Ira Glass of This American Life criticizes the 170 million Americans advocacy campaign to defend public broadcasting’s federal funding in today’s Boston Globe. The campaign, developed by American Public Media and the Association of Public Television Stations to recruit public radio and TV supporters as advocates, fails to address conservatives’ criticism that pubcasting programs have a liberal bias, he says. “Weirdly, my betters in the public broadcasting community have decided they’re not even going to argue about that,’’ Glass tells the Globe. “Instead they have this kind of vanilla ad campaign based on the idea that 170 million Americans watch public TV or listen to public radio, and these Americans are from all walks of life and are conservatives and liberals.

The 170 Million Americans campaign to support public broadcasting funding has posted on YouTube a short video titled, “Keep Public Radio On.” The initiative aims to draw attention  to what it says is the average number of Americans that interact with public broadcasting each month via programming, websites and outreach (Current, Dec. 13, 2010).

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has renewed its support of the  P.O.V. documentary series with a grant of $1.5 million for three years, it announced today (Feb. 3). The money will go to the PBS program as well as its related online and educational activities.

Public media thoughtleader Rob Bole is at it again, posing intellectually challenging questions to pubcasters everywhere. “Where is our online boldness?,” he writes in a blog post Wednesday (Feb. 2). “Where are the great challenges we are addressing in the lives of our audiences that have show us so much trust, loyalty and enthusiasm? Are we going to be incrementalists? How can we capture the art and vision that we put into our documentaries and journalism and turn that to the digital spaces that our country is rapidly inhabiting?” Intrigued? More here.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation today (Feb. 3) announced a four-year, $4.2 million grant to Northwestern University for the Knight News Innovation Laboratory. The Knight Lab will be the first of its type in the nation, a partnership between Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism and the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern. Journalists and computer scientists will join forces to create new digital tools, build partnerships with media organizations and expand the media innovation community. Even the historic blizzard in Chicago couldn’t stop the announcement. A formal launch at the snowed-in university was scrapped for an online question-and-answer session with Eric Newton, vice president of the journalism program at Knight Foundation, and his team.

The National Children’s Museum, opening in Prince George’s County, Md., in 2013, will partner with Sesame Workshop, the two announced today (Feb. 3). The two will collaborate on museum programming for the young visitors, and Sesame Street characters will be featured in the exhibits.

U.S. Ambassador to Greece Daniel Smith, center, was on hand Wednesday (Feb. 2) to welcome travelers accompanying co-hosts for the public broadcasting show Grannies on Safari as they arrived at the Athens International Airport from Luxor, Egypt. The group had landed in Egypt on Jan. 26, as the country began to explode into anti-government protests. They finally made it out on a U.S. State Department charter flight. First row, from left: Jessie Shropshire of Ohio, Gail Bikel of Indiana, Ann Pinkney of Illinois, co-host Regina Fraser, Smith, co-host Pat Johnson, the ambassador’s wife Diana Smith, and Julio Martinez of Illinois, the show’s photographer.

Updated, Feb. 7: Rick Lewis, c.e.o. of the fundraising group Friends of WLRN for nearly seven years, will step down at the end of February. Jorge Perez-Alvarez, c.f.o. of the Friends group, will serve as interim chief executive. Alberto Carvalho, superintendent of Miami-Dade County public schools, which owns WLRN-TV/FM, has objected to the independence of the nonprofit Friends group, which raises funds for the stations, and complained about the six-figure compensation of underwriting sales reps for the Friends group (Current, June 21). The Friends board has given Carvalho a voice in appointing Lewis’s successor, which he wanted. Friends Chair Charles Tatelbaum told Current that both he and the superintendent will appoint members of the search committee.

Public media applications for funding by the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program are due March 17. The full Funding Opportunity notice details the PTFP priorities and eligibility standards, and the FAQ has more info. A series of hourlong webinars to train applicants begins next week. Dates are Feb. 10, 14 and 23, and March 7. All begin at 2 p.m. Eastern. To reserve a spot in the webinars, write to Lynn Chadwick, lchadwick@ntia.doc.gov, before the close of business the day before. Last fall the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration bestowed about $20 million in matching grants to public stations and other nonprofit and noncommercial organizations.

Chicago public broadcasting outlets are taking a hit from local media columnist Robert Feder. In his blog post today (Feb. 3) on how the media performed during this week’s massive blizzard that crippled the city, both WTTW-Channel 11 and Chicago Public Radio WBEZ were declared losers. In fact, he writes, WTTW was the “biggest loser,” because it “declared Wednesday a snow day and shut down its entire news operation.” “Viewers who tuned in to Chicago Tonight expecting an analysis of the city’s response to the crisis or an examination of the blizzard’s political and economic impact were stunned to see a rerun of the public television station’s forum with mayoral candidates from Jan.

The Los Angeles music community will lose an important ally if  Republicans on the Hill have their way and cut back or zero out pubcasting support, reports LA Weekly. NPR affiliate KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., is a longtime source to launch new bands. “What’s at stake locally is no less than KCRW’s ability to provide its current musical programming — credited by sources across the industry for breaking L.A. bands and taking indie acts to national prominence.” KCRW librarian Eric J. Lawrence estimates that 20 percent of its programming is devoted to local bands. But rights for all of that music are covered by a license negotiated and paid for by CPB.

PBS’s annual study of media technology used by teachers reveals an “insufficient capacity of computing devices and technology infrastructure to handle teachers’ Internet-dependent instructional activity,” it announced today (Feb. 2). The national research by Grunwald Associates LLC also shows that kindergarten through 12th grade teachers spend 60 percent of their time using educational resources in the classroom that are either free or paid for by teachers themselves, due to school budget cuts. The nationwide, online survey reflects views of a representative sample of 1,401 full-time classroom teachers (1,204 K-12 public school teachers and 197 pre-K teachers in public and private schools) in August 2010.

WTTW’s Grannies on Safari hosts and the tour group they’re leading just landed (3 p.m. Eastern Feb. 2) at the airport in Athens, Greece, on a U.S. State Department charter flight from Luxor, Egypt. Their spokesperson Maria Dugandzic-Pasic said Regina Fraser and Pat Johnson told her that the entire Luxor airport was full of  tourists frantic to leave. Because the travelers have no access to television or the Internet – and opted to stay on their tour boar on the Nile – they were not aware of the seriously deteriorating situation in the country as mobs demanding the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak begin to clash with pro-Mubarak crowds.

There’s a whole slew of case studies just posted on the PBCore site. What’s that? The Public Broadcasting Metadata Dictionary Project.

MHz Networks has extended Al Jazeera English’s live coverage of the upheaval in Egypt, the Virginia-based pubTV distributor said Tuesday (Feb. 1). Al Jazeera English newscasts on MHz Worldview reach more than 35 million households nationwide. And viewers are finding other ways to watch Al Jazeera English, the New York Times reports. Meanwhile, KSMQ in southern Minnesota received donations Tuesday from viewers specifically pleased with the additional Al Jazeera English coverage on Worldview.