Two pioneering pubcasters in Philadelphia, John B. Roberts and Bruce Harrison Beale, died on the same day, March 8 [2012]. John B. Roberts, one of the founding directors of WHYY-FM/TV in 1957, died of a spinal infection at his home in the retirement community of Rydal Park in suburban Philadelphia. He was 94. In 1953, Roberts had founded the Temple University public radio station, WRTI-FM, now an outlet for classical and jazz music, and taught communication at the university from 1946 to 1988. “When I was an undergrad at Temple in the 1970s, “WRTI was staffed and managed by students,” said Temple faculty member Paul Gluck, who served as station manager of WHYY-TV from 1999 to 2007.

Patricia Simon, president of PBS39 in Bethlehem, Pa., is leaving the station after 10 years to pursue other opportunities, reports the local Express-Times. Station Board Chair Jamie Musselman announced today (March 28) that Timothy Fallon will act as c.e.o. while the board of directors begins a search for a new leader. Fallon has been involved with the station since 1995 and served as chairman 2002-04.

NPR member station WTMD-FM is moving from an 1,800-square-foot facility in the center of the Towson University campus to an 8,000 square-foot broadcast and community gathering place this fall in the new Towson City Center. The new home will provide a live-music performance space, a community meeting room and classroom, studios and offices. WTMD’s General Manager Stephen Yasko said on the station’s website that the new building will be contain than a pubradio station serving the Baltimore region. “We’ve designed this space to be a combination: a music lovers’ clubhouse, community meeting space and education center,” he said. “Our listeners and the public will be invited into WTMD every day to experience the best in national and Baltimore bands.”

The Masterpiece Trust has received a $1 million gift from San Diego philanthropist Darlene Shiley. It’s the largest gift to date for the Trust, which was established in January 2011 to allow major donors to directly support the Masterpiece strand, and enable those donors to provide part of their gift to a local station. Half of Shiley’s gift, made on behalf of her and her late husband Donald, will go to KPBS in San Diego. Shiley was one of the first donors to the Trust, with a previous gift of $250,000. Other stations that have received a local portion of major gifts to the Trust include WNET, New York City; Vermont Public Television; WTCI, Chattanooga, Tenn.;

Matt MacDonald of PRX has an idea for funding pubcasting. “Public radio and television stations should collaborate and work together with Visa, Mastercard or American Express to create an nationally branded affinity public media credit card,” he writes in a blog post today (March 27), which is an extension of his recent session at IMA. “Each transaction made with that credit card would get rounded up to the nearest dollar and the card holder uses a website that allows them to determine how it gets allocated back out to participating stations, programs and producers.” If there are 170 million people using public media each month, MacDonald writes, “then there are a large number of credit card transactions each day performed by public media consumers.

The CPB Board on Tuesday (March 27) unanimously approved spending up to $7 million for a joint master-control project linking six stations in Florida and one in Georgia, similar to its centralcast project in New York state (Current, Oct. 3, 2011). The Jacksonville Digital Convergence Alliance LLC will run one master control for WJCT in Jacksonville; WFSU, Tallahassee; WPBT, Miami; WBCC, Cocoa; WUCF, Orlando; Tampa stations WUSF and WEDU; and WPBA, Atlanta. The facility will be in Jacksonville. CPB estimates cost savings to the stations of $15 million to $20 million over the next 10 years. Also at the meeting in Washington, D.C.,

KPCC is giving the public a rare (tongue firmly in cheek) chance to see the public-radio journalist in its natural habitat — “an idyllic and fragile Eden free from the bias and bile of the 24-hour news cycle” —  in this hilarious two-minute pledge promo. In the takeoff on a wildlife doc, an intrepid explorer/host intones, “Make no mistake, the future of this highly developed species is imperiled. Only one thing can save it: A symbiotic relationship with another highly developed species — the public radio listener.”

