KCSM in San Mateo is still struggling despite some $800,000 in cuts — including dropping PBS membership. The Oakland Tribune reports the station needs to hit its $1 million fundraising goal by Jan. 1; so far it has raised $6,000. Marilyn Lawrence, g.m., fears the San Mateo County Community College District may be forced to sell KCSM, which has been on the air since 1964. The 1.5 million watt station broadcasts to San Mateo, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and is carried on 60 cable systems.

Politico is reporting that NPR executives recently asked political correspondent Mara Liasson to reconsider her relationship with Fox News. NPR brass is concerned that the cable news channel’s programming has grown more partisan and regular appearances on Fox by Liasson and NPR news analyst Juan Williams add to the perception that NPR tilts to the left, according to Politico. Liasson declined to sever her ties with Fox. Williams, whose NPR contract gives him wide latitude for outside work, no longer identifies himself as an NPR analyst when appearing on the cable channel. NPR denies that its request for Liasson has anything to do with the White House’s recent campaign to discredit Fox as a shill for the Republican party.

Follow a KCET crew as program guru Bohdan Zachary tags along to the LA Auto Show. Huell Howser’s reporting will be part of the station’s evening of car programming Jan. 14, featuring the doc Who Killed the Electric Car? Howser chatted with GM reps about their electric Chevy Volt, available starting next year.

European pubcasters will assist struggling pubTV and radio networks in Eastern and Southern Europe, the New York Times reports. “There is a real threat of public service broadcasting disappearing in some of these countries,” Claudio Cappon, vice president of the European Broadcasting Union, told the Times. “Every day we are receiving cries for help.” Pubcasters in Hungary, Cyprus and Malta and the former Yugoslavia are facing budget cuts due to the global recession, as well as waning political support. The Broadcasting Union plans to coordinate programming donations to the needy broadcasting systems. Some 500 hours of drama, documentary and children’s shows, normally sold to broadcasters, would be provided free.

The cancellation of Now on PBS is bothering PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler as well as some of his readers. Late last month, news leaked out from PBS that Now and Bill Moyers’ Journal would end next year. PBS confirmed in a statement that the shows would “conclude their weekly series at the end of April 2010,” and details would follow in January. But as Getler writes, “I must say that as a steady viewer of these programs, not just as the ombudsman, I find the one and only PBS public statement thus far about the ending of these programs to be puzzling; unresponsive to dedicated viewers and to the high-profile role for public affairs junkies that these broadcasts have played for years on public television.”

David S. Bennahum’s Center for Independent Media is one of the success stories in nonprofit news, reports Allan D. Mutter in his blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur. Since starting the center, which includes an online news network, in 2006, Bennahum has raised more than $11 million from hundreds of individual donors and some four dozen foundations. His advice: Don’t become overly dependent on a single funding source. Don’t concentrate on raising money from journalism-oriented institutions; rather, target funding to support issue-oriented reporting. He’s also focusing on advertising sales, revenue from live events and subscription products aimed at niche readers, perhaps politicians, lobbyists or state contractors.

The new Bernard L. Schwartz Center for Media, Public Policy and Education at Fordham University will research and promote the potential role of public broadcasting in news reporting, the Graduate School of Education announced today. Its work will study the nation’s newsgathering traditions and investigate “solutions for their survival,” a statement said. At the helm is Bill Baker, who was WNET’s president for 20 years. The center is funded by the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, which supports mainly New York-based educational, medical and cultural institutions.

With all the pubcasting 40th anniversaries this year, we couldn’t let this one pass unnoticed. Yes, for the 40th year, Wisconsin Public Television will offer “Once Upon a Christmas Cheery in the Lab of Shakhashiri,” hosted by University of Wisconsin-Madison chemistry professor Bassam Shakhashiri. Tickets to the taping this weekend were gone within a few days; broadcasts on WPT will be Dec. 21, 24 and 28. The special runs on stations nationwide, so don’t forget those magic words: Check your local listings.

The Sounds of American Culture, an annual radio series featuring recordings from the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, brings the story of John Lee Hooker’s first hit song to this week’s edition of Studio 360. “Boogie Chillen” is the first of five new pieces to air; next week Carmen Miranda’s “O Que é que a Bahiana tem” gets the spotlight (more details here). Sounds of American Culture, produced by Ben Manilla and Media Mechanics with support from the Library of Congress, brings attention to the limited number of recordings that are added to the registry each year.

Tavis Smiley will do several primetime specials in addition to his regular weekly PBS show starting in January, his production company announced yesterday (PDF). The programs will be titled Tavis Smiley Reports. The first of the four hourlong programs, on Jan. 27, 2010, will go behind the scenes with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The March 31 episode will dissect one of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s pivotal speeches, delivered one year before his assassination. In the third, Smiley joins director Jonathan Demme on a visit to New Orleans and reports on its ongoing challenges after Hurricane Katrina. The fourth will be announced next year.

The House has passed the Satellite Home Viewer Update and Reauthorization Act by a vote of 394 to 11, with 29 members not voting. Association of Public Television Stations President Larry Sidman noted, “This legislation reflects a reasoned approach to the satellite carriage needs of public television stations across the country.” The bill allows satellite operators to carry out-of-market network TV station signals for viewers who don’t receive an adequate signal from their nearby station. The Senate version of the bill, the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act, passed the Commerce Committee on Nov. 19.

Virtuoso Voices, the production shop creating interview clips for classical music stations, has updated and republished its extended tip sheet on interviewing performers. “Interviewing 3.0” features advice from some of public radio’s best-known hosts (Bob Edwards, Robert Siegel, Susan Stamberg), as well as its most experienced music producers (David Brown, John Diliberto, Marco Werman and Brian Newhouse, among others). Terry Gross isn’t among those sharing trade secrets; but, reading through the guide, it becomes apparent that the craft of interviewing isn’t a secret, it’s a disciplined skill that has much to do with being prepared, listening carefully and not being afraid to ask the hard, obvious or even dumb questions.

For a week in February (Feb. 19-26), the FCC will offer 67 local FM frequencies assigned to specific cities and towns. The commission postponed the filing window from December on the request of public media groups seeking more time to prepare. (Original announcement.) Though the frequencies will be reserved for noncommercial use, they remain unused in the commercial FM band — that is, above 92.1 MHz. The places on the list were chosen because at least 10 percent of their population now have access to no more than one noncomm radio service. The FCC will use a point system giving preference to local applicants with local boards and to those who don’t hold other licenses.

What should public radio do about the aging of its audience, as documented in the latest Walrus Research report? Given that the trend parallels a much more profound shift of aging among the U.S. population as a whole, media analyst Mark Ramsey writes, any attempts to create “younger-oriented versions” of NPR’s tentpole news magazines would be the “wrong way to go.” “That’s like asking Lady Gaga to cover a Peggy Lee tune and expecting it to be a hit, assuming Lady GaGa would even be interested in covering it (which she would not),” Ramsey writes on his blog Hear 2.0.

Scholastic Media, the international children’s publishing, education and media company, is introducing iPhone and iPod apps for several kid’s shows including PBS’s Clifford the Big Red Dog and WordGirl. Clifford’s is titled BE BIG with Words; kids are rewarded with pictures of words they spell. For WordGirl fans there’s Word Hunt (above), in which players save a city from villains by using vocabulary words. They’re available from the Apps Store.