The first-quarter Nielsen numbers that arrived recently at WGBH were surprising — in a very positive way. Antiques Roadshow, Masterpiece and Nova each posted double-digit increases in audience numbers over this same time last year, according to the Sponsoring Group for Public Television, sales org for the shows. In a statement the group noted that the three shows “were up in desirable demos, significantly outperforming key competitive cable networks.” Roadshow had total audience growth of 18 percent, including increases of 17 percent in adults 35 to 64 and 7 percent in adults 25 to 54. For Masterpiece, total audience grew 31 percent, increased 25 percent among adults 35 to 64 and 20 percent in adults 25 to 54.

Lots of correspondence to the PBS ombudsman on the Need to Know debut, and “almost all” of it about the weekly pubaffairs show were “pretty grim,” reports Michael Getler. Among viewer comments: “I had to write someone because I am so upset that I am shaking.” “The new program Need to Know should be retitled: Got to Go. It is pablum.” “Watching Need to Know was like having someone snatch your NY Times and give you back USA Today. Getler cautioned viewers, “This is the first program and lots of series get off to rocky starts in the eyes of some people.

How about spending a Sunday swimming 750 meters (half a mile), biking 18 miles and running 5K (3 miles)? That’s just was PBS President Paula Kerger did yesterday in the 751-participant Kinetic Sprint triathlon in Spotsylvania, Va. She set the land speed record for PBS presidents with a time of 2:14:38. PBS spokeswoman Stephanie Aaronson told Current that Kerger has been in training since last September, learning a lot from friends who compete in such events and running two charity races to ramp up. Finding time to train was a challenge: get to office before 7 a.m., catch up on e-mails from night before, head to the gym and then back to the office.

When Mike Dunn takes the helm today at University of Utah’s KUED, he’ll probably be the first pubcasting g.m. ever to have survived an attack by a 400-pound grizzly bear. Dunn still has small scars on the corner of his mouth and near his wrist from the 1994 attack at Grand Teton National Park; the big scars “are on my back where you can see the claw marks,” he told the Salt Lake City Tribune. The head of the search committee had asked Dunn if he was “tough enough” for the job, to which he replied, “Well, you know, I did survive a bear attack.”

It’s been a big week for indie producer Dave Isay and his team at StoryCorps. In an May 5 appearance on Colbert Report promoting his new book, Isay defined the essence of motherhood as a combination of “fierce devotion, love and, you know, wisdom.” He also went along with Colbert’s joke demanding a follow-up on MILFs. The first StoryCorps animated short went viral on the Internet, previewing the series to air this summer on PBS’s P.O.V. and on public TV stations as interstitial spots. The sneak-peak video, also tied to the Mother’s Day theme, is “Q&A,” one of the most popular StoryCorps audio interviews.

We don’t want to spoil this video for you, so all we’ll say is you’ll go gaga over this one from NPR. Robert Siegel is definitely a highlight, but we like those “Directors” too. Stay tuned to the Current blog as your Friendly Pubcasting Reporters track down the back story on this. UPDATE: Tamar Charney, program director at Michigan Radio in Ann Arbor, reports the video “has been quite a hit with our Facebook fans. After we mentioned the spoof on-air our FB fans number started ticking up!” EXCLUSIVE UPDATE: Reporting from the Dorkosphere, Your Intrepid Reporters now have the full story.

Looking for a way to boost participation in your station’s Facebook fan page? Arizona Public Media’s page, which had stalled at 555, picked up 100 new fans in just six days in March, as well as pulled them into PlayPBS, its local version of the COVE player — all with an online scavenger hunt offering free tickets to a David Sedaris performance. Station spokesperson Steve Delgado told Current the idea bubbled up during publicity brainstorming between the underwriting and promotions folks and Sedaris’s team. At the same time, the station was planning a PlayPBS soft roll-out and wanted a few hundred visitors to try it out.

