In a report released Monday (PDF), the Maryland Office of Legislative Audits contends that the state’s Public Broadcasting Commission spent more than $2 million dollars on services without a competitive bidding process or working through the Board of Public Works, both violations of state procurement requirements, the Associated Press reports. The commission operates the six Maryland Public Television stations. MPT executive v.p. Larry Unger declined to identify the firm in question to the AP. A response from the commissioners said they consulted with Maryland’s Department of Budget and Management officials about the payments and that the vendor is one of several companies that have worked for the pubcasters.

NPR’s web team is racing to adapt NPR.org for the technical requirements of Apple’s new iPad, which launches on April 3. Kinsey Wilson, senior v.p. of digital media, reassures Apple enthusiasts that NPR.org will be “optimized” for the iPad experience: “Features like the NPR audio player have been given greater visibility and adapted for the unique technical requirements of this new platform; we’ve modified the navigation and made the site more ‘touch’ friendly; and we’ve improved the sponsorship experience.” NPR is simultaneously developing a companion iPad app. “Until we see how everyone uses it, it’s anybody’s guess as to what the best experience is,” Wilson tells Poynter.org

Larry Sidman, president of the Association of Public Television Stations for the past year, will resign as of April 1, he told Current today.

PBS will score a broadcast first when American Experience posts its “Earth Days” doc on Facebook before its broadcast premiere, reports the New York Times. Mark Samuels, American Experience e.p., said the showing — which will include PBS underwriting credits — is an experiment. “It’s an opportunity, we think, to engage with a new audience, an audience that we may not be bringing to PBS Monday nights at 9 o’clock,” he told the paper. It’ll hit the social networking site April 11, and TV on April 18. Fans on Facebook will also be able to interact there with Samuels as well as the film’s producer, Robert Stone.

“State of the News Media 2010,” this year’s annual report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, warns that the “the losses suffered in traditional news gathering in the last year were so severe that by any accounting they overwhelm the innovations in the world of news and journalism.” The massive report includes an analysis of the revamped PBS NewsHour, which recently melded its online and on-air coverage (Current, Jan. 11). The show had a 0.8 for the 2008-09 season, flat from ‘o7-08. David Sit, v.p. of NewsHour and MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, told researchers that excluding a $5.2 million grant for coverage of the 2008 presidential election, the program budget for the fiscal year ending June 30 increased 15 percent, about $3.5 million, to $27.7 million.

WGBH has filed a federal lawsuit in Illinois, alleging that the Treasure Hunters Roadshow violates the Antiques Roadshow trademark and participates in unfair competition and unfair business practices. “We believe there are many people who have been confused and the things such as the prominent use of ‘roadshow’ and the ‘treasure chest’ are leading to that confusion,” Eric Brass, corporate counsel for the WGBH Educational Foundation, told the Mount Vernon Register-News. WGBH had filed a similar suit in 1999 against the International Toy Collectors Association, the precursor to Treasure Hunters Roadshow; that was settled out of court. Matt Enright, v.p.

Virginia’s General Assembly adjourned yesterday after approving a two-year budget that slashes millions from various services in the commonwealth, including pubcasting, reports the Washington Post. Community Idea Stations, in Richmond and Charlottesville, get a 15 percent drop in funds over the next two years. States nationwide are targeting pubcasting as budgets dwindle (Current, Jan. 25).

Broadcast technicians will mount a protest outside NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., at noon today. The National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-Communications Workers of America is negotiating on behalf of 65 employees whose union contract expires this month. Members of the unit agreed to deep wage and benefit cuts to help alleviate NPR’s budget crisis last year. The union is objecting to NPR’s demands for the next contract, which include a wage freeze, benefit reductions and proposals to remove bargaining rights over benefits and eliminate more than half of the bargaining unit’s jobs, according to the NABET website.

Broadcasters who decline to turn over spectrum for an upcoming auction may face fees for their decision, according to Broadcasting & Cable. Citing an unnamed source who has seen the National Broadband Plan that will be presented to Congress this week, the fees would be another tactic used by the feds to encourage give back of spectrum for auction. The FCC is looking to shift 500 MHz from traditional broadcast to wireless use (Current, Feb. 8, 2010).

In a speech that he described as “confession or admission,” former FCC Chair Reed Hundt yesterday told a Columbia University audience that his decision to favor broadband over broadcast goes back to 1994, and that the March 17 National Broadband Plan “will reflect … the end of the era of trying to maintain over-the-air broadcast as the common medium and the beginning of a very detailed, quite substantive, commitment to having broadband, the son of narrowband, be the common medium,”according to TV News Check. He also said the plan “will have in it a specific pathway to shrinking the amount of spectrum that broadcast will be able to use.

Sesame Workshop has received a grade of C and PBS a C+ from the Center for Science in the Public Interest on their marketing of food to children. While that sounds “average,” of 128 firms surveyed more than 95 received a failing grade. The nonprofit group’s Report Card on Food Marketing Policies (PDF) examines whether companies that market food to children have adopted a policy on marketing, and the adequacy of that policy. During research last year the center evaluated several elements of each company’s approach to children, including the strength of its nutrition standards, the scope of media covered by its policies, and definitions for “child-directed” media.

Here’s an interesting video interview from the collegiate News Net Nebraska with longtime pubcaster Ron Hull, a passionate advocate for cultural and historical programming who helped start American Experience. In the interview, Hull recalls his first foray into television. It was in the Army, just after the Korean War armistice was signed in 1953. While stationed in Oklahoma, Hull was approached by a general looking for someone to produce a half-hour show. “He said, ‘What do you know about TV?'” Hull recalled. “I didn’t even have a set.” Hull went to the local library and researched scriptwriting, then called the local TV station.

More than 60 national leaders in education, research, technology, policy and children’s media will meet March 22 and 23 at the Fred Rogers Center in LaTrobe, Pa., to explore using new technologies and media in education. Representing pubcasting at the Fred Forward Conference on Creative Curiosity, New Media and Learning (PDF) will be CPB, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, PBS and Family Communications Inc., Rogers’ production company that carries on the educational legacy of Mister Rogers.

The Senate yesterday passed the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act. The Association of Public Television Stations had backed passage of the bill, which was known as the Satellite Home Viewer Update and Reauthorization Act when it passed the House on Dec. 3. The bills allow satellite operators to carry out-of-market network TV station signals for viewers who don’t receive an adequate signal from their nearby stations. In a statement, APTS President Larry Sidman praised Congressional leadership. “Working together on a bipartisan basis with each other and with their counterparts in the House, they have crafted legislation that serves consumers interests.”

WQUB in Quincy, Ill., plans to dismiss its professional on-air staff as of June 1 and turn most of its operations over to WGEM, a commercial radio/TV outlet affilated with NBC. Quincy University, WQUB’s licensee, is reducing its $250k subsidy for the NPR News and music station but doesn’t want to sell it, says Bob Weirather, g.m. “That is not in their mind at all. What we’re trying to do is get more community support for the station.” The station doesn’t qualify for state funding because Quincy is a private university. Last year, it fell out of CPB funding criteria and lost half of its $90,000 Community Service Grant, according to Weirather.