Details on most sessions at January’s NETA conference are now online. The confab is at the M Resort in Henderson, Nev., about 15 miles from Sin City.

Two pubTV films are on the short list for Documentary Feature Academy Award nominations, PBS says. Both docs, Food, Inc. on POV and Garbage Dreams on Independent Lens, will air next year. Both now advance to voting by the Documentary Branch Academy. For a full list of films moving foward, see the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences website. Oscar nods will be announced Feb. 2, 2010, with the 82nd annual Academy Awards show on March 7.

Another new media site has sprouted, this time in Florida, reports Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. The online paper, 83 Degrees, is published by Detroit’s Issue Media, which has created several other online pubs. It’s edited by Diane Egner, former content director at Tampa NPR affiliate WUSF. Local governments, universities and corporations are funding the effort. ““If you’re watching PBS, you know there are certain underwriters for certain programs,” Egner told . Each of our partners is underwriting specific issues that we cover.” The site’s coverage will include the new economy, innovations, investments, the environment.

The Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday passed the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA), its version of the satellite reauthorization bill, according to Broadcasting & Cable. The bill allows satellite operators to carry out-of-market network TV station signals for viewers who don’t received an adequate signal from their nearby station. It’s an issue the Association of Public Television Stations has been working on for several years, much of the time spent in negotiations with the DISH Network. “APTS is pleased with the firm action taken today by the Senate Commerce Committee to end the discriminatory behavior by DISH Network against local public television stations,” APTS President Larry Sidman said in a statement.

PubTV’s Design Squad show was on hand to launch T-shirts into the air at last week’s Education Technology Showcase on Cap Hill. The fun with T-shirts showed how engineering could be “used to solve real-world problems,” reports TMCNet’s Education Technology page. In attendance were Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senators Patty Murray, Jeff Bingaman, Kay Hagan and Ted Kaufman and other officials. The event, sponsored by the Education Technology Directors Association, highlighted programs funded by the National Science Foundation.

David Fanning, the founding executive producer of PBS’s Frontline series, gave this talk in 2009 as the annual James L. Loper Lecture in Public Service Broadcasting sponsored by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. Thank you, Geoff Cowan and Dean Wilson, for your kind words, and especially for your invitation to come here to the Annenberg School to give the annual Loper Lecture. This also gives me a chance publicly to thank Jim Loper, for the years of work he gave not just to KCET but as a leader in public broadcasting. It’s an honor to be invited in his name.

Sesame Street’s Grover now has his own app. And Grover’s Number Special is the first official Sesame Street app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It includes original Sesame video and “encourages visual discrimination, counting and number recognition,” according to a Sesame Workshop press release. In it, restaurant waiter Grover catches and counts ingredients to whip up a meal for an impatient customer. Users tip their device back and forth to help Grover catch the foods. “Oh, it is so much fun,” Grover said in the release. “Please play my little app–the customer is getting very hungry!” It’s $2.99 from from the App Store or iTunes.

Peconic Public Broadcasting, which recently purchased WLIU pubradio (Current, Oct. 13, 2009; background, Aug. 24) from Long Island University, has won approval for the station to remain in its current studios through March 31, according to the East Hampton Press. The purchase is expected to be finalized in January so the extension provides time to find a permanent location.

WNET.org and Brooklyn web developer Tierra Innovation Inc. promoted their WordPress CMS Toolkit at the regional WordCamp NYC last week. Their first four freely available, open-source plugins for WordPress are available online now and “lots more” are coming, says Tierra President Jamie Trowbridge. Also coming are templates for a content management system abstracted from the ones used by WNET.org to build 50 sites for its shows, stations and projects, Trowbridge tells Current. Outside of West 33rd Street, Dallas’s KERA recently used the toolkit to build a site for KXT-FM, its new sister station (“Music to the Core”), and Chicago’s WTTW created one for its coproduction with Brian Boyer, Retirement Revolution.

Public broadcasters will be well-represented at the FTC’s upcoming summit, “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?”, Dec. 1 and 2 in Washington. The confab will explore issues such as the economics of journalism in print and online, new business and nonprofit news models, and ways to reduce journalism costs without sacrificing quality. Panelists announced by the FTC so far (PDF) include pubcasters Joaquin Alvarado, CPB’s senior veep for diversity and innovation; NPR head Vivian Schiller; Jon McTaggart, senior veep and COO, American Public Media; Alisa Miller, president and CEO, Public Radio International; and Jason Seiken, senior veep, PBS Interactive.

WFYI’s studios in Indianapolis co-star in a new MasterCard holiday ad. David DeMumbrun, station director of production operations, told Current a scouting crew visited local commercial stations, but when they got to the state-of-the-art pubcasting studios (opened in August 2008), “they found nirvana.” The spot stars Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning (hence, the filming location) and How I Met Your Mother actress Alyson Hannigan. Hannigan’s part in the ad was filmed at the studio and Manning’s in an Indy home. What a production day it was on Oct. 13 at WFYI: The ad’s cast and crew numbered around 155. Director of photography was Russell Carpenter, who shot the big-screen Titanic.

PBS last week told the FCC that pubcasters should be allowed to continue their multiplatform efforts and and that over-the-air DTV is important to that work, reports Broadcasting & Cable. It’s an important argument as the FCC decides how to free up spectrum for wireless broadband. “The free and universal nature of over-the-air broadcasting enables PBS and its member stations to ensure that virtually every household has access” to content, PBS said in FCC filings and in a meeting with FCC staffers. On Nov. 3, APTS representatives also discussed pubcasting spectrum issues with the FCC’s Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis.

MontanaPBS is just $20,000 away from its $1.3 million goal for an over-the-air broadcast tower for viewers in the Great Falls area, reports the Great Falls Tribune. Currently, Great Falls may be the largest American city without an over-the-air PBS signal. Sally Newhall, co-chair of the “Tower to the People” fundraising effort, said the project has a construction deadline of the end of the year, and an October 2010 deadline to match a $75,000 Murdoch Foundation grant. “I feel really positive about it,” Newhall added.

Maxie C. Jackson will become president of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters in January. He succeeds Carol Pierson, who is retiring after 12 years as head of NFCB. Jackson is now senior director, program development, for WNYC in New York, where he has worked on the launch of the morning news program The Takeaway, on program planning and audience development. He previously served as p.d. for WETA-FM in Washington and acting g.m. of WEAA in Baltimore. He is a member of the board of the Development Exchange and Eastern Region Public Media and former board member of the African American Public Radio Consortium.

An anonymous donor is providing a $5 million challenge grant backing the Minnesota Public Radio Enterprise News Fund, a “permanent fund for significant enterprise news gathering,” announced MPR President Bill Kling during MPR’s Future of News Summit. The summit, convened at MPR headquarters this morning, is examining new models for local and regional news. An afternoon panel on the role of daily newspapers and online start-ups that are helping to fill gaps in local news coverage, is about to begin. Watch and participate online here.