A Gulf Leak Meter widget and live video stream of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have provided PBS NewsHour with a “significant increase” in Web traffic, the show reported today (May 27). Newshour and NPR are providing the embedding code for the widget free and it has been used by more than 3,000 websites including YouTube, Huffington Post, New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Wired, ProPublic, Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and many local PBS stations. Subscribers to the PBS Newshour YouTube channel doubled in one 24-hour period. More than 1 million viewers have watched the video feed via Newshour and NPR websites.

While state budget woes continue to threaten public broadcasters, WTVI in Charlotte, N.C., is running into county funding problems. Mecklenburg County provides about 23 percent of the station’s operating budget, or about $860,000, President Elsie Garner told Current. Garner got a heads-up call from the county manager in March that the funding would be zeroed out under a proposed fiscal 2011 budget. The station geared up for a fight with a “very complex and well-orchestrated” plan of attack, Garner said. The League of Women Voters was instrumental; that group didn’t want to lose its televised debates. Thousands of postcards of support poured in to the county.

Next Sunday the funder of The Principal Story, a doc that aired in September on P.O.V., will receive the first Woodward A. Wickham Award for Excellence in Media Philanthropy, bestowed by Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media. The grantmakers’ group said the award was named after the late MacArthur Foundation Vice President Woody Wickham to honor funders who demonstrate Wickham’s “creative, often courageous” grantmaking (Wickham obituary, February 2009). The Wallace Foundation, which backs initiatives to improve school leadership, stepped forward as full funder of the doc by Tod Lending and David Mrazek (Current, Sept.

NPR President Vivian Schiller said some very provocative things this morning at D8, the Wall Street Journal‘s All Things Digital conference, according to a live blog of her appearance. Early in her Q&A session, Schiller tells the Journal‘s Kara Swisher: “First of all, note we don’t call ourselves National Public Radio anymore. We’re NPR.” The change reflects NPR’s job to provide universal access to news and information, she explains, “that used to mean radio, but we don’t think we should be limited to that anymore….We just wanted to reach more people, on more platforms. We want to make it as widely available as possible.”

The PBS Annual Meeting in Austin earlier this month may be over, but it continues to generate vital news: KQED is announcing winners of its Seussical Twitter rhyming contest that took place at the breakfast launch for The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That (KQED image above, dig those striped parfaits!). The grand prize, a complete, 40-plus volume set of Dr. Seuss books, went to Mary Ann Dillon, Ready to Learn coordinator at PBS Eight/KAET in Phoenix. Her Tweet: A person’s a personNo matter how smallAnd PBS kidsAre the smartest of all Runners-up, who received books from “The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library,” didn’t quite hit the anapestic tetrameter rhythm exactly but managed to have fun.

Democratic Congressman John Yarmuth of Kentucky has introduced H.R. 5477, the Ready To Compete Act, that would fund pubTV’s Ready to Learn and Ready to Teach (which encompasses PBS’s popular TeacherLine). It also adds two new programs: Ready to Achieve, a national, on-demand digital media service that would allow pubTV stations to share content in a central location; and Ready to Earn, to support educational digital content and services for adults, including GED preparation and workforce training. In a statement, Lonna Thompson, interim president and CEO of the Association for Public Television Stations, said, “Education has been, and continues to be, at the core of the mission of public television.

In its latest experiment with soliciting text donations, This American Life used the push notification system on its iPhone app to ask listeners to support the show. The response from tech savvy readers of Ars Technica was not positive. “The pushed message for donations felt a bit off-putting,” the online technology journal reported last week. “Getting a donation pitch during or after a show is expected. A random notification pushed to your phone isn’t.” Sixty readers commented on the article, including Seth Lind, TAL production manager, who apologized for the annoying iPhone message. “We’re all learning how to use this stuff!”

PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler takes on comments on Tavis Smiley’s show that have created a bit of a buzz in the conservative blogosphere. In his May 25 program Smiley interviewed Avaan Hirsi Ali, a former member of the Dutch parliament. Ali said that radicalized Islamist terrorists “got into their minds that to kill other people is a great thing to do and that they would be rewarded in the hereafter.” Smiley replied, “But Christians do that every single day in this country.” Ali: “Do they blow people up?” Smiley: “Yes. Oh, Christians, every day, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that’s what Columbine is — I could do this all day long.”

A draft copy of a Federal Trade Commission paper on bolstering journalism includes recommendations to spend more money on CPB, and establish a commercial broadcast spectrum auction tax going toward pubmedia. The paper, “Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism” (PDF), is not an official document, rather a draft for discussion at the third and final FTC workshop on news coverage on June 15. It advises boosting funding for CPB, noting that its 2009 federal budget allotment was $409 million, while per capita spending on pubcasting in Finland and Denmark is 75 times that figure. It offers up an idea for a spectrum auction tax on commercial stations, with proceeds going to a pubmedia fund.

Liane Hansen, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday since 1989, plans to leave the program next May. She’ll be visiting public radio stations over the next year while other NPR journalists take turns behind the mic. “It’s not you, it’s me,” she said in a letter to listeners broadcast on Sunday. “I’ve made the personal decision to move to where I have always wanted to live — by the ocean.” Hansen will continue working for NPR as a freelancer once her contract as WESUN host expires. In other people news, former NPR correspondent Kim Masters will join the Hollywood Reporter as editor-at-large.

WKYU in Bowling Green, Ky., said in a statement today that it is the first PBS affiliate in the country to use a revolutionary light emitting diode (LED) lighting system, which will reduce energy consumption by 97 percent. The equipment is so new — manufacturing began in 2009 — that one commercial station is the only other TV facility using it. WKYU’s old lights were around 40 years old and “regularly malfunctioned,” according to the station. Those were incandescent tungsten, manufactured in the 1960s and ’70s, with specialized bulbs expensive to replace. “The control panel looked like a huge old telephone switchboard, with knobs on retractable cords that plugged into a patch panel above,” the station noted.

The Federal Communications Commission today (June 1) released a survey showing that 91 percent of respondents were either “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with their home broadband speed. The telephone survey of 3,005 Americans (PDF) in April and May also showed that 80 percent did not know the broadband speed to their home computer.

“Public Insight Journalism = New Voices, New Stories” is the subject of tomorrow’s (June 2) webinar from the National Center for Media Engagement and American Public Media. Speakers will give pointers on PIJ, developed by Minnesota Public Radio. Thousands of Minnesotans make up the Public Insight Network to assist MPR in its reporting. Learn why public insight journalism is an important method for engaging communities, how to use it, and the benefits that stations have gleaned from it. The hourlong webinar starts at 2 p.m. Wednesday, click here to register.

From PBS’s June 2010 request for primetime series proposals to be funded by the CPB/PBS Diversity and Innovation Fund. See also Current feature on the Explorer Archetype. The Explorer Archetype Research shows the most successful brands embody a single archetype. To define and fully leverage PBS’s brand, we are employing Archetypal Branding, a proven strategy in which an organization aligns all activities behind a single unifying concept. We believe adopting this strategy will help us increase audience engagement, raise money and build brand loyalty. What are Archetypes? Archetypes are universally recognized images or themes found in art, literature, myths, legends and stories.

Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson yesterday (May 27) used a line-item veto to override state legislators on a proposed funding cut of around $1 million for public broadcasting, reports Channel 3, the Wichita NBC affiliate. “I know it’s going to save programming and some of the work we do in the community, because that’s a lot of money,” said KPTS President and CEO Michele Gors Paris. In addition to affecting KPTS in Wichita, the cuts would have had an impact on Smokey Hills Public Television in Western Kansas and radio stations such as High Plains Public radio in Garden City.