Citing North Carolina’s Open Records laws, Alcoa Aluminum Inc. wants UNC-TV — licensed to the University of North Carolina — to turn over all reporting documents relating to its North Carolina Now segments titled, “Alcoa and the Yadkin River.” UNC-TV spokesman Steve Volstad told Current that station attorneys will “abide by the letter of the law,” and are still researching the request. There’s a great deal of information at stake, including anything related to reporter Eszter Vajda’s research into Alcoa’s request for a new 50-year lease of four hydroelectric dams in the state. UNC-TV earlier this month (July 6) provided that information to its state legislature as part of its investigation into the dam lease renewal.

Documentarian and baseball fan Ken Burns will premiere his latest film, “The Tenth Inning,” today (July 16) at Dartmouth College’s Hopkins Center for the Arts, reports The Dartmouth newspaper. The original 1994 “Baseball” series ran nine episodes and covered the history of the sport from the Civil War to 1992. The sequel, produced with filmmaker Lynn Novick (both above), focuses on recent developments in the sport. It’ll have its broadcast premiere Sept. 28 on PBS.

Why did Mississippi Public Broadcasting drop Fresh Air from its radio schedule? The blog “A Unitarian Universalist Minister in the South” set off a blogosphere chain reaction yesterday by speculating that the “recurring inappropriate content” cited by MPB Radio Director Kevin Farrell must be the show’s willingness to treat homosexuals as normal people, not the “evil incarnate bent on destroying the American dream, baseball and apple pie, too.” MPB Executive Director Dr. Judith Lewis didn’t get into the details in a statement issued late yesterday, after Gawker and the Huffington Post had picked up on the story. “Too often Fresh Air‘s interviews include gratuitous discussions on issues of an explicit sexual nature.

The Los Angeles Times said that PBS “flexed its usual strength” when the News and Documentary Emmy nods were announced today (July 15) and the network received 37. Frontline scored four and Frontline/World, three; Nova and P.O.V. each had four; and Bill Moyers Journal, which ended this year, received three. “Mosque at Morgantown,” one of the “America at a Crossroads” series funded by CPB, also is in the running. The 2010 lifetime achievement award goes to noted documentarian Frederick Wiseman, perhaps best known for his groundbreaking 1967 cinema verite “Titicut Follies.” Several of his 30 films ran on PBS, including “Domestic Violence” and “High School.”

Online donations to nonprofs are up 23 percent this March, April and May over the same time last year, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reports. The Blackbaud Index of Online Giving keeps tabs on nearly 1,800 nonprofit organizations with combined donations of $400 million annually. It found that groups with annual budgets of more than $10 million saw Internet donations grow 28 percent during that period compared to last year; those with budgets of $1 million to $10 million rose 21.3 percent; and those with budgets of less than $1 million grew 13.1 percent.

NPR’s David Folkenflik, State of the Re:Union creator Al Letson, and PBS’s Frontline are public broadcasting’s winners in this year’s National Press Club Awards. The Press Club honored Folkenflik for press criticism in “Why GQ Doesn’t Want Russians to Read its Story“; Letson for “Brooklyn: Change Happens,” an episode of the series spawned by via CPB’s Public Radio Talent Quest initiative; and Frontline for consumer journalism in The Card Game, a documentary reported by Lowell Bergman and coproduced with the New York Times.

A unique nonfiction film that its producers call “a road movie on the web” is getting attention within the indie production world, according to the Independent, a news site for media makers. Viewers interested in “Prison Valley” sign into Twitter, Facebook, or create an account on the film’s site. Then the movie, from French producers David Dufresne and Philippe Brault, begins in a car driving along Skyline Drive in Cañon City, Colo., heading toward an area that’s home to 13 prisons. There are opportunities to take detours into additional interactive content, and visitors see the names of others who are watching.

