Under legislation introduced Monday (July 19) in the Senate, broadcasters would share in the proceeds of a spectrum auction, according to TVNewsCheck. In the Spectrum Measurement and Policy Reform Act, put forward by Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), the Federal Communications Commission would determine how auction proceeds would be allocated between license holders and the government. The legislation would also authorize the Commerce Department to set annual fees on existing spectrum users based “on the fair market commercial value of that spectrum” as determined by the FCC. The government sees the auction as a way to clear spectrum space needed for the increasing number of wireless devices (Current, Feb.

PBS President Paula Kerger is gala chair for this November’s International Emmy Awards Nov. 22 in New York City, reports WorldScreen.com. The 38th annual awards presented by the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences honor work in 10 categories.

The reporter behind the controversy over PBS affiliate UNC-TV releasing pre-broadcast footage and reporting docs to the North Carolina state legislature spoke out on Friday (July 16). In a statement, Eszter Vajda said: “This is why I became a journalist … to bring information to the public that they don’t have, to arm them with information that sometimes is kept from them on purpose.” She said the story, on Alcoa’s request to renew its license on several hydroelectric dams, “deals with the relationship between big business, people and the environment.” After a state legislative committee investigating Alcoa’s license renewal request declared UNC-TV a “state agency,” Alcoa then demanded, via the state’s open records laws, that the station furnish it all the reporter’s materials on the story dating to January 2008.

KVCR-TV in San Bernardino, Calif., has received a $6 million donation from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians to fund the nation’s first full-time Native American channel, reports the Desert Sun newspaper. “We fully anticipate this channel to become a model for public television programming across the country,” said Larry Ciecalone, president of the PBS affiliate. James Ramos, chairman of the San Manuel Band, said the channel supports the tribe’s mission of “eradicating stereotypes that often stem from inaccurate depictions of American Indians in commercial television.” He said content will be Native-produced film and television, providing potential work for actors and storytellers.

“The Red Green Show” fans Kerry Comerford and his longtime partner, Brooke Parker, left their home Berkeley Springs, W.Va., for their first overnight away in 25 years and drove five hours to meet their quirky pubTV fave character, currently on his “Wit & Wisdom” tour, in Charleston on Sunday (July 18). The two never get away as they have horses and other farm animals to tend. But that day they were among a massive crowd that waited at Zeeger Hardware in Charleston, Va., for hours to meet Steve Smith, the Canadian who plays the “handyman hero” on the show, reports the Charleston Daily Mail.

Production U, a new two-week media camp for high-school students, kicks off Aug. 2 off at PBS 39 in Bethehem, Pa., reports Lehigh Valley Live. “In public television, a huge mission of ours is to educate people,” said Amy Burkett, station senior veep of production. “The thing I’m most passionate about is television and I want to share that passion and education with the next generation of television producers.” The students will shadow producers, as well as write, shoot, edit and act in a 15-minute teen-oriented newscast to be shown online. A second session begins Aug. 16. (Image: PBS 39)

ProPublica, The Takeaway and Ushahidi Haiti, a crowdsourcing crisis map created in response to the massive earthquake in January, each received 2010 Knight-Batten Awards of Special Distinction. The awards, selected by an advisory board, honor innovative journalistic collaborations that “foster unique levels of digital engagement,” according to J-Lab, which administers the awards. ProPublica was lauded for advancing the craft and practice of crowdsourcing; the Takeaway for its use of text-messaging to collect tips from residents in a Detroit neighborhood; and Ushahidi Haiti for its rapid and multi-layered efforts responding to disaster-relief needs in Haiti. Cash prizes of $1,000 go to winners of Special Distinction Awards; the Grand Prize of $10,000 went to Sunlight Live.

An often-overlooked corner of the evolving pubmedia ecosystem hides PEG access (public access, educational, government) channels. But the recent conference of the Alliance for Community Media PEG advocacy group revealed the trend that more of the channels are transforming into “community media centers” to further their public-service mission, write Bill Densmore and Colin Rhinesmith at the New America Foundation blog Sustaining Democracy in a Digital Age. The support once required from the cable industry is fading away; cities including Los Angeles and Las Vegas have totally pulled the plug. But the Web offers low-cost (or free) ways to deliver information to Web-savvy citizens, PEG supporters say.

Five staffers have been due to the ongoing merger between PBS affiliates CET in Cincinnati and ThinkTV in Dayton, Ohio, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. The two have been operating together since 2008 as Public Media Connect Inc., headed by president David Fogarty. “We’re going through changes with staff realignments and technical operations,” in both cities, he told the newspaper. CET’s signal is now being sent from Dayton. All channel monitoring and program traffic are done there for both. One master control operator from each station, two producers and an educational services staffer lost jobs. Fogarty said they’re also cutting some part-time and contract personnel.

San Francisco’s KQED is adding weekday newscasts to its FM station and as on-demand audio on its website, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “These will be the first local news-only reports on KQED-FM in several years and will air on the half hour from 6:04 a.m. to noon and at 4:33 p.m. The two minutes of air time will be subtracted from the NPR newscasts that precede them,” the Chronicle reports. The expanded news service launched this morning; a blog reporting breaking news, News Fix, rolls out next month.

The Ford Foundation was noncommercial television’s first big funder, years before Congress contributed large sums — supporting efforts to acquire reserved channels, helping to start stations in major cities, and backing National Educational Television, the system’s major production and distribution organization in its early years.

Public Law 90-129, 90th Congress, November 7, 1967 (as amended to April 26, 1968) This law was enacted less than 10 months after the report of the Carnegie Commission on Educational Broadcasting. The act initiates federal aid to the operation (as opposed to funding capital facilities) of public broadcasting. Provisions include: extend authorization of the earlier Educational Television Facilities Act, forbid educational broadcasting stations to editorialize or support or oppose political candidates, establish the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and defines its board, defines its purposes, authorize reduced telecommunications rates for its interconnection, authorize appropriations to CPB, and authorize a federal study of instructional television and radio.

Several hundred e-mails landed in PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler’s in-box regarding the three-part doc “Turmoil and Triumph: The George Schultz Years,” running this month on PBS (image, PBS). Viewers raised many of the same issues that media watchdog FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) did regarding the laudatory tone of the film as well as funding closely linked to the former Secretary of State — particularly by the Bechtel Foundation, where Schultz was president for seven years. In response, PBS told Gelter in part: “No PBS funder is permitted to exercise editorial control over content. This is the most important consideration in our underwriting policies.

Jesse Thorn, host and creator of The Sound of Young America, speaks up for humor on public radio by announcing that Mississippi Public Broadcasting can’t air his program unless and until it resumes broadcasts of Fresh Air, the NPR talk show that MPB Radio dumped because of “gratuitous discussions on issues of an explicit sexual nature.” Fresh Air is “one of the best radio shows in the world,” Thorn writes, and its editorial standards have been acknowledged with Peabody and Murrow awards. “This incident is of particular concern to us here at The Sound of Young America not just because we create a show with a format similar to Fresh Air‘s, or because Terry Gross is a personal hero of mine, but also because much of our show is focused on humor, and that seems to be the real target of the ban,” Thorn writes.