PBS wrapped up its two-day Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif., on a high note — a performance by legendary vocalist Tony Bennett. Great Performances will premiere his “Tony Bennett: Duets II” on Jan. 27. More press tour coverage in the Jan. 17 issue of Current. (Image: PBS/Rahoul Ghose)

PASADENA, Calif. — PBS President Paula Kerger is not fazed by Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s recent comment favoring an end to federal aid to public broadcasting. Nor is she worried by Romney’s call for advertising on Sesame Street. “I’m glad that he said that he liked public broadcasting,” Kerger said during a Jan. 4 press conference at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour. “You know, we have always had bipartisan support.” The country must make tough decisions about government spending, Kerger said, but federal money costs only $1.35 a year per American. Broad support for public broadcasting, as shown by research, “should translate into political leverage,” Kerger said.

Sam Adams, mayor of Portland, Ore., went public Wednesday (Jan. 4) with his concerns about security costs for an upcoming GOP presidential debate at Oregon Public Broadcasting. He wants OPB and the Oregon Republican Party, co-sponsors, to move the event to a location closer to the airport to reduce the number of police necessary. “The costs are real,” Adams told the Oregonian — and already $1.5 million over budget. “I don’t know what else to say. We just don’t have the budget for this.” OPB President Steve Bass said it would be cost-prohibitive for the station to move the event from the OPB studios.

SoCal Connected on KCET in Los Angeles will air an interview with Bill Moyers on Friday (Jan. 6), a week before the veteran newsman returns to pubTV with the weekly Moyers and Company. In the sit-down with host Val Zavala, Moyers provides his current assessment of America, saying that “the growth of inequality in this country is the biggest story of our time. The have-nots now have less than they ever did. The have-it-alls now have more than they ever did.” His show takes on the issue in the first three episodes. Moyers also says of President Barack Obama: “You gotta fight for the people.

Steve Chiotakis, host of Marketplace Morning Report, is moving to the local All Things Considered anchor spot on KCRW, the Santa Monica, Calif., station announced Wednesday (Jan. 4). Chiotakis has hosted the American Public Media show since 2008. In a statement, he said that KCRW “is a natural fit for me. It’s home to terrific and talented people. It’s an L.A. institution with a world-class sensibility. I’m excited about what’s possible and can’t wait to get to work telling the stories of this great city.” He’ll start in late January.

A spectrum auction to free up bandwidth space for mobile devices will probably fail if Congress adopts a Republican House plan, said Blair Levin, former executive director of the Federal Communications Commission’s Omnibus Broadband Initiative that proposed the auction, reports the TVNewsCheck website. The proposed legislation would give the FCC authority to conduct incentive auctions and share proceeds with the Treasury and broadcasters who voluntarily give up spectrum, but it also contains provisions designed to protect broadcasters who keep spectrum. “The legislation ties the FCC’s hands in a variety of ways,” said Levin, who is now with the Aspen Institute.

PBS on Wednesday officially announced its upcoming 20-episode Market Wars, at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour. In it, four antiques experts search cross-country for unique items to take to auction. Whoever makes the highest total profit at auction in each episode is named the winner. “With affectionate humor, Market Wars follows the combatants, gleaning the best tactics from the battlefield and arming viewers to pursue their own successful treasure hunts,” PBS said. Executive producer is Antiques Roadshow’s Marsha Bemko. Pubcasters first heard details of the show at the NETA convention in Kansas City, Mo., last October (Current, Nov.

SoundCloud, a web start-up that combines audio production with social networking, raised $50 million in new venture capital, according to TechCrunch. Investors including Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers and GGV Capital of Menlo Park, Calif., are backing a ramped-up expansion in the United States for the Berlin-based company.

NPR and the Association of Independents in Radio unveiled a new payment structure for freelance contributors that provides a 7.5 percent increase to station-based and independent radio producers. The change, announced by interim news chief Margaret Low Smith to take effect immediately, includes a three-tiered compensation system and establishes standardized rates for tape syncs. “NPR’s decision to increase rates, which comes at a time of tight budgets, is intended to reflect our commitment to the vital network of station-based and independent reporters whose contributions enhance our programming every day,” Smith wrote in her Jan. 1 email. It took nearly a year of negotiations with AIR and internal consultations within NPR to adopt the new rate system, according to AIR President Sue Schardt.

The efforts by noncom Radio Bilingue, which is expanding and building five stations along the U.S.-Mexico border, “are key as the number of Latinos in the U.S. keeps growing and the nation moves toward a presidential election,” reports the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News. “We want to offer news and information that’s relevant to the lives of our listeners,” said executive producer Samuel Orozco, “so that they can use it as citizens, to be able to participate in the decision-making process and be active members of society.” “They’re a model of how Latino public broadcasting can flourish,” Florence Hernandez-Ramos, director of Denver-based Latino Public Radio Consortium, told the paper.

PBS is hoping to “make audiences think of public television more like the top-tier programming of HBO, Showtime and other channels they are willing to pay for,” according to the New York Times. As chief programmer John Wilson said, “Think of PBS and the local stations as premium television on the honors system.” An aggressive promotional campaign helped “Downton Abbey” on Masterpiece win six Emmy Awards, the paper noted. “The thinking was that [PBS] had to up their game,” said Kliff Kuehl, president of KCPT in Kansas City, Mo. “That’s what we’ve evolved to — trying to give people that pay-TV moment.”

A local “Ad-Hoc Committee for Responsible Public Radio” led by longtime pubcaster Fred Flaxman is asking the Federal Communications Commission to deny the license renewal of WCQS in Asheville, N.C., charging that the station violated requirements to form a community advisory board and conduct listener surveys, according to the Citizen-Times. The station filed a response with the FCC saying that it is now in compliance. “The matters raised by the petition are not only outside the FCC’s jurisdiction but have along ago been resolved” by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, it said. The station’s broadcast license, held by Western North Carolina Public Radio (WNCPR), would have been automatically renewed on Dec.

“2012 will be a make or break year for public broadcasting in New Zealand,” according to the Spy Report, an Australian media news site. “New Zealand governments have never shown a strong commitment to public broadcasting, but 2011 has witnessed a remarkable dismantling of what little there was of public broadcasting on television.” On Dec. 23, it says, Stratos Television, the country’s only national independent noncom channel, went dark; its c.e.o., Jim Blackman, cited “transmission costs coupled with the economic environment and general lack of support at all levels” as the cause. The noncom children’s and family channel, TVNZ 6, ended broadcast on Feb.

The Tampa Bay Times is looking back at a rough year for pubcasters in the state, after Gov. Rick Scott’s decision in May to veto nearly $4.8 million in state funding. Public TV stations lost more than $300,000 and each public radio station saw a $60,000 drop. All told, in the Tampa Bay area, WEDU, WMNF and WUSF radio and TV stations lost a total of around $1 million. “And while Tampa Bay area public broadcasting fans initially responded with a surge in donations,” the paper noted, “as the year wore on, local stations found themselves increasingly challenged to find new, permanent solutions to the funding dilemma.”

Bob O’Rourke, a former vice president for public relations at the California Institute of Technology who helped develop several pubcasting science features, died Tuesday (Dec. 27) of complications following a lung transplant. He was 72. O’Rourke conceived the idea for AirTalk: The CalTech Edition, a collaboration with local NPR member station KPCC in Pasadena, Calif., as well as The Loh Down on Science, “the fun way to get your daily dose of science in less than two minutes,” hosted by Sandra Tsing Loh. He also was a driving force behind Curious, a four-part pubTV series from WNET that focused on the work of scientists at CalTech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.