Larry Ciecalone, president of dual licensee KVCR in San Bernardino, Calif., has been placed on administrative leave “while an undisclosed matter is investigated,” the Press-Enterprise in Riverside is reporting. Bruce Baron, chancellor of licensee San Bernardino Community College District, announced the decision to the station staff Tuesday (March 27). He told the newspaper that the issue was a personnel matter and declined to discuss details. The investigation is expected to take about three months. During that time, Baron will head up station operations, TV Station Manager Kenn Couch will oversee both TV and radio, and Charles Fox remains head of the new First Nations television, funded by the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians (Current, July 26, 2010).

Jane Krutz, an enthusiastic advocate for more than 47 years for the Arkansas Educational Television Network, died Sunday (March 25) in Little Rock. She was 86. “It is literally true that there might not have been an AETN without her,” Allen Weatherly, executive director of AETN, said in a tribute on the network’s website. “In fact, she was advocating for a public television station for Arkansas years before we finally made it to the air in the mid 1960s.” Krutz frequently appeared during membership drives, testified before Congress for public broadcasting in 1995, served since 1996 on the AETN Commission, and received the PBS National Volunteer of the Year award.

The PBS NewsHour is developing a Friends of the NewsHour initiative, similar to that created for WGBH’s Masterpiece strand, to allow viewers to contribute directly to the weeknight news program. The fund would solicit gifts from major donors. Bo Jones, president of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, told Current that he’s just begun to plan the project. “We want to consult with local stations to elicit ideas and their input,” he said. “We plan for Friends to be a cooperative effort with the stations.” The Masterpiece Trust has raised more than $2.5 million since January 2011, said Ellen Frank, director of major gifts at WGBH in Boston.

CPB has awarded a $500,000 grant to NPR in support of its international news coverage. The grant, announced during a March 26 awards dinner honoring NPR correspondent Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, supports travel costs for reporters and their producers, as well as the work of NPR’s foreign desk editors, according to CPB Chair Bruce Ramer. As NPR’s foreign desk steps up its reporting from the Middle East, Asia and Africa, reporters are putting themselves “on the frontline of historic news events,” Ramer said.”This will help NPR stay on the story as long as it takes.” “This is going to be so important for our work,” said NPR President Gary Knell.

KQED has moved its Silicon Valley offices to downtown San Jose, within walking distance of City Hall. The new site includes office space, multiplatform production facilities and the TV studio for KQED Plus, the new identity of KTEH after the Monterey pubstation merged with KQED six years ago (Current, May 15, 2006).  KQED Plus is led by Executive Director Becca King Reed, producer of This is Us, the weekly magazine show profiling individuals from South Bay. KQED’s main headquarters remains in San Francisco.

NPR tapped CNN veteran Edith Chapin to run its foreign desk News chief Margaret Low Smith announced Chapin’s appointment last week along with another change on its foreign desk: Didi Schanche, a former Associated Press correspondent and editor who joined NPR in 2001, is to become deputy senior foreign editor. When Chapin officially signs on May 14, she will oversee NPR foreign correspondents based in 17 bureaus worldwide as well as a team of editors and reporters in Washington, D.C. She succeeds longtime foreign desk editor Loren Jenkins, who departed last November. Chapin has spent her entire career at CNN, beginning in 1987.

On a recent afternoon at NPR, Andy Carvin was watching a video of a protest purportedly shot in the Syrian city of Homs, a locus of that country’s uprising against its repressive regime. The video’s location surprised Carvin, considering the firepower the government has unleashed on the city to quell the uprising. As he often does, he looked for telltale landmarks in the background, listened to the chants and accents of the protesters, and checked if the weather in the video matched the day’s forecasts. He ended up asking his Twitter contact who had disseminated the video for more verification. This vetting process occupies most of Carvin’s workdays.

Southern Oregon University has fired longtime Jefferson Public Radio Executive Director Ron Kramer, the Mail Tribune in Medford, Ore., is reporting. Kramer held both positions since 1974. University President Mary Cullinan presented Kramer with the termination letter on Friday (March 23). The move does not affect Kramer’s position as head of the JPR Foundation, the station’s fundraising organization. A recent university audit had advised against Kramer holding both those positions, citing a potential conflict of interest. Kramer’s termination is effective June 30.