Lynn Allen of Boise, Idaho, a former longtime employee of Idaho Public Television, died unexpectedly March 28 on vacation in Mexico, after a sudden illness. She was 68. In recent years, Allen coordinated the Independent Television Service’s Community Cinema program in the state for IdahoPTV. Boise, Idaho, was the launch city six years ago for the outreach, now the largest engagement initiative in pubcasting with 100 markets nationwide screening Independent Lens features and hosting discussions. ITVS compiled a short tribute video about Allen here. Allen arrived at IdahoPTV in 1980 shortly before it became a statewide system. She worked four years as administrative assistant to the general manager before assuming duties as the system’s first personnel manager.

The FCC rejected a petition to block the license transfer of Rice University’s student-operated radio station KTRU-FM, clearing the way for the controversial $9.5 million sale to close later this month. The University of Houston’s KUHF will take over the college station’s 91.7 MHz frequency and launch a full-time classical music service under the call letters KUHC. Friends of KTRU, a group of students, alumni and other supporters who mounted spirited protests of the sale last summer, took its challenge all the way to the FCC. But, in a decision released April 15, the commission dismissed the Friends’ petition, which objected to the transfer as a set back for broadcast localism and diversity in noncommercial educational radio.

The original Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, the critically acclaimed 1987 documentary on PBS, will be preserved with a $550,000 donation from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Washington University in St. Louis Library announced today (April 19). The four-year grant will support work to copy the images from acetate-based film, highly susceptible to decay, to a more stable, polyester-based film. Included in the project are the documentary’s complete, unedited interviews. The original film and interview footage were donated to the University Libraries in 2001 as part of the Henry Hampton Collection, one of the largest archives of civil rights media in the United States.

ProPublica’s Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein, reporters who collaborated with This American Life and NPR’s “Planet Money” to report on the 2008 financial meltdown, received the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. Their award-winning coverage began with an in-depth story on the hedge fund Magnetar, which became the basis of This American Life‘s “Inside Job” episode. ProPublica acknowledged its public radio partners in a statement today: “Jesse and Jake’s work was greatly augmented by partnerships with public radio’s “Planet Money” and This American Life. While radio reporting is not eligible for the Pulitzer, we want to acknowledge a great debt to, and celebrate our partnership with, Adam Davidson and Ira Glass and their teams.”

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that the sale of WDUQ in Pittsburgh was delayed after negotiations over the asset purchase agreement extended beyond the 90-day deadline announced in January. Susan Harmon of the Public Media Company, the offshoot of Public Radio Capital that formed a partnership with Pittsburgh’s WYEP-FM to buy WDUQ, said the contract should be signed within days. “There was one clarification that needed to happen on Friday,” April 15, the day of the deadline, Harmon said, and the lawyer who needed to weigh in wasn’t available. Departing WDUQ G.M. Scott Hanley moved on ahead of schedule, signing on April 1 as communications chief for the Jewish Healthcare Foundation.

This year, St. Patrick’s Day was the deadline for pubcasters to ask Uncle Sam for help replacing their ancient, failing transmitters, or for a broadcast starter-set to put a new station on the air. It was also one of those days when Congress lurched toward its budget compromise — and took back the offer. Gone is the 49-year-old Public Telecommunications Facilities Program, a $20-million line item in the Department of Commerce, which had been saved year after year by supporters in Congress. This time they were too busy saving PTFP’s younger and bigger sibling, CPB. When the two parties finally agreed on this year’s final continuing resolution, April 8, Congress had spared CPB’s basic appropriation — $430 million this year and next, plus $445 million for fiscal 2013 — though the only certainty provided by the advance appropriations was that Congress has more time to fight over them.

Since launching an NPR news and local talk format on WGBH 89.7 FM in late 2009, the pubcaster has gained listenership at the expense of WBUR, Boston’s dominant NPR News franchise, according to the Boston Globe. The audience shifts during the weekday noon timeslots — when WGBH’s locally focused Emily Rooney Show goes up against WBUR’s national Here and Now — suggest that ‘GBH’s gains have come at ‘BUR’s loss, Emerson College professor Jack Casey tells the Globe. WGBH also has the advantage of a powerful broadcast signal that reaches far beyond metropolitan Boston, where WBUR’s audience is concentrated.

