There is no evidence that PBS altered a transcript of President Obama’s recent speech to Congress to cover a “major gaffe by the president,” PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler writes. However, he adds that leaving the prepared remarks on the NewsHour website “from Thursday night until bloggers, and the ombudsman, shook their tree Saturday morning — long after the White House and the [New York] Times had published actual transcripts — was a serious lapse.” During the speech, Obama mistakenly said that Abraham Lincoln was the “founder” of the Republican party, but that statement was not in the original transcript supplied by the White House and posted by NewsHour.

WBGO launched the public phase of a $3 million capital campaign fundraising for a major signal improvement project. The jazz and NPR News station plans to put a new antenna on the spire atop 4 Times Square, one of the tallest structures in New York City, which is home of Condé Nast magazines and a huge NASDAQ display above street level. The upgrade will improve signal quality for listeners throughout metropolitan New York and New Jersey and expand the station’s potential audience by 1 million listeners. Several funders, including the defunct Public Telecommunications Facilities Program, brought WBGO to the half-way mark in its capital campaign.

After covering Congress for dozens of public radio stations for more than eight years, the nonprofit operator of Capitol News Connection will wind down operations by the end of the month. The news service faltered late last year, lost subscribing stations and finally lost further support from CPB, which itself suffered a $30 million cut from its digital project funding. “[A]fter a careful review of our finances and cash flow, we have concluded that it would be impossible to replace those funds in time to ensure the continuation of the service,” CNC announced today. The service held down its fees to stations, which rarely exceeded 32 percent of its annual revenue, but that made it dependent on aid from CPB and foundations, said Melinda Wittstock, founder and chief exec — who also served as one of CNC’s handful of Capitol Hill reporters.

Rhode Island Public Radio will move its NPR News service to WELH 88.1 FM in Providence in October. The signal transition, which was negotiated this summer, provides for Latino Public Radio to expand into a full-time broadcast service on 1290 AM, the channel that served as a beachhead in establishing an independent public radio service in Rhode Island under the call letters WRNI. By moving off the AM dial onto the reserved FM band, RIPR strengthens its channel position in the most populated region of the state. The Wheeler School, a private prep school in Providence, agreed to provide 88.1 FM to RIPR through a programming partnership, not a sale.

WJCT/89.9 FM in Jacksonville, Fla., is dropping A Prairie Home Companion along with two other shows due to the loss of state funding, according to the St. Augustine Record. It’s the station’s most expensive weekly show, at $26,682 for 2011, station President Michael Boylan told the paper. As of Oct. 1, the show will be replaced with Bob Edwards Weekend at a cost of $1,871 a year. Also on Oct. 1, the BBC’s World Have Your Say will sub for Tell Me More and locally produced music shows will run instead of World of Opera. Boylan said that the dual licensee is facing a $500,000 shortfall on its planned $5.7 million budget, after Gov.

Former WHYY executive Nessa Forman died Saturday night (Sept. 10) of complications from pancreatic cancer at Penn Hospice at Rittenhouse in Philadelphia. She was 68. She retired in 2007 from the station as vice president of corporate communications and public affairs. She had worked at WHYY since 1983. “Nessa has managed her illness the way that she managed her life,” Bill Marrazzo, president of WHYY, said in an interview on Sept. 9 with the Philadelphia Inquirer, “always with considerable grace, good humor and fully engaged in a broad palette of current events.” Marrazzo said that at WHYY, “she set the highest standards for professionalism, loyalty to the principles of public media … and being the best WHYY shopper for clever gifts ever.”

WNET’s Need to Know will have several temporary hosts, including an NPR veteran, reports the New York Times, in the wake of Alison Stewart’s departure. Scott Simon, host of Weekend Edition Saturday, will fill the chair this week. Coming soon will be Maria Hinojosa of Now on PBS, Ray Suarez of PBS NewsHour and Jeff Greenfield, a network news vet who also hosted WTTW’s national production CEO Exchange on PBS. WNET programmer Stephen Segaller called it an “interim arrangement” to provide the program “some breathing room” as the station ponders its future. Also, NTK Executive Producer Shelley Lewis is being replaced by Marc Rosenwasser, whose background includes work on ABC and NBC newsmagazines as well as executive producing WNET’s Worldfocus, which was canceled just before NTK premiered last year.