An inventory of “existing spectrum allocation, assignment and utilization” is already under way, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a letter to Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.). Broadcasting & Cable reports that a bill mandating the inventory by the FCC and National Telecommunications and Information Administration has passed the House and is awaiting action in the Senate. The FCC soon will vote on a proposal to free spectrum in the mobile satellite services band for terrestrial broadband. Then, probably sometime during the next few months, will begin reclaiming 120 MHz of broadcast spectrum for that broadband.

BBC Worldwide is about to launch a news website for American audiences, BBC.com, according to Advertising Age. The site, produced by a staff of ten journalists based in Washington, D.C., will cover politics and general news, and is expected to go live today. “[T]his latest effort is part of the company’s ambitions to nab more U.S. online media dollars, and the inception of BBC.com underscores the importance of original content to that strategy,” Ad Age reports.

America needs one news service to broadcast internationally, drawing on the strengths of both public and commercial media, writes Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, in today’s (July 14) Wall Street Journal. America’s broadcast news industry was designed to have private owners operating within public regulations. Currently, “American journalism is not just the product of the free market, but of a hybrid system of private enterprise and public support,” he writes. In today’s globalized world, other countries have strong national media: The BBC in Britain, China’s CCTV and Xinhua news, and Qatar’s Al Jazeera. But news broadcast internationally from the United States originates from Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — developed during war “as tools of our anticommunist foreign policy,” Bollinger said.

WNET/Thirteen will launch on Sept. 21 “Mission U.S.,” the first in a series of educational online games targeting “teens and tweens” nationwide, according to a press release. It’s part of CPB’s $20 million American History and Civics initiative, which was announced in 2005 and funded seven grantees in 2007 (Current, July 9, 2007). The first of 10 “missions” is “For Crown or Colony?,” which takes place just before the American Revolution in Boston. Players follow Nathaniel Wheeler, a 14-year-old printer’s apprentice. According to the release, “Nat’s fate rests in players’ hands: Should he complete his apprenticeship and support the Patriots’ cause, remain loyal to the crown, or leave Boston, taking a new job at sea?”

The Washington Post‘s Reliable Sources columnists are reporting that a cutting remark rocker Paul McCartney made during the taping of a PBS “In Performance at the White House” concert was omitted from the program. His comment came near the end of the June 2 performance, after he received his Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song from President Obama (above, PBS image). After one more song, McCartney told the crowd, “After the last eight years, it’s good to have a president that knows what a library is.” The Huffington Post said a rep for producing station WETA explained that McCartney’s comment came after the program had officially concluded.

Robert Coonrod, CPB president from 1997 to 2004, has been chosen CEO of media and communications company InterMedia, the firm said in a press release. The appointment was announced by Richard Carlson, chairman of the InterMedia Board, who served as president of CPB from 1992 to 1997; Coonrod had worked under him there for many years. InterMedia provides cloud communications services to small- and mid-sized businesses. He joins InterMedia from his post as COO of the nonprofit Meridian International Center.

Robert Fish, president of Rhode Island PBS, died July 9 at his home in Snug Harbor, Rhode Island. He was 65. He was a member of the Rhode Island Telecommunications Authority, and president of the Rhode Island Broadcasters Association since 2008. Michael Isaacs, chairman of the telecom authority, said Fish could “turn adversity into advantage. He brought that kind of thinking and leadership to the public television station here in Rhode Island. It was a new perspective from someone who had broadcasting experience in a different arena. Bob knew a lot of people and touched a lot of lives.” His career included serving as g.m.

CPB is backing the National Federation of Community Broadcasters as its service provider for African American public radio stations. The decision, announced after a meeting of African American station reps at NFCB’s Community Radio Conference last month, adds a third ethnic radio group to NFCB’s roster — African American Public Radio Stations (AAPRS). This is a new group — not the preexisting, similarly named African American Public Radio Consortium led by Loretta Rucker, which applied unsuccessfully for the grant. NFCB already provides an organizational umbrella for Native Public Media and Latino Public Radio. “We have experience and a track record of dealing with the diversity of our industry,” said new NFCB President Maxie Jackson, who forged strong relationships with many African American station execs during his previous jobs as a station programmer and consultant.