Martin Busch, the “father of South Dakota Public Broadcasting,” died April 15 at his home in Atchison, Kan. He was 89. Busch started as program director for KUSD-AM in 1954 at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, gradually working his way to director in 1960. Busch oversaw the establishment of KUSD-TV/Channel 2, which went on the air in 1961, the first educational television in the state “and part of his vision that everyone in the state, especially children in schools, should have access to educational programming,” according to the Sioux City Journal. During his tenure, he also participated in the early development of similar state systems regionally, as well as national NPR and PBS.

In state capitals, public broadcasting advocates have been fighting uphill battles to preserve a key piece of stations’ revenue puzzle.

Federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are investigating an April 2 transmitter fire at KUAR in Little Rock, Ark., as possible arson. [Two weeks later, the station said it was still operating at 75 percent of its usual power.] The fire, which crippled the station’s signal right before its spring pledge drive, was started by an intruder who stripped copper wiring at the transmitter site, used accelerant to start a blaze, and then put a new padlock on the building to prohibit anyone from entering. Copper wire theft is “a huge problem for radio stations,” according to Ben Fry, g.m.

WMFE’s sale of its TV station in Orlando, Fla., leaves two smaller public stations reluctant to assume the role of big kid on the block. Other PBS member stations in the state are now discussing how to provide the full PBS schedule to Orlando, the country’s 19th largest TV market, according to Rick Schneider, chair of the Florida Public Broadcasting Service and president of Miami’s WPBT. The Orlando area’s largest PBS station will become a new outlet for the Daystar Television religious broadcasting chain. The buyer is Community Educators of Orlando Inc., based in Texas and headed by Daystar chief exec Marcus Lamb and his wife, Joni Lamb.

After PBS declined to designate the proposed show Something Different with Bill Moyers (w.t.) for common carriage, Moyers has withdrawn the program, according to the New York Times. Carnegie Corporation backed the concept with $2 million grant last month, opening the possibility that Moyers would come out of retirement to mount a new weekly production. “After discussions with my underwriters, we have decided to pursue other options and projects,” Moyers explained in an e-mail to the Times. PBS plans to unveil its fall schedule to member stations next month, it said in a statement. “Until then, we’ll continue to work with Bill and all of our talented producers to create an engaging and diverse program offering.”

Legislation to end state funding for New Hampshire Public Television got a thumbs-down recommendation from the Senate Finance Committee on April 13, according to Fosters.com. On a 4-3 vote, the panel ruled that H.B. 133 is “inexpedient to legislate.” The bill would eliminate $2.7 million in state subsidies to NHPTV, roughly a third of its budget. The bill still goes before the full Senate; a vote is expected this month.

The impending sale of WMFE-TV in Orlando to religious broadcaster Daystar leaves Growing Bolder without a presenting station. It’s WMFE’s only local production, shining a light on the older yet vibrant folks among us. The series started last season on 20 pubTV stations and is now up to 275. “We’re looking at this as a chance to move to a presenting station in a bigger market with more infrastructure to promote and secure underwriting,” former local anchor Marc Middleton, who now heads Growing Bolder Media, tells the Orlando Sentinel. “WMFE has been a great partner, but without any staff on the TV side, we’ve had to do all the sales and marketing on our own.

What drives PBS documentarian Ken Burns to poke at history’s ghosts? In a revealing, low-key interview in the current New York magazine, he reveals that his mother died when he was 11 and his only memories of her are while she was gravely ill. It’s that pain that he says prompted him to making docs, a medium that “psychologically worked for me. Some of the things we do are to keep the wolf from the door.” After a bit more prodding, the mag notes, “Burns goes full Freud.” “I mean, I’ve talked to a psychiatrist about this. He said, ‘Well, look what you do for a living.