Noel Gunther remembers the moment when he realized that public broadcasting had to get involved in traumatic brain injury education. It was 2001. Gunther was producing a segment for WETA’s documentary series Exploring Your Brain. He was interviewing hockey Hall of Famer Pat LaFontaine, who had been forced to retire at age 34 after several concussions. The first, in 1990, knocked him unconscious and put him into convulsions — and yet LaFontaine was back on the ice 10 days later. After he retired in 1999, LaFontaine suffered from chronic piercing headaches and depression; his mind was in a fog. “Pat told me about trying to read a book to his daughter — a simple book,” Gunther said.

The CPB  Board’s 2011 business plan, now online (PDF), was approved during its meeting Nov. 15 and 16  in New Orleans. CPB’s six priorities for 2011: digital and innovation; diversity; dialogue, engagement and awareness; education; journalism; and core system support. That plan promotes station mergers and consolidations of functions such as joint master control operations — concepts the corporation has long encouraged (Current, March 1). CPB also will continue working to promote stations’ financial stability. “If that proves to be unfeasible” with a particular station, the document notes, “CPB will explore alternatives to maintain public broadcasting service to the affected community.”

Talk about collaboration! A typical FM/TV tower can be home to dozens of antennas for stations and other spectrum users. Five full-power TV stations and five FM broadcast from Pinnacle Hill in Rochester, N.Y. (right). Some FM translators and two-way radio and mobile users also share the tower. Pubcaster WXXI owns the middle tower and uses it to broadcast its TV signal and two FMs. 1 These are UHF TV antennas, typically 40-50 feet in length. The two on the crossbar atop WXXI’s tower aired analog signals until the analog turnoff and now will be removed. WXXI-TV’s DTV antenna is on the opposite side of the tower.

The FCC has extended the deadline for complying with new Emergency Alert System rules, reports Television Broadcast today (Nov. 24). The new deadline for all EAS participants to implement Common Alerting Protocol technology is now Sept. 30, 2011, instead of March 29, 2011.

Traveling for Turkey Day? Check out PBS NewsHour’s handy TSA Time page, which organizes Tweets by airport. This from O’Hare in Chicago: “OHare super nice. No line, arrived @ perfect time. Now 5 hour wait for flight.” Oops.

Cookie Monster wants to host Saturday Night Live. (Hey, if octogenarian Betty White can do it . . .) Want to help? Watch Sesame Street’s latest soon-to-be-viral video: Cookie Monster’s audition tape for Saturday Night Live, then visit the “Cookie Monster should host Saturday Night Live!” Facebook page. As of Wednesday (Nov. 23) morning, more than 44,000 folks have signed up. As one wrote, “OMG!! This will be awesome!!!!!”

Brian Reddington, senior v.p., development, has moved from supervision of its Online Giving Initiative to focus solely on the PBS Foundation, Michael Jones, PBS c.o.o, said in a memo today (Nov. 23). PBS’s controversial national online fundraising campaign, set to begin on PBS.org in January, will now be overseen by Jason Seiken’s PBS Interactive team. Bob Minai and Kristin Calhoun will head up the effort. Keith Brengle, recently hired as director, online giving, will now report to Minai. “Jason Seiken clearly has serious online expertise and credibility, and the experience of working with PBS member stations,” said longtime development pro Michael Soper, PBS’s head development officer, 1978-92, and now a nonprofit consultant.

PBS has hired a director of station development services to plug the hole created in June when laid off four staffers in the development unit (Current, Nov. 1). Valerie Pletcher will be a director of station development services beginning Dec. 1, Joyce Herring, s.v.p. of station services, announced to staff in a memo. Pletcher will work as a liaison with system development professionals on informational and training needs, best practices and the development portion of the Annual Meeting. From 1997 to ’99, Pletcher was manager of sponsorships and marketing for the PBS Sponsorship Group; from ’94 to ’96 she was underwriting manager at WVPT/Virginia Public Television.

Robert Feder, longtime Chicago media columnist, is departing Chicago Public Media and its Vocalo blog. He said in a post today (Nov. 23) that he’ll reveal his new online home soon. “With the recent redesign of the Vocalo blogs and their move to a new site at WBEZ.org, I have decided it’s time for me to leave,” he said. Before signing on with Vocalo — a mashup of traditional and new media designed to engage a diverse audience — in November 2009, Feder spent 20 years covering media at the Sun-Times. Phil Rosenthal, Chicago Tribune media columnist, said Vocalo’s move to the WBEZ site, “puzzling for its urgency and lack of necessity, has been snarled in technical difficulties.”

Chicago’s WFMT-FM (98.7) set a record with fall pledge, bringing in $695,000, General Manager Steve Robinson said in a Sun-Times story today (Nov. 23). Then two trustees kicked in to round that up to $700,000. The previous top figure was $620,000. Average contributions increased 17 percent to $199 from last year’s $170. Robinson also asked contributors if they wanted to donate CD premiums to local schools, and many did.

Hiki Nō, PBS Hawaii’s new and innovative student news network, has secured the funding it needs and will launch in February 2011, blogs station President Leslie Wilcox today (Nov. 23). It has raised $1.2 million from local and national funders including the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. CPB and the the Clarence T.C. Ching Foundation provided seed money. Hiki Nō will partner with teachers and middle and high school students from all of Hawaii’s islands to create a collaborative network to deliver community-based news and information to the state via PBS Hawaii’s broadcast and web platforms.

Tavis Smiley said “it’s unthinkable, it’s untenable, it’s unacceptable,” that KCET execs didn’t let him know that they were breaking from PBS as of Jan. 1 (Current, Oct. 18). He told the Los Angeles Times in a story today (Nov. 23) that being out of the loop when his show is produced on the lot at the L.A. station is “unconscionable.” “I literally got a phone call as KCET was making the statement publicly, as this story was breaking,” he said. “I was traveling, so I wasn’t even in the city. I didn’t even find out about this until hours after it had been announced.”

Three PBS documentaries are on the short list for Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced. “Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould” premieres Dec. 27 on American Masters, “Waste Land” will air on Independent Lens in April 2011, and  “William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe” ran on P.O.V. this June. The Academy Awards nominations will be announced at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Jan. 25, 2011, live from Los Angeles. CORRECTION: Make that four PBS docs in the running for the coveted Oscar. Cynthia Lopez notes that P.O.V.’s “Enemies of the People” is also short-listed; that’ll air next year.

What’s really at stake in the battle over federal funding to NPR, and how can the field’s advocates make the best case for continued support? Public broadcasters began speaking out last week in friendly venues, testing their message points and strategizing about whether and how to mount a more aggressive campaign to enlist broad public support. At yesterday’s Public Media Camp in Washington, D.C., attendees discussed the political attack with Jay Rosen, press critic and j-school professor at New York University, who participated via Skype in a session on the response to the “culture war.” Rosen, who described himself as sympathetic to the fight to preserve federal funding, called for a blogger — one who works independently and outside of NPR and PBS — to report on the debate, critique press coverage of it, and call out the “most outrageous statements” from the field’s partisan critics.

Public media needs coding collaborators. That’s what pubcaster Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices writes in today’s (Nov. 22) Hacks/Hackers blog. Large pubradio stations have ambitious Internet projects going, but they also have the staff and cash to do so. Mid-to-small stations and independents need simpler, smaller apps. Golding has two examples of pubmedia-specific API how-tos that could cheaply and immediately help hundreds of sites.