned a 1.5 rating in Nielsen overnights, according to PBS. That’s 50 percent above the usual 1.0 PBS overnights for 8 p.m. Sundays last season, but far less than Downton Abbey’s Season 2 premiere of 2.7. A PBS spokesperson said the Midwife’s 1.5 figure is expected to be higher in full national ratings, which also count DVR hits and within-week repeats. In Britain, Call the Midwife earned bigger ratings than even Downton Abbey, which is now a mega-hit for Masterpiece.

The “Swing State Radio Network” launched by New York’s WNYC is returning for the upcoming presidential and vice-presidential debates. WNYC public affairs host Brian Lehrer will anchor pre-debate call-in shows that will air in New York as well as on WUSF in Tampa, Fla.; WMFE in Orlando, Fla.; WDET in Detroit; WFAE in Charlotte, N.C.; WOSU in Columbus, Ohio; WCPN in Cleveland; Wisconsin Public Radio; and New Hampshire Public Radio. The coverage will also feature a live chat with a video feed hosted on WNYC’s political site, ItsAFreeCountry.org. WNYC political reporter Anna Sale will participate in the chats. The impromptu Swing State network began with coverage of the party conventions.

CPB’s business plan and operating budget for 2013, approved by the board at its September meeting, are now available online. The business plan assumes that CPB will be federally funded at the current level of $445 million. It also notes that the system is still struggling financially. “While we are seeing some reports of modest improvement in membership fundraising,” the plan notes, “the $250 million in state support that has been lost across the system over the last few years has not been restored. On the contrary, proposals at the state level to defund or reduce public broadcasting continue.” The plan contains fewer projects than in previous years, reflecting the loss of CPB’s digital funds.

“Those of us working in public media have the potential as never before to expand and deepen understanding, tolerance, and common purpose among a broadly diverse citizenry,” writes Sue Schardt, executive director of the Association of Independents in Radio on MediaShift. How? Storytelling. “Storytelling has emerged as a safe zone that allows media practitioners to circumvent, or at least loosen up, some of the traditional boundaries that may be confining the industry during a time of great change,” she writes. “It is, in part, a way for us to flex and experiment on the edges of the often strict parameters of journalistic practice and the fixed broadcast medium that defines much of what we do — sort of like the Casual Friday versus Monday to Thursday in a workweek.”

The five-member FCC today voted unanimously to begin the process of reclaiming broadcast spectrum to auction for wireless broadband use, reports Broadcasting & Cable. Commissioners adopted the Incentive Auction Notice of Proposed Rule-Making, and now seek comment from stakeholders and the public on its recommendation for handling the massive undertaking. The auction, to open up bandwidth for mobile devices, will happen in three phases: TV broadcasters will offer spectrum for the lowest price, the FCC will repack remaining stations into a smaller section of the spectrum, and the freed-up spectrum will go to the highest bidder. The FCC is seeking comment on issues including auction design, repacking, unlicensed use of spectrum and transition deadlines.

The State We’re In, an English-language public radio series produced by Radio Netherlands Worldwide in partnership with WAMU in Washington, D.C., will shut down production next month, according to its producers. The show, which relates first-person accounts of life-changing experiences, has an audience reach of 12 million people, but it fell victim to domestic austerity measures imposed by the Dutch government in 2011. When Radio Netherlands’ government funding was cut by 70 percent, The State We’re In was reported to be one of the few programs to survive the transition. “We were assured at that time by Radio Netherlands’ outgoing management that the show was still going to be an integral part of Radio Netherlands, but those assurances didn’t hold,” Greg Kelly, the program’s editor, wrote in an announcement posted Sept.

A consultant’s report released Thursday afternoon recommends that the Salisbury University Foundation negotiate a deal with another public broadcaster to operate both of its Delmarva Public Radio stations as music stations, dropping the NPR News format now airing on WSDL 90.7 FM in Ocean City, Md. The foundation, licensee of WSDL and WSCL 89.5FM in Salisbury, Md., has been covering financial losses at the stations for three of the last four fiscal years — most notably covering a loss of more than $150,000  in 2008 — and faces increased capital expenses in relocating the stations’ studios from a university building that’s  set to be demolished. 