A portion of the main antenna mast recovered from the rubble of the North Tower of the World Trade Center will go on display next year in the National September 11 Memorial & Museum to honor broadcast engineers killed in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. WNET was on the tower, and the station lost engineer Gerard “Rod” Copolla on that day. After the 9/11 attacks, the charitable arm of the Society of Broadcast Engineers created the Broadcast Engineer Relief Fund to help the families of the six engineers who died. “With donations from many members of SBE, and vendors and industry foundations, we were pleased to send checks of $42,500 each to every family… without any strings attached,” SBE President Vinny Lopez told Radio World.

PBS won 10 statuettes at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards Saturday night (Sept. 10) in Los Angeles, including Outstanding Nonfiction Series for American Masters. The American Experience presentation of “Freedom Riders” won three. The Creative Arts Emmys honor technical disciplines and behind-the-scenes crafts essential to television production — art direction, cinematography, hairstyling, makeup, music, picture editing, sound editing and mixing, special visual effects, stunts and more. Here’s a full list of winners (PDF).

Ohio State University trustees on Friday (Sept. 9) approved the $2 million sale of WOSU Public Media’s AM frequency and transmitting equipment to a Roman Catholic station, Gabriel Radio Inc., according to Columbus Business First. The deal completes WOSU’s transition to all-FM broadcasts, which began last year. The station had paid Fun With Radio LLC $5.7 million for the 101.1 FM signal and tower to create Classical 101. WOSU converted its 89.7 FM frequency to an all news-talk format, and has been dual broadcasting on 820 AM since then. “We invest a lot in our local news,” Tom Rieland, g.m.

Regulatory wrangling over the FCC’s proposed rule-making for low-power FM stations is heating up. A bipartisan group of House lawmakers on Sept. 7 urged the commission to license as many LPFMs as possible as it implements the Local Community Radio Act, according to The Hill. Meanwhile, formal comments from competing broadcasting interest groups are rolling into the FCC. NPR is among the broadcasters objecting to the commission’s proposal for opening FM frequencies in urban areas. Rather than dismissing some 1,800 pending translator applications from full-power broadcasters to make way for new LPFMs, as the FCC has proposed, NPR urges the commission to wade through its massive backlog of applications from 2003 and approve those that would not obstruct new LPFM service.

Bohdan Zachary, broadcasting and program development v.p. at KCET in Los Angeles, recently got the chance to visit the set of Doc Martin, the station’s highest-rated show, in the picturesque fishing village of Port Isaac, North Cornwall, U.K. “One of the great joys of my visit was the chance to interview each one of the series’ actors,” Zachary reports. “As busy as they were with filming, they were eager to talk about how many American tourists are suddenly popping up in Port Isaac — a sign of the series’ success on public television.” Star Martin Clunes told Zachary that several Hollywood producers are negotiating for an American version of the show, similar to the new version of the Helen Mirren-led BBC classic Prime Suspect premiering on NBC this fall.

YouTube is in discussions with the Center for Investigative Reporting to form a video-based reporting service, reports the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. YouTube wants the center to curate material for what it plans to call YouTube Investigative. “There’s a revolution around information and technology,” said center Executive Director Robert Rosenthal, with social media platforms eager to get involved in a type of journalism once dominated by traditional press outlets. The Berkeley, Calif.-based center also is in discussions with Apple and Google about collaborations.

After nine years of work, a new 50,000-watt public radio station debuted Wednesday (Sept. 7) on the Fond du Lac Reservation in Minnesota, reports The Pine Journal in Carlton County, along the central-eastern edge of the state. Giizis, the Ojibwe word for moon, inspired call letters WGZS at 89.1 FM. Dan Huculak, operations manager for the station and a member of the tribe, told the newspaper that the station will broadcast music, local news and events, public service announcements, and Ojibwe language and cultural programming. The initial broadcast day will run 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays, with weekend hours coming soon.

The archives of Riverwalk Jazz, the critically acclaimed PRI show hosted by musician Jim Cullum, are heading to Stanford University. Included are 400 radio programs and a 700-page website for the show, which debuted in 1989. And in January 2013, Stanford’s Archive of Recorded Sound will offer a continuous web stream of all Riverwalk programs, including documentaries on the history of jazz from its earliest roots. “Nothing like this is available anywhere else,” said Margaret Moos Pick, the program’s executive producer.