WBUR’s Order in the Court 2.0, winner of a Knight News Challenge grant, continues to progress, reports MediaShift Idea Lab. Two new staffers have arrived: Joe Spurr, project director, responsible for the design and development of the Order in the Court 2.0 website, which will provide live streaming of Quincy (Mass.) District Court proceedings. Spurr most recent worked at KPBS in San Diego, where he redesigned its website. Producer Val Wang will oversee the daily stream of written and video content from the court. She’s been a freelancer with Here and Now and On Point.

The National Religious Broadcasters group “suggests that the government turn its attention to the needs of a huge, underappreciated resource: noncommercial religious broadcasters.” The NRB released that statement today (Nov. 17) in reaction to the increasingly noisy debate over federal funding of CPB, PBS and NPR. “These donor-driven broadcasters do not receive a dime of tax money, yet they serve the public interest,” said Greg Parshall, NRB v.p. and general counsel, by spreading news about homeless shelters, reading and school programs, anti-crime groups, crisis pregnancy centers and military support programs. So noncom religious stations “should be give more latitude to raise funds on-air for other legitimate, nonprofit groups,” Parshall said, and need “fewer constraints in seeking program sponsorship from corporate and business underwriters.”

House Republicans announced today (Nov. 17) that they plan to force a floor vote on defunding NPR, The Hill is reporting. House GOP Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) and Rep. Doug Lamborn (Colo.) said the issue received the most votes on Cantor’s YouCut site, which allows visitors to advise lawmakers on budget cuts. (The option to vote “no” is not provided.) “When NPR executives made the decision to unfairly terminate [Correspondent] Juan Williams and to then disparage him afterwards, the bias of their organization was exposed,” the two said in a statement. “Make no mistake, it is not the role of government to tell news organizations how to operate.

PBS NewsHour’s new science page went live yesterday (Nov. 16), with original reporting by NewsHour Science Correspondent Miles O’Brien, Digital Correspondent Hari Sreenivasan, Reporter/Producer Jenny Marder and the show’s science reporting unit. There’s a “Just Ask” feature for viewer questions for scientists and other experts, podcasts and more interesting science, engineering and techie stuff.

The Associated Press is reporting that 130 employees of the New Jersey Network received 45-day layoff notices Tuesday (Nov. 16) as the pubTV and radio network prepares to break from state support (Current, July 6). Another 17 who are paid through a private foundation also are expected to receive pink slips soon. They’re part of some 2,200 layoff notifications to state employees. However, according to the Asbury Park Press, most of the terminations are unlikely to occur. The notices are a state civil service requirement. “The staff has known for quite a while that they might possibly get these,” acting NJN executive director Janice Selinger told Current.

CPB’s Public Media Innovation (PMI) fund is the topic of Friday’s (Nov. 19) webinar sponsored by the National Center for Media Engagement. The grants support station work on emerging media platforms. Representatives from KPBS in San Diego, Maryland Public Television, University of Pennsylvania’s WXPN and WKSU at Kent State in Ohio will discuss projects and generating new streams of revenue. Register here for the 1 p.m. Eastern event.

CPB’s Board of Directors at its meeting today (Nov. 16) in New Orleans approved a resolution expressing its “deep concerns about the consequences of NPR’s decisions” in the handling of correspondent Juan Williams’ dismissal — a termination that is now undergoing an external review. It says that the public television and radio systems are “highly interdependent,” which means the “actions of one public media stakeholder can affect the welfare of the others and the public media system as a whole.” The resolution states that public reaction has been “highly critical.” And it concludes that the consequences of NPR’s actions are “renewed challenges to public media’s journalistic integrity, Congressional attempts to reduce or eliminate funding for public media, and the impact such reductions will have on public media’s future programming and services.”

At its meeting in New Orleans today (Nov. 16), the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting elected Bruce Ramer (left) as its new chairman, and David Pryor as vice-chairman. Ramer is an attorney and partner at Gang, Tyre, Ramer and Brown in Beverly Hills, Calif., specializing in entertainment and media. He has been active in public television for nearly 20 years, joining the board of KCET in Los Angeles in 1992 and serving as its chair from 2001 to 2003. He was appointed to the CPB board by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate in October 2008.

