Documentaries airing on HBO and PBS tonight are “among the most inventive, expressive programs produced this year in observation of Black History Month,” writes a New York Times reviewer.

  Now they’re sister stations   WNET WLIW Cume households* 3.1 mil. 2.1 mil. Annual spending $180 mil. $14 mil. Employees (approx.) 450 80** Members 350,000 < 50,000 *Nielsen cume audiences are for one week in November. **WLIW employees include 24 technicians hired on a daily basis. They will maintain separate on-air identities and production efforts, but two of the New York City area’s public TV stations completed their long-expected marriage Jan. 31. WNET, a major production house for public TV with a budget of $180 million acquired the assets of WLIW, its feisty Long Island-based rival with a budget of $14 million.

Frontline producer Barak Goodman discusses “Failure to Protect: The Caseworker Files” on washingtonpost.com.

Michael Lazar, president of Capital Public Radio in Sacramento, tells the Sacramento Bee that new competitor KQED is “not going to be offering the listeners a true alternative.” (More coverage in the Sacramento Business Journal.)

San Francisco’s KQED will move into Sacramento next year with its $3 million purchase of a religious FM station.

Another ethics watchdog takes issue with NPR’s Cokie Roberts serving on a presidential panel. “Few news organizations would allow their journalists to become involved in an activity comparable to the one Cokie Roberts has chosen and ABC News has approved,” writes Bob Steele, director of the ethics program at the Poynter Institute.

A NOVA producer and a Lockheed Martin engineer will discuss the “Battle of the X-Planes” documentary today at the Washington Post‘s website.

The New York Times profiles peace activist Leslie Cagan, who (as the article fails to mention) is also chair of the interim board of public radio’s Pacifica Foundation.

The only camera crew at a recent New York hearing on media ownership was from PBS’s NOW with Bill Moyers, notes the L.A. Times‘s Brian Lowry.

The latest Eastern Public Radio newsletter includes updates on digital radio, station hires and more.

WUSF in Tampa let go of eight employees in a reorganization.

Technical problems have knocked WCVW-TV in Richmond, Va., off the air.

“We’ve ridden the tiger before,” says PBS’s Wayne Godwin of the tough market for PBS underwriting sales. The Los Angeles Times reports on why companies are less inclined these days to sponsor PBS programs (Reg. required).

The Washington Post takes note of the federal budget’s possible blow to pubcasting.

With its proposed fiscal year 2004 budget the Bush administration not only rejects pleas for DTV transition funding for public TV, but recommends suspending the Commerce Department’s ongoing Public Telecommunications Facilities Program. APTS, PBS, CPB and NPR issued a joint statement saying the cutbacks would “deeply” threaten public service. [Link to administration’s proposed budget on OMB website.]