Independent Lens has launched its second annual Online Shorts Festival of 11 comedy, drama and documentary films. The Grand Prize winner C. Beck was selected by the curators of the series and broadcast on PBS in November. A jury of industry folk selected the 10 online winners and awarded a Grand Jury Prize to Bullet Proof Vest. Viewers can download the shorts or watch them on-site, post comments, and rate films. The audience favorite award will be announced in February.

The FCC released its report and order proposing new protections for low-power FM stations. Accompanying statements of commissioners are posted here.

“A senior Superior Court judge is suing the Georgia Public Broadcasting network because it won’t air a debate the judge orchestrated and paid to produce,” reports the AP. Judge Dann Winn apparently donated $5,000 to GPB and says there was a “handshake understanding” the pubcaster would air a Feb. 6, 2006, debate–featuring Winn–about the morality of dropping atomic bombs in WWII. The debate is available on GPB’s online digital library. Winn, who represented the pro-bomb argument, said he wanted to challenge the idea that “America was barbaric and we were the bad guys.”

Three new Masterpiece Theatre hosts, starting with former X-Files co-star Gillian Anderson, are part of the series’ previously reported makeover, and the familiar theme music will be reduced to a musical mention, the New York Times reported today. The new hosts succeed Russell Baker. Anderson will introduce the Masterpiece Classic period dramas from January to May, followed by two other hosts for the Masterpiece Mystery! shows in the summer and Masterpiece Contemporary in the fall. Anderson appeared on the series in Bleak House this spring. Viewers will see the makeover in January along with the Complete Jane Austen package.

The Sesame Workshop unveiled its Joan Ganz Cooney Center today, named after Sesame Street‘s creator and aimed at literacy development. The center will “conduct and support research, create new media properties, and stimulate a national dialogue on how interactive technologies can be utilized to help accelerate children’s learning,” according to a release. Its first report, “The Enduring Power of Pow! Wham!: Children, Digital Media, and Our Nation’s Future,” finds that while the digital media play a huge role in kids’ lives, they rarely provide educational content. The center has appointed three leaders: Michael H. Levine has been named executive director; Ann My Thai will oversee partnerships with high-tech and gaming industries and direct organization and growth; and Dixie Ching will direct the center’s research.

CPB is seeking proposals for development and launch of a new public radio program service for Latinos in Los Angeles. Its request for proposals, which has a Jan. 17 deadline, identifies first-generation Latinos as the target audience.

WTVP in Peoria, Ill., must restructure its capital loan by Jan. 15 or pay its $6.9 million balance, the station said, announcing that it would postpone its December pledge drive, the Peoria Journal Star reported Saturday. To prepare for DTV and move to new quarters in downtown Peoria, WTVP borrowed $10.3 million in 2001, but was found in default after some 2002 pledge figures slipped below the level required by the banks. Probably unrelated dispatch from Peoria: John Morris, v.p. for development at the station, is a candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress. The former two-term Peoria City Council member has two prominent opponents for the nomination: a state legislator and the head of a big local chamber of commerce/economic development nonprofit.

For one thing, it doesn’t claim to be a “museum” anymore, thanks to Pat Mitchell, former PBS c.e.o. and current head of the recently renamed Paley Center for Media. Mitchell left PBS last year to lead the institution known as the Museum of Television and Radio until Mitchell changed its name, Newsday reports. She made the switch because she wants the center to embrace online media as well. Mitchell told the paper she left PBS because she was exhausted by the demands of the job.

Sirius Satellite Radio said today that Ford Motor Co. aims to put its receivers in 70 percent of 2009 Fords and Mercurys, not to mention all Lincolns and Range Rovers. Last summer Chrysler Group made the same prediction for the 2008 year; the radios are standard in Sebrings and some other mid-priced lines. They’re standard on some sporty VWs, too. XM Satellite Radio receivers, meanwhile, will be standard on 95 percent of Hyundais this model year and on all Buicks, Hummers and Saabs this year, and optional on some Toyota Corollas next year, XM said. For holiday giving, Sirius is selling an iPod-size $149.99 radio that receives its signal from either satellite or the Internet (via WiFi) or plays recorded broadcasts or MP3s.

Six pubradio stations and other producing organizations will collaborate on a CPB-funded five-part doc, The Farm, headed by Executive Producer Wes Horner, who has led numerous series including NPR’s Performance Today, and John Biewen, correspondent and producer with APM’s American RadioWorks for eight years. Over the course of a farm year, the team will introduce listeners to the members of five farm families who plant, harvest and herd their food. Participants include WFCR in Amherst, Mass.; WBHM in Birmingham, Ala.; Iowa Public Radio; Native Public Media and KUYI on Arizona’s Hopi reservation; Capital Public Radio in Sacramento, Calif.; and Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, where Biewen is based.

Arbitron announced late yesterday that it has postponed roll-out of its portable people meter ratings system in New York and other top markets. The company’s official announcement is here and a report in today’s New York Times is here. Also, reporting by Associated Press, MediaDaily News and the Wall Street Journal.

37.8 million people tuned in to watch all or part of Ken Burns’ series The War, announced PBS in a press release yesterday. The series won a 4.7 national average household rating, and on average, 7 million people were watching the saga at any given time.

PBS is in the middle of transitioning to server-based distribution, which is the second phase of its switch to the Next Generation Interconnection System, John McCoskey, PBS c.t.o, said in this edition (MP3) of Television Broadcast‘s Two-Minute Drill. Stations have mostly completed the hardware build-out, which was the first phase, but will have to point their antennas toward new satellites next year, McCoskey said. Only 19 pubTV stations have yet to switch to digital broadcasting but those will be ready to go by the February 2009 analog shut-off, he said. PBS is now shifting its DTV focus to consumer awareness efforts.

CPB seeks a senior analyst to manage next year’s pubTV Audience Awareness, Attitudes and Usage Study (RFP). Application deadline is Dec. 5.

“The old Sesame Street is not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for softies born since 1998, when the chipper ‘Elmo’s World’ started. Anyone who considers bull markets normal, extracurricular activities sacrosanct and New York a tidy, governable place — well, the original Sesame Street might hurt your feelings,” writes Virginian Heffernan in a New York Times Magazine article about how old school Sesame Street episodes, now available on DVD, “may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child” and are a “frightening glimpse of simpler times.”