Two-term Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour called for an end to state subsidies for Mississippi Public Broadcasting in a $5.5 billion fiscal 2012 spending proposal released yesterday. Barbour, who acknowledged at his Nov. 15 news conference that he’s considering a bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, vowed to close the state’s $700 million deficit during his last year as governor, according to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. The budget proposal [PDF] reduces state spending an average of 8 percent, but targets MPB and the state’s arts and library commissions with cuts of 20 percent. Barbour recommends that MPB take a $1.5 million hit in its state appropriation next year, reducing its state aid to just over $6 million.

“The world has changed, but our spectrum allocations still reflect the previous era,” said Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski Monday (Nov. 15) in a speech to the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners in Atlanta (full remarks here). He told the audience that by opening spectrum to commercial use in the 20th century, “we made it possible for entrepreneurs to create a large and successful over-the-air broadcast TV industry that in turn helped create our extraordinarily successful U.S. content industry, bringing real benefits to our economy and beyond.” “Fast forward to today,” he said. “Less than ten percent of us — down from 100 percent — still get our television programming from over-the-air broadcast transmissions. 

The Washington Post is reporting that PBS edited out controversial remarks made by Tina Fey (left) during her acceptance speech for the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize last Tuesday night (Nov. 9). Here’s what didn’t make it into the Sunday (Nov. 14) broadcast: “And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women — except, of course, those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape ‘kit ‘n’ stuff. But for everybody else, it’s a win-win. Unless you’re a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years — whatever.

Among the 58 possible federal budget savings recommended by the vice chairs of the president’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform are the entire appropriations to CPB, the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program and the Agriculture Department’s facilities grants to rural public stations. That could put public broadcasting in a congressional bull’s-eye, since a number of bigger items on the list would be too politically devastating to okay. Who on either side of the aisle would vote to boost the retirement age to 69, wipe out income-tax deductions for health benefits and mortgage interest or raise the payroll tax? “The current CPB funding level is the highest it has ever been,” the draft says, with no comment on the merits, and notes that erasing the appropriation would save nearly $500 million in 2015 alone.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) recommended today (Nov. 15) that 115 MHz of spectrum be reallocated for wireless broadband service within the next five years. The Federal Communications Commission will need to identify the spectrum by mid-2011 and begin removing broadcasters by mid-2013, it said in a timetable for identifying and releasing spectrum for wireless broadband. President Barack Obama’s goal is to free up some 500 MHz over the next decade. Public broadcast stations will need to decide whether to participate in the voluntary giveback (Current, Feb. 8). While there was talk about using funds from the spectrum auction to create a public broadcasting trust fund, Obama in June signaled he preferred other uses for the cash.

Bills to defund public broadcasting, or at least any radio network that fired Juan Williams, are beginning to seem like a real threat since the Nov. 2 midterm election gave Republicans a 60-plus majority in the House and a mandate to take huge bites out of federal spending. Last week the co-chairmen of President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform — assigned to suggest ways to reduce the $13.7 trillion deficit — advised dropping CPB from the budget, along with some vastly bigger federal expenditures that have even sturdier support in Congress (separate story). For conservative talking heads, ending aid to pubcasting would be a high-profile get-tough symbol.

John Lawson, former president of the Association of Public Television Stations, is the new executive director of the Mobile500 Alliance, the group announced today (Nov. 15). The Alliance is a broadcasting collective working to accelerate availability of mobile digital television, which allows consumers to see live TV on laptops, tablets, smart phones and other mobile devices via a broadcast signal. Lawson will help secure content arrangements and work with electronics manufacturers to enhance device features. Lawson ran APTS from 2001 to 2008. He was e.v.p. of broadcast company ION Media Networks from 2008 until earlier this year. In April, Lawson re-launched his consulting firm, Convergence Services Inc.,