The Berkshire Eagle has picked up Current‘s Feb. 25 story about the public TV series Visionaries.

Want to see how multi-channel digital terrestrial radio could work–if it ever becomes a reality? (As it stands, NPR is one of the few broadcasters pushing for the standard to include multicasting.) NPR commissioned Impulse Radio to create this demo to show how a listener could select either a music or talk stream on a digital radio. Clicking the link launches a download of the file.

Has NPR adequately addressed complaints over a report on anthrax investigations that mentioned the Traditional Values Coalition? NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin weighs in.

There’s now a website for the Public Radio Collaboration, formerly known as the Mega Project. This year’s collaboration will focus on the events and aftermath of September 11.

The latest Harper’s features an article by independent public radio producer Scott Carrier about post-Taliban Afghanistan, and Hearing Voices adds to it with pics and audio. (Warning: the first picture displayed depicts a dead man.)

Minnesota Public Radio responds to a snarky take on it in the Feb. 20 City Pages.

Over the weekend the Washington Post and New York Times both ran articles about public radio’s “Yiddish Radio Project,” which starts tomorrow on All Things Considered.

Former CNN Washington bureau chief Frank Sesno is collaborating with George Mason University, where he recently accepted a teaching position, and WETA-TV on developing a weekly local public affairs series.

The University of Kansas has withdrawn an invitation to have historian and NewsHour contributor Doris Kearns Goodwin speak … (Topeka Capital-Journal)

Rick Madden, who helped to reinvent public radio during 19 years at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, succumbed to brain cancer Feb. 21. He was 56. Madden died at his home in Rockville, Md., with his wife and two daughters close by. He had been diagnosed with the disease in December 2000. Colleagues throughout public radio grieved his loss and lauded CPB’s radio v.p. as a passionate public servant who advocated sweeping ideas and took deep personal responsibility for the health and growth of both the system and its people. During his time at CPB, pubradio’s average quarter-hour ratings more than doubled, and he consistently urged programmers to set the bar even higher.

Rick Madden, who helped to reinvent public radio during 19 years at CPB, died of brain cancer Feb. 21. He was 56. Madden Madden died at his home in Rockville, Md., with his wife and two daughters close by. He had been diagnosed with the disease in December 2000. Colleagues throughout public radio grieved his loss and lauded CPB’s radio VP as a passionate public servant who advocated sweeping ideas and took deep personal responsibility for the health and growth of both the system and its people. During his time at CPB, pubradio’s average quarter-hour ratings more than doubled, and he consistently urged programmers to set the bar even higher.

Frontline knows how to shake things up in North Carolina. Last week, less than a month after the series aired Ofra Bikel’s 90-minute documentary “An Ordinary Crime,” about 21-year-old Terence Garner, a state court granted Garner’s motion for a new trial. He posted bond and went home with his mother and family for the first time in more than four years. Garner had been serving a sentence of 32-43 years for robbery and attempted murder—the “ordinary crime” he insisted all along he had no part of. Bikel—whose award-winning trilogy “Innocence Lost” led the state to drop charges in 1997 in a major child abuse case in Edenton, N.C.—again

Twenty-nine years after their pioneering observational doc series entranced PBS viewers, the filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond are bringing back the Loud family one last time. They are talking with WETA about offering the new hour-long episode to PBS, according to Mr. Raymond and Jim Corbley, v.p. of production management at the Washington station. If a deal is struck, the film could be ready this fall, Raymond said. The occasion was the death Dec. 21 [2001] of Lance Loud, eldest son in the Santa Barbara family, who stunned his family and became a symbol of gay liberation in 1973 by coming out on national television.

The bond market is offering new capital financing options for public broadcasting this week with the expected sale of $6.5 million in tax-exempt bonds for Colorado Public Radio’s expansion. [After this article was published, the entire lot of bonds sold in one day at 5.8 percent.] Other pubcasters will follow. Nashville Public Radio plans to sell about $3 million in bonds in March to cover purchase of a second station in town. And the new nonprofit Maryland Public Radio aims to finance the $5 million purchase of Baltimore’s WJHU. Pubcasters have 10 to 15 borrowings under review at George K. Baum & Co.,

As Congress threatened to convene a hearing on how CPB distributes its money, a public TV review panel released a proposal last month to change the formula that allocates grants to stations. The fixes ought to please North Carolina’s UNC-TV, which had complained to hometown members of Congress — who pressed for the hearing — that several state networks like itself pay more in PBS dues than they receive in Community Service Grants (CSGs). The proposal would aid state nets by establishing a credit for licensees that operate three or more transmitters. If the recommendation is adopted by the CPB Board, UNC-TV would see an 80 percent increase — about $320,000 — in its base grant in fiscal year 2003, according to CPB.