Milwaukee Public Television and MPTV Friends, which had previously operated as two independent organizations, have merged, the groups announced Monday (Jan. 23) in a press release. Under the agreement, Friends will phase out operations in 2012, and many of its employees will join the MPTV staff  to continue coordinating fundraising events including the popular Great TV Auction. “We’ve always shared the goal of bringing the community the best in public television programming,” said station G.M. Ellis Bromberg in the statement. “This agreement strengthens our relationship and makes our stations even better by allowing us to devote more resources to present new and exciting entertainment and educational offerings.”

Three shows on PBS scored awards from the Producers Guild of America in ceremonies Saturday (Jan. 21) in Los Angeles. Masterpiece Classic’s hit Downton Abbey continues its string of honors with the David L. Wolper Award for Outstanding Producer of Long-Form Television, beating out Cinema Verite, Mildred Pierce and Too Big to Fail on HBO and The Kennedys on Reelz Channel. The outstanding producer of non-fiction television award went to Susan Lacy and Julie Sacks for American Masters. Also, Sesame Street won for children’s television, a new category in the 23-year-old awards.

Jan. 20 was Gary Eichten Day in Minnesota, proclaimed by Gov. Mark Dayton to honor the retiring Minnesota Public Radio host and producer after a 45-year career. The proclamation noted that Eichten began his career at MPR as a student announcer at KSJR, Minnesota’s first public radio station, in 1967. Over the years he has served as news director, special events producer, and station manager; for the past 20 years he’s been host of Midday. A “Heckuva Farewell” for Eichten took place Jan. 19 at the Fitzgerald Theater. For his last Midday show, Gary interviewed Vice President Walter Mondale.

Les Anderson, longtime metro news reporter for KSKA in Anchorage, Alaska, is retiring after a career in which he “once stood by a wet mule in a Wisconsin parking lot, wearing hillbilly clothes and promoting a new citrus pop for a commercial radio station,” reports the Anchorage Daily News. Anderson came to public radio in an interesting way, beginning as a college professor at University of Wisconsin. Decades ago, an English composition student asked him what can be done with an English degree; Anderson went to his office and pondered the question. “Then he decided to see if he, with a master’s degree in English, could make a career in radio,” the paper said.

A legal fight may be brewing between the BBC version of Sherlock Holmes, which airs on PBS as part of Masterpiece Mystery, and an upcoming CBS version of the detective stories. According to the UK newspaper The Independent, the Beeb producers feel that CBS’s Elementary, which also places the character in a modern setting using laptops and cellphones, may be too much like their version. Sue Vertue, Sherlock e.p., said that CBS “approached us a while back about remaking our show. At the time, they made great assurances about their integrity, so we have to assume that their modernised Sherlock Holmes doesn’t resemble ours in any way, as that would be extremely worrying.”

After receiving and investigating an 11-page complaint from a former Antiques Roadshow appraiser (Current, Dec. 12, 2011), producing station WGBH is revising how it handles contact information for experts on the Roadshow website, and making changes in its Appraisal Event Participation Agreement. In a letter to Gary Sohmers, who had raised concerns over what he saw as “illogically restrictive” clauses in the contract signed by all the experts — who are not compensated for their work — WGBH Corporate Counsel Eric Brass said the station, as part of an ongoing review process of production-related practices, would make contact information available online for past appraisers, and change the participation agreement “to focus more clearly any restrictions on an appraiser’s activities and statements regarding Antiques Roadshow to those that WGBH believes are important for protecting the series’ trademark and other legal rights, and its image.”

Here’s more from Jake Shapiro, founding c.e.o. of Public Radio Exchange, on why PRX and the Knight Foundation created the Public Media Accelerator, which was announced in December 2011. First, the concept: “Accelerators are organizations focused on early stage investment in technology startups, providing a mix of financing, mentorship and other support to help launch new companies with the potential for explosive growth,” he writes on MediaShift. “It’s clear that public media needs its own accelerator — attuned to the needs and assets of the industry and connected to the talent and energy in the broader technology and media world.”

A two-hour documentary examining the impact that conservative talk radio has had on the political climate in Wisconsin — a state currently roiled by an impending gubernatorial recall — will premiere on Milwaukee Public Television on Jan. 30. Conservative Talk Radio: Liberty or Lies was produced, written and directed by Brien Farley, a Waukesha County radio, video production, marketing and public relations professional, as a graduate-level independent study project through Marquette University’s College of Political Science, and began as a six-part series based on 17 hours of interviews. “There’s little question that conservative talk radio has had a significant impact on political conversation and results in Wisconsin over the past few years,” said Ellis Bromberg, general manager of MPTV, in a press release.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is giving PBS NewsHour a $420,000 grant to enable volunteers to translate its 2012 election coverage into dozens of languages, as well as caption it for viewers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. NewsHour Open Election 2012 will use crowd-sourcing technologies developed by the nonprofit Participatory Culture Foundation and open-source Web tools creator Mozilla. “These technologies will make election news, speeches and debates more accessible for diverse audiences, helping to increase their understanding of, and engagement in, the political process,” CPB said in a press release Thursday (Jan. 19). NewsHour has used the technology twice before. The first was a translation of the president’s 2011 State of the Union Address, which was converted via open-sourced captions into seven languages and partially translated into 16 more.

Blackbaud, a software provider for nonprofit organizations including public broadcasters, has agreed to purchase Convio, another firm that helps pubcasters with fundraising. Both boards of directors have unanimously approved the transaction, structured as a cash tender offer followed by a merger, according to an announcement on NASDAQ.com.”Blackbaud noted that the acquisition of Convio will combine both companies’ strengths to provide a comprehensive and compelling set of multi-channel supporter engagement solutions to nonprofit organizations of all sizes,” the announcement said. Blackbaud had acquired Target Analytics, another public broadcasting station vendor, in 2007.

“NPR has always been a curiously insular institution,” according to a long look at the network in the latest Vanity Fair, “a place where people with common backgrounds congregate, stay around forever, live near and sometimes marry one another (at one point Susan Stamberg actually kept track of how many such matches there had been).” “It’s a self-involved and self-defining culture,” an NPR insider told writer David Margolick. “I suppose it’s only a matter of time before an NPR couple produces the first NPR baby who becomes an NPR reporter.” As an outsider, new NPR President Gary Knell, former head of Sesame Workshop, “seems well suited to pop NPR out of its Beltway bubble,” Margolick writes.

The Sun newspaper in Britain is reporting that the Masterpiece Classic hit Downton Abbey could be in for a movie treatment. After Downton’s win for best mini-series at the Golden Globes on Sunday (Jan. 15), creator Julian Fellowes “was virtually mobbed at the event’s after-party at the Beverly Hilton, with actors and movie bosses wanting to know whether there was a film on the cards.” “Julian was explaining he would have to give the idea a lot of thought and that lots of people have already asked him about film rights,” the paper reports. “Insiders suggested any film is likely to deal with a single event that engulfs the Abbey and its characters that won’t detract from the ongoing TV narrative.”

Progressive radio talk-show host Lynn Samuels, 69, who began her career on public radio, was found dead in her Queens, N.Y., apartment on Christmas Eve, the New York Daily News reported. When Samuels didn’t show up for her Sirius XM show Dec. 24, reps for the satellite radio company had asked the police to investigate. Samuels began her radio career in 1979 at Pacifica Radio’s WBAI in New York City. In the 1980s she moved to WABC Radio. She joined Sirius XM in 2003. Fans continue to post at LynnSamuels.com. Comments, questions, tips? sefton@current.org