The application that NPR created for the launch of Apple’s iPad has received the highest user ratings among the apps offered by major American news organizations, according to this analysis by Newsosaur Alan Mutter. NPR’s app ranks sixth among the top ten news applications in terms of downloads, but iPad users give the content and experience an average rating of 3.5 stars, higher than apps created by USA Today (3.0), the New York Times (2.5) and the Wall Street Journal (2.5). The BBC and France 24, the international news channel funded by the French government, received user ratings of 3.5 and 4.0, respectively, and Mutter believes that the rich-media iPad experience offered by broadcasters has an advantage over newsprint publishers.

The prototype for the American Archive is complete, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting (background: Current, May 14, 2007 and April 13, 2009). CPB commissioned the project in January 2009 to determine how best to preserve and archive the historic video and audio stored throughout the pubcasting system. The first phase (25 stations took part) was an inventory, the second (22 stations) concentrated on restoring, digitizing and cataloging more than 5,700 sound and video items totaling more than 2,300 hours of broadcast material. The prototype will be unveiled at the PBS Annual Meeting this month in Austin, Texas.

Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and two of her producers filed a federal lawsuit over their arrests during the 2008 Republican National Convention. The journalists were among some 40 reporters arrested as they covered street protests outside the convention hall in St. Paul, Minn., and they allege that authorities violated their First Amendment rights to gather news independently. They also seek compensatory and punitive monetary damages for medical expenses and lost equipment, according to the Associated Press. Defendants in Goodman vs. St. Paul include the cities and police departments of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the Ramsey County Sheriff and unidentified Secret Service personnel.

In an email to employees, WNET today announced a $15 million gift for its new Lincoln Center Studio, which will be named for donors James S. and Merryl H. Tisch. James Tisch, president and CEO of Loews, is the chairman of WNET.org’s Board of Trustees. This is the largest individual contribution in WNET’s nearly 50-year history. “When we decided to invest in the new studio, one of our main goals was to bring in a major philanthropic partner to help us leverage these studios to our best advantage as leaders in public television programming,” WNET President Neal Shapiro told staffers.

The APTS Grant Center website (password protected) is now up and running, provides funding opportunities and resources to help public broadcasting stations find and apply for grants, according to a statement from the Association for Public Television Stations. There are monthly APTS Grant Center conference calls and webcasts, and lists of personnel in funding agencies. The CPB-funded center is partnering with the Development Exchange Incorporated (DEI) on the foundation and radio components, providing profiles on national, local and regional foundations identified as potential station funders.

Democratic Rep. David Obey, a longtime pubcasting champion and chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, is leaving Congress after this term. The Capital Times in his home state of Wisconsin called him Congress’s “most powerful populist.” In 2005, Obey co-sponsored an amendment to restore the $400 million CPB appropriation for the next year that that the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee wanted cut (Current, June 27, 2005). The previous month, he had joined fellow Democratic Rep. John Dingell of Michigan to complain about CPB Board Chair Kenneth Tomlinson’s probe of alleged liberal bias in pubcasting (Current, May 16, 2005), saying, “the law says the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is supposed to keep its cotton-picking nose out of programming and out of politics.”

Penn State’s WPSU is one of dozens of TV stations worldwide participating in the new TED Open TV Project, bringing speeches and appearances from the world of technology, entertainment and design to viewers (a bit of TED history here). Those are called TEDTalks, and have received some 200 million Web views since postings began in 2006 with such speakers as Bill Gates, Frank Gehry, Jane Goodall, Al Gore, Billy Graham, Peter Gabriel, Quincy Jones and Bono. TEDTalks are the brainchild of the nonprofit Sapling Foundation, dedicated to “fostering the spread of great ideas.” Now those speeches are coming from the Web to television.

Big news in the indie production world, P.O.V.‘s 2011 call for entries is now open. The pubcasting program is TV’s longest-running showcase for independent nonfiction films, and many projects it has supported or aired have gone on to fame — one good example is the recent Oscar nominee “Food, Inc.” For filmmakers new to the application process, P.O.V. offers this handy video. For those who have applied before, good news: The form is much shorter this year, according to P.O.V.’s series producer Yance Ford. Log in here to apply.