How’s this for a scary headline? “Behind calm veneer, PBS stations fight bitterly.” It’s WEDU vs. WUSF in the Tampa Tribune‘s story. What’s the fight about? Oh, just “viewers, sponsors, programs and even their very existence on cable TV channel lineups,” according to the Tribune. It quotes Shelly Palmer, New York chapter president of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, as saying: “What you’re seeing in Tampa is the first border skirmish in what will literally be a death match between cable companies and local stations across America.”

A representative of Dish Network told Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) yesterday that the satcaster is planning new talks with noncom TV stations on multicast or HD signal carriage, reports Broadcasting & Cable. Cable operators and DirecTV already have such deals. Eshoo introduced a bill that would force such carriage, citing public interest. Jeffrey Davis, spokesman for the Association of Public Television Stations, told Current in a statement that Dish Network, for the most part, is not carrying local public television stations in HD in any markets except Hawaii and Alaska, where carriage is federally mandated. The statement added: “It is our sincere hope that Dish and public television can reach a private agreement.

Facing a loss of $800,000 in Pennsylvania state funding, or about 25 percent of its budget, WQLN Public Media is terminating staff and making other budget cuts. Affected are WQLN-TV and WQLN-FM. Five jobs have been eliminated; among those are the program director and engineering director. The three remaining top managers will get salary cuts. President and g.m. Dwight Miller will lose 10 percent, the others 5 percent. There’s a hiring and salary freeze, and the remaining 25 staffers will take two weeks of unpaid leave. Also, PRI’s Marketplace will be dropped from WQLN-FM. Miller told Current that the governor’s office has received more than 7,000 emails from across the state.

CPB is offering grants to public radio stations to expand local news gathering and digital platform reporting capabilities. In a request for proposals issued June 11, CPB solicited proposals from groups of 3-6 stations to collaborate in creating multimedia coverage on a single news topic of strong local interest. The concept is similar to the content verticals proposed for NPR’s Argo Project. Successful proposals for the local journalism centers will describe plans to employ multi-disciplinary teams of journalists, including editors to ensure quality standards, reporters who are comfortable reporting on multiple platforms, and facilitators working with social media and other engagement tools.

Sesame Street‘s Abby Cadabby will host 3, 2, 1, ¡VAMOS!, a new half-hour preschool show starting June 22 on Discovery Kids Latin America. The program offers segments from the interactive program Play With Me Sesame and the multi-media project Global Grover, as well as Bert and Ernie’s Great Adventures, the first claymation series from Sesame Workshop.

Negotiations over the future of Planet Money, the NPR blog and podcast on global economics, include the option of operating it as a for-profit, according to this report by AOL’s DailyFinance. “Like everyone else in the business, we’re trying to figure out if there are other revenue models that might work for us,” says Adam Davidson, the NPR reporter who teamed up with This American Life‘s Alex Blumberg to report “Giant Pool of Money,” the 2008 documentary that launched their multimedia spin off for NPR.org. “One of many possibilities raised has been the possibility, like many not-for-profits, of having a for-profit fundraising arm.”

In a compromise with the small number of PBS stations running religious programming, the PBS board today approved a membership requirement that would allow those shows to continue but would ban more sectarian programs to be added on primary channels. Also, religious programs may be carried on multicast channels or other platforms as long as PBS branding is not included. This was the final requirement recommended by the Station Services Committee after more than a year’s work updating membership criteria. The “three nons” question had been sent back to the system for additional input (see Current, April 13).

Public Radio News Directors Inc. presented its Leo C. Lee Award to former NPR producer Doug Mitchell. The award, which honors distinguished contributions to public radio journalism, recognized Mitchell’s work to “encourage young people – and particularly young people of color – to get into public radio,” PRNDI announced on its website. Mitchell, who left NPR in lay-offs announced in December, is a 20-year veteran of NPR News, and he worked for over a decade to establish a public radio journalism program for young people. Through Next Generation Radio, as the training program was called, “Doug did what a trainer is supposed to do–encapsulate the best values of the organization and transmit them intact to a new generation,” wrote former NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin, in a blog posting about the loss of present and future talent with Mitchell’s exit.

PubTV’s Saddle Up with Dennis Brouse has a new website. It’s designed to be an educational tool for horse enthusiasts. Brouse said in a statement he hopes the site will show users “how to develop a strong connection with their horses.”

Uh-oh. First young man Michael Kinsell alleged a link to PBS to advance his plans to become the next Mister Rogers. Now comes word that a staffer for the infamous comedian Sacha Baron Cohen mentioned a potential affiliation with PBS in the lead-up to filming of his latest project about a gay fashion designer, Bruno. A California woman, Richelle Olson, has filed suit saying she was duped by a call from a fake corporation linked to Cohen. A rep asked her if a “celebrity” could announce numbers at a charity bingo game Olson runs, and told her that his appearance would be taped for “a television station such as Discovery Channel or PBS.”

More than 317,000 calls came into the FCC’s toll-free DTV help line yesterday (PDF), the agency reported, as stations said farewell to analog signals. The FCC termed that number “extraordinarily high.” Total calls in the runup: Nearly 700,000 between June 8 and 12. Almost 30 percent of callers asked technical questions about their digital converter boxes. “Most” of those, said the FCC, were taken care of with directions for rescans of the boxes to receive channels that had moved to new frequencies. Check out Current‘s story from this week’s issue on the 2.7 percent of American households that were unprepared for the switchover.

WFUV’s Rita Houston will present special coverage of the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival on tonight’s edition of The Whole Wide World, airing 7-10 pm. Online listeners can catch her live show here (choose the ‘FUV branded streams). Houston, music director for the NYC station, will produce live broadcasts, video podcasts and other online coverage through out the weekend.

Reporter John Eggerton of Broadcasting & Cable decided to see for himself how things were going at the FCC’s DTV call center. He tried three times. First, call demand was too high; “goodbye,” a voice said. Next, Eggerton said he was put “on hold with music that recalled the funky jazz of 1970’s detective show soundtracks.” Third time — nope, didn’t make it through to speak with a human then either. The FCC doesn’t yet have call totals. But in a statement today it “hails a new era in broadcasting” (PDF).

How did your station celebrate today’s milestone DTV transition? At PBS affiliate WGVU-TV in Grand Rapids, Mich., “dignitaries, photographers and reporters jammed into the … control room for a live broadcast counting down the final seven minutes of the station’s analog signal,” reports The Grand Rapids News. Two local bigwigs – including Grand Valley State University President Emeritus Arend D. Lubbers, who welcomed viewers when the station started broadcasting in 1972 – did the honors at 10 a.m. and switched off the power to Channels 35 and 52. “I thought it would hurt, but it didn’t,” Lubbers reported. As analog monitors went gray, applause erupted outside the door.

This week the House Appropriations Committee okayed its subcommittee discretionary allocations for FY2010, reports APTS in its weekly legislative update. That’s the amount each subcommittee has to draft its spending bill. The subcommittee that funds most pubcasting programs (Labor, HSS and Education) received $7.5 billion more than FY2009, for a total of $160.65 billion. “Although this is a welcome increase,” APTS noted, “key elements of President Obama’s ambitious domestic agenda will likely account for much of this increase, making funding in the Labor-HHS bill extremely competitive.” The bill should hit the House floor for a vote July 22. The House Appropriations Committee also this week retained PTFP’s $20 million in the House Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Subcommittee’s bill.