The production team on the BBC drama Being Human is taking baby steps toward going green, earning praise from the Center for Social Media at American University. There are now recycling bins on the set and in offices, and staffers are working on using less paper for scripts and call sheets, reports blogger Andrew Buchanan. He adds, “OK, it won’t make the series carbon neutral, but it’s a great first step. . . . It would be great if all productions everywhere go carbon neutral as soon as possible, but entrenched behavior and customs take a while to change.” The center offers a Code of Best Practices for Sustainable Filmmaking for ideas on how to go green.

Pubcasters’ memories of Julia Child keep proliferating like profiteroles in Paree. Here’s one from Jim Lewis of Oregon-based fundraising consultants Lewis Kennedy Associates: Back in 1985, Child was receiving an honorary doctorate in humane letters from her alma mater, Smith College in Massachusetts. She agreed to attend a donor event at WGBY, thanks to a former classmate and friend of the station, Charlotte Turgeon. “As general manager,” Lewis told Current, “I was given the honor of driving Julia from Northampton down to our studio in Springfield.” Child’s husband Paul was in front next to Lewis; Turgeon and Child were in back.

If anyone doubts the power of Hollywood and its well-trained media machine, note what the New York Times reports this morning: Within days after Columbia Pictures launched an affectionate bio of Julia Child by an expert screenwriter and featuring two highly likeable stars who draw free publicity from a zillion magazine, blog and TV reports, the 48-year-old book at the heart of the plot is selling far better than ever before. Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Child and co-authors, was selling 22,000 copies a week, more than in any entire year in its history, the Times reported. A Barnes & Noble exec said the $40, fatty and fat (750-page) book sold seven times as many copies in a month as in a typical year.

Vote by Sept. 4 on panels you’d like to attend at any of the three South by Southwest conference-festivals to be held in Austin, Texas: interactive, March 12-16; film, March 12-20; music, March 17-21. Example: Jacob Harris of the New York Times wants to hold a panel “Shut Up and Code! (Hacking the Future of News)”: “Talk is cheap. Talk about the future of news is cheaper still, especially since so little leads to action.” To enter competitions: The interactive festival will accept entries Oct. 16 through Dec. 18 (entry fees escalate). The film festival will accept short or feature-length entries Nov.

A self-described conservative watchdog group is suing the FCC to release documents related to the delayed DTV transition. Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in U.S. District Court for District of Columbia says an adviser to President Barack Obama stood to benefit from the delay, which slowed up Verizon’s new broadband network to compete with Clearwire. The lawsuit also alleges that documents the FCC did provide to the group were highly redacted, and other documents were withheld.

Comparison of previous webcasting royalty deal with new terms negotiated under the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2009

Now that public broadcasting has a webcasting royalty deal with the recording industry, local pubcasters are learning what it requires of them. Many are asking: Is this something we can live with?

Documentary filmmaker Deborah Kaufman writes in The San Francisco Chronicle of her fears that what she sees as the increasing attacks on controversial films may signal a return to the “culture wars” of the 1990s (Current, Dec. 12, 1994). She recalls working across the hall from Marlon Riggs, director of Tongues Untied, which sparked a furor for PBS at that time (Current, June 24, 1991). “Often forgotten in these battles,” she points out, “are the many thousands in the audience hungry for knowledge, political debate and unfettered creativity who continue to line up at theaters from Melbourne to Edinburgh, Tokyo to San Francisco.”

Denver’s KBDI-Channel 12 has stirred up local discussion with recent pledge content. Joanne Ostrow, arts and entertainment columnist for The Denver Post, writes that the station “aired controversial documentaries promoting conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 and claiming taxes are unlawful. Answering the phones during the pledge drive were conspiracy believers who reportedly encouraged callers to believe.” KBDI Membership Director Shari Bernson told Ostrow that her goal in selecting pledge shows is to provide a forum for many different viewpoints and present things not seen on other stations. 9/11: Pressed for Truth was one of KBDI’s top five fundraisers in the past year, and it plans to repeat it in September.

Talk show host Diane Rehm fell and cracked her pelvis yesterday and will be off the air for several weeks. Guest host Susan Page told listeners of the injury on this morning’s edition of The Diane Rehm Show.

CPB has granted nine pubTV stations a total of nearly $900,000 to create content on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) that will be shared with the system and other educational organizations. Stations, their projects and grants are: Louisiana Public Broadcasting, “Global Warming Consequences and Mitigation, $118,777; Maryland Public Television, “Changing the Balance: Digital Assets Investigating Climate Change,” $125,000; Nebraska Educational Telecommunications Commission (NET Television), “Antarctica’s Climate Secrets,” $125,000; Northern California Public Broadcasting (KQED), “Clue into Climate: A Digital Media-Based Curriculum Unit on Climate Change,” $97,200; Utah Education Network (KUEN), “Utah Climate Literacy Partnership,” $125,000; WGBH, Wisconsin Public Television and ThinkTV, “Climate Literacy Collaborative,” $226,481; WOSU Public Media, “What Ice Cores Reveal About Climate,” $80,655.

So many Americans have fond memories of Julia Child’s legendary cooking shows on PBS. But Bohdan Zachary, chief programmer at KCET, is lucky to have memories of a very special experience: visiting Child in 2002 in her apartment at a Montecito, Calif., seniors’ complex. “Julia was the one and only resident allowed to turn her guest bedroom into a kitchen,” noted Zachary, who was there with a camera crew to interview Child for a retrospective to run during a fundraiser. Zachary made an interesting discovery in the kitchen — a toaster oven. Child told him she enjoyed learning new ways to prepare food using the handy little appliance.

The availability of station webstreams through iPhone apps such as the Public Radio Player “ramps up the pressure on local broadcast stations to figure out what their unique value proposition is, given the opportunities for bypass,” says PRX’s Jake Shapiro in this extensive Q&A with Xconomy Boston. Mobile phone subscribers are increasingly using the devices to tune into the pubradio outlets and programs of their own choosing, but it will be a “some time” before this new distribution technology cuts into the audience for pubradio’s traditional broadcast service, he adds. “So one of the risks is actually that there isn’t the same sense of urgency, because it doesn’t feel like a crisis, even though there is a fairly widespread agreement that the transformation is underway.”

“Faces are how I sold 60 Minutes,” recalls the late Don Hewitt in an interview being reaired by KCTS in Seattle this week. “I wanted 60 Minutes to be a magazine, and I said, ‘How do they sell magazines?’ The covers sell magazines. I haven’t got covers–I’m gonna use faces. Mike Wallace, Diane Sawyer, Leslie Stahl, Harry Reasoner, Ed Bradley.” Scroll horizontally to see a clip from KCTS’s interview at right (or click here). Hewitt also put in a word for good writing. The retired 60 Minutes e.p., 86, died of cancer today on Long Island. KCTS interviewed Hewitt last year when he won Washington State University’s Murrow award for lifetime achievement.

On Nov. 10, exactly 40 years after Sesame Street‘s debut, Sesame Workshop will release Sesame Street: 40 Years of Sunny Days, with five hours of famous segments (remember “Rubbery Ducky”?) and guest appearances including actor Robert De Niro. It’ll cost $20.99; look for it on Amazon.