Where in the world was Ken Burns when his 10-year project, National Parks: America’s Best Idea, had its PBS premiere last night? Watching it alone, in his Washington, D.C., hotel room. “I like to watch it when everyone else does,” Burns told Current after a National Press Club event today. The energetic documentarian has been making appearances for the project since July 2008, and hasn’t been back home to Walpole, N.H., since Aug. 21. That’s not all: He’s working on half a dozen projects simultaneously. How does he do it? Check out the upcoming Current for an inside look.

Twenty pubcasters are included in The Chronicle of Philanthropy‘s executive compensation survey for the nation’s top foundations and charities. Figures reflected end of fiscal 2008. The Chronicle’s survey examined 325 organizations that are among those raising the most money from private sources in 2008, as well as grant makers holding the largest assets. Former NPR C.E.O. Kenneth Stern, who departed in 2008, is atop the pubcasting list, receiving $1,319,541 as part of his four-year contract. Another former exec, PBS C.O.O. Wayne Godwin, who served from 2000 to 2008, was paid $398,063. Current PBS C.E.O. Paula Kerger, $534,500, up from $424,209 at end of fiscal 2007.

The leadership of WNET said a federal investigation into the station’s use of federal grants totaling almost $13 million is wrapping up, and the organization is financially sound. “There was sloppiness as opposed to real wrongdoing in terms of our accounting systems, which has been addressed,” said James Tisch, chairman of the WNET Board, in an interview. The station has hired a new chief financial officer and created the position of executive director, financial control, to ensure compliance with federal grant rules, said Neal Shapiro, president. “We have a new CFO. We have a new compliance person to make it very clear we take all these rules very seriously,” Shapiro said.

Frontline has entered into an “editorial partnership” with Tehran Bureau, an online news site connecting journalists, experts, readers–and sometimes anonymous contributors. The site launched today. The joint effort fits into what Frontline e.p. David Fanning refers to as “converged” journalism. The show’s senior editor Ken Dornstein tells The New York Times that means “investing in the best reporting possible, then using all platforms to incubate and publish stories.” Segments of the upcoming Frontline episode on Iran, “A Death in Tehran,” will be shown on the site before the November television broadcast.

A new column from PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler is now online. Subjects include KBDI’s Sept. 11 conspiracy theory pledge programming, and Tavis Smiley’s former affiliation with Wells Fargo wealth-building seminars.

WFYI Public Broadcasting in Indiana is announcing a new board game it helped create that provides insights into the challenges former inmates face. The project was developed with Volunteers of America-Indiana and John P. Craine House, an alternative sentencing program for nonviolent women. “Checkpoints and Challenges” provides role-playing situations that newly free inmates face. It’s designed for use by re-entry programs, correctional systems, congregations with prison ministries and secondary and higher educational programs. It’ll be sold starting Sept. 30 on the volunteer group’s web site for $32.

By now you know, unless you’ve been holed up in a Yosemite cave, that Ken Burns’ latest doc, National Parks: America’s Best Idea, kicks off Sunday night. The PBS Video Portal will have the entire series, all six parts, available for viewing starting that day. The portal already offers an extended preview and a peek behind the scenes.

The local president and vice president of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET) have been laid off from Twin Cities Public Television, reports the online news site The Twin Cities Daily Planet. A NABET statement said that in August, after union contracts were renegotiated, TPT announced layoffs of four of 11 NABET employees and at least three IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) members. The NABET workers were on the production crew for Almanac, the station’s weekly pubaffairs program. TPT President Jim Pagliarini said the station was “absolutely not” trying to quash the unions. “We need to free up resources,” Pagliarini said.

With $5 million in backing from San Francisco businessman and investor F. Warren Hellman, KQED and the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism will launch a local nonprofit Web-based news service for San Francisco. “The Bay Area has a voracious appetite for news and is one of the most engaged and community-minded regions in the nation,” Hellman said, when announcing the Bay Area News Project yesterday. “We are confident that this is an ideal place to create a new economic model that will sustain original, local quality journalism, and we believe the Bay Area will step up to support these efforts.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee today approved the Satellite Television Modernization Act of 2009. Among other things, the legislation allows for the importation of signals into markets that lack a network affiliate. Larry Sidman, president of the Association of Public Television Stations, complimented the committee “for acting quickly and wisely on providing a much-needed legislative solution to allow state public television networks to reach all their state residents with important news and public affairs programming.”

Several of PBS’s recent Emmy winners are now streaming online at the PBS Video site. There’s Masterpiece’s “Little Dorrit,” Nova’s “A Walk to Beautiful,” POV’s “Inheritance” and Between the Lions.

Firefighters had to make two trips to extinguish a blaze sparked by a generator at New Hampshire Public Television in Durham, reports The Union Leader in Manchester. The emergency crew had to cut a hole in the roof to put out the fire. The generator had been running for several hours due to a power failure.

Creating short website “documercials” for commercial businesses is a growing way for documentary filmmakers to supplement their income, according to The Independent. The story cites numbers from Kelsey Group, an advertising research firm, that in 2007, small businesses spent $10.9 million on Internet video ads and that’s projected to hit $1.5 billion in 2012. “The trend also focuses on portraying a company’s corporate message in a more sincere format,” it notes. So more companies are turning to docmakers for their unique approach to subjects.

Howard J. Blumenthal, c.e.o. of Philadelphia’s WYBE-TV, has been named interim executive director of the state-owned New Jersey Network and interim president of its fundraising arm, the NJN Foundation. He will keep the WYBE job as well, NJN said in a clarification. NJN has had temporary top execs since the former e.d., Elizabeth Christopherson, took a foundation job last November. Blumenthal is a former media exec and onetime e.p. of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?

Ari Shapiro, NPR justice correspondent for four years, and Emilio Delgado, who’s been “Luis” on Sesame Street for 38, were guest singers with Thomas Lauderdale’s retro mini-orchestra Pink Martini at the Hollywood Bowl Sept. 19. Delgado performed “Sing a Song,” the Carpenters hit by Sesame Street songwriter Joe Raposo, with the band’s vocalist China Forbes (a duet captured in this video recorded at KCRW). And Shapiro’s global singing debut (here on YouTube) is a suaaaave interpretation of what he calls “a big-band swing number.” In an interview with Alex Cohen on L.A.’s KPCC, Shapiro, who sang in college, tells how he fell in with this band.