A new report from Walrus Research shows that NPR’s Car Talk continued its streak as NPR’s most popular weekend program in Spring 2012, with Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! coming in second and Weekend Edition Saturday a more distant third. The report says airing the three shows in sequence is the “ideal scheduling to benefit all three programs.” Car Talk goes into repeats starting next month.

Nebraska Educational Television’s Backyard Farmer — the longest-running local television program in the country — is celebrating its 60th season with a special, Backyard Farmer: 60 Years and Still Growing, and an event tonight on the campus of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. For the 60th anniversary special, producers went into the archives of the live call-in program, pulling interviews with panel members who tackled questions such as, “How fresh can manure be before you use it in your garden?” Panelists will be on hand at tonight’s event to answer questions, and NET will screen a blooper reel. The program airs Thursdays on NET during the growing season, mid-April through mid-September.

Two African-American Public Radio Consortium stations at historically black colleges and universities are offering jazz programs for national broadcast. Return to the Source with Douglas Turner is a traditional-jazz offering from WJAB-FM at Alabama A&M University, and The Soul of Jazz with Jamal Ahmad from WCLK at Clark Atlanta University combines classic and contemporary soul, jazz and world music. Each runs two hours weekly, and is available on Content Depot.

In an interview with the Kansas City Star, new CPB Chair and longtime KCUR radio pubcaster Patty Cahill recalls her 2009 Senate confirmation hearing for her appointment to the CPB Board. “I remember thinking, ‘How am I going to sit?’” she tells the newspaper. “Because I’m short and usually my feet don’t touch the ground and I sit on my leg. And I had been at KCUR so long, it seemed like getting a tattoo was a good idea, so I got one on my wrist. And it’s addicting, so whenever one of my daughters would get a tattoo I would go and get one.

Veteran public broadcaster Daniel Schiedel will be the new executive director of the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority, the OETA Board of Directors announced today. Schiedel has more than 21 years experience in public broadcasting. Currently he is general manager of KRSC-TV in Claremore, Okla. He previously served as g.m. of Wyoming Public Television Network, and has worked at pubTV stations in Missouri and South Dakota. Schiedel replaces John McCarroll, who served as OETA executive director for nine years and will retire Sept. 28. Deputy Director of Finance and Administration Toni Matthews will serve as interim executive director until Schiedel begins work at OETA on Nov.

Cleveland commercial classical station WCLV-FM will begin operating as a noncommercial entity Jan. 1, 2013, the station’s owner, ideastream, announced yesterday. “The transition will allow generous businesses and organizations to support the work of WCLV, and will give individuals who appreciate hearing classical music on the radio the opportunity to provide support through donations large and small,” according to the press release. WCLV has been broadcasting since 1962. Last year it was acquired by public radio and TV broadcaster ideastream, but it continued to operate as a commercial station. In migrating from commercial to noncommercial, it follows the example of other classical stations that have also made the change in recent years, such as WQXR in New York, WCRB in Boston, and KING-FM in Seattle.

CPB has selected Crawford Media Services in Atlanta to digitize audio and video content for the American Archive. The CPB initiative is working to preserve local and national public media content from the past 60 years. So far, more than 100 public television and radio stations have identified some 1 million hours of programs, raw footage, unedited interviews, recorded speeches, scripts and photos. Around 40,000 hours will be preserved in the archive. Crawford has worked on similar archival projects for CNN, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the United States Marine Corps and the Coca-Cola Co. CPB is currently in the process of selecting a permanent home for the archive.

In a meeting Tuesday (Sept. 25), a member of the Alabama Educational Television Commission accused two Alabama Public Television employees of giving false information during a recent court hearing, the Birmingham News reports. “We had two employees testify under oath to false information,” said Rodney Herring, a chiropractor from Opelika, Ala. “There’s a side of that where you could go so far as to say that’s perjury, there’s a side of that that maybe they just didn’t know what the heck was going on.” Herring was referring to testimony in August that was part of a lawsuit filed by former APT Executive Director Allan Pizzato over his abrupt June termination.