At the Primetime Emmy Awards Sunday night (Sept. 18), premium cable channel HBO “was beaten up in prestige categories by an unlikely foe — public broadcasting, which gets its funding from the government and viewer contributions,” reports the Los Angeles Times. PBS won 14 statuettes (including the earlier Creative Emmy presentations) compared with HBO’s 19, but Masterpiece’s “Downton Abbey” walked away with some of the night’s top honors, generally reserved for big-money HBO productions. The Brit import about an aristocratic family in pre-World War I England won for TV miniseries or movie; Julian Fellowes, series creator, also won the writing award in that category; and director Brian Percival and supporting actress Maggie Smith took those honors.

Lawrence Grossman, former PBS president, and Shae Hopkins, executive director of Kentucky Educational Television, are two board members of Digital Promise, the White House’s educational initiative that was announced Friday (Sept. 16) in Washington, D.C. The project, backed by the Department of Education, Carnegie Corporation of New York and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, will work to identify breakthrough educational technologies, partner with researchers and entrepreneurs to determine what works best, and drive private-sector investment in innovation. The initiative also includes a League of Innovative Schools to help test projects, $15 million in new awards from the National Science Foundation to support research on next-generation learning environments, a national alliance of more 35 of America’s top education-policy researchers, and more.

Robert M. Reed, the founding manager of Hawaii’s public TV network who became a publisher and an author, died of respiratory failure Sept. 17, 2011, in Winter Park, Fla. He was 79. He started the Hawaii Educational Television Network in 1962 and served as its g.m. and an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii. In a 20-year career in public television, he also served as g.m. of KUED in Salt Lake City and as head of public TV’s national syndication service in Bloomington, Ind., and at PBS. He worked at stations in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Atlanta; and Madison, Wis.; as well as Honolulu.

The Federal Communication Commission released an order today (Sept. 16) that extends the deadline for Emergency Alert System (EAS) participating stations to implement the new Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) standard. The order moves the deadline from Sept. 30 to June 30, 2012. The extension may allow the first-ever National EAS Test scheduled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the FCC, set for Nov. 9, to run more smoothly, notes the CommLaw Center blog of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. Media including NPR, the Association of Public Television Stations and PBS joined the National Association of Broadcasters in requesting the extension, reports TV Technology.

Finalists for this year’s National Book Awards will be revealed live on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud, from the new Literary Arts space in Portland. It’s a public-radio first, said Sarah Jane Rothenfluch, the show’s executive producer. Beginning at 9 a.m. local time on Oct. 12, host Dave Miller will interview past winners, finalists and judges, who will announce the finalists.

Essential Public Media has completed its purchase of Pittsburgh’s WDUQ/90.5 FM, reports the local Post-Gazette. The call letters will change to WESA-FM. Under the terms of the agreement, seller Duquesne University will receive $4,004,500 in cash. Essential Public Media also will provide $1 million in underwriting to the university over the next 10 years, along with $500,000 worth of internships to Duquesne students. The deal was announced in January (Current, Jan. 24).

WNET will distribute its own content internationally beginning at next month’s MIPCOM program marketplace, according to entertainment news site C21. Previously, overseas distribution was handled by PBSd, a partnership between PBS and WGBH in Boston. “We thought we could do better,” said Harvey Seslowsky, managing director of sales and global content distribution for WNET in New York City. “What we’re trying to do is find ways to kick up our sources of revenue,” and perhaps funnel those funds into new programming or expanded seasons of existing shows, he said. PBS will continue to handle domestic distribution of the station’s content, while WNET will take over international sales.

Shelley Lewis, the executive producer who just left WNET’s Need to Know, has landed as executive vice president of programming at Current TV, it announced today (Sept. 15). Current President David Bohrman called Lewis, right, “a great idea person” with the “perfect combination of relationships, experience and entrepreneurial drive to help us establish Current as a new kind of multi-screen news experience for a new kind of news viewer.” Prior to her time at NTK, Lewis was a co-creator of Air America Radio and also worked at CNN and ABC News. She starts Sept. 19 at Current. (Image: WNET)

Association of Independents in Radio launched the beta website for its new CPB-backed initiative, Localore. Inspired by Maker’s Quest 2.0, AIR’s 2009 project for indie-led cross-platform media experiments, Localore will pair radio and TV indies with pubcasting stations on projects that blend digital with broadcast media. The site that launched today features the Station Runway, a series of digital video presentations by six “incubator” stations that hope to recruit producers to work with them. AIR and CPB will announce more grant details and identify as many as 20 participating stations on Sept. 22 during the Public Radio Program Directors conference in Baltimore.

Actor and former Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton has raised $3 million for his RRKidz reading app for iPad and Android users, reports Venture Beat. He’s partnering with PBS affiliate WNED in Buffalo, which was Reading Rainbow’s presenting station, on the project. (The show ended its 26-year run in August 2009.) “With RRKidz, Burton is introducing a reading, discovery and exploration platform (enhanced eBooks) that could have more than 300 interactive books by the time it launches,” according to Venture Beat. “We are slipping on the world’s stage in education, very precipitously,” Burton said. “To remain a world leader, we have to do a better job educating our children.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is awarding $4.1 million to help American Public Media expand its digital Public Insight Network, it announced today (Sept. 15). PIN gathers more than 120,000 citizen sources who share their knowledge with reporters in 45 newsrooms, including 15 of the top 20 media markets (background, Current, Jan. 24, 2011). CPB said its investment will add more than 100,000 new sources and  bring PIN to 50 additional newsrooms.

Mike Schneider, a familiar anchor and reporter who has worked with the four major commercial nets and major station newsrooms in the Northeast in the past 30-plus years, was announced Wednesday (Sept. 14) as anchor and managing editor of NJTV’s nightly state news program, NJ Today. He and his physician wife raised their children in Bergen County, N.J., and he ran for Congress there as a Democrat in 1998. He’ll work with new Executive Producer Bob Males, a New Jersey native and resident who previously worked as e.p. of New Jersey and Long Island news for Verizon’s Fios service, and Michael Aron, longtime senior political correspondent at New Jersey Network, NJTV’s predecessor, who joined NJTV as political correspondent in August.

New Hampshire Public Television is in collaboration talks with WGBH, as well as stations in Vermont and Maine, according to Foster’s Daily Democrat, which covers New Hampshire and Maine. Grace Lessner, spokesperson for NHPTV, confirmed the discussions but said no further details are available. Jeanne Hopkins, vice president of Communications at WGBH, told the paper: “We’re in conversation to see if there’s ways to collaborate. We’re looking at if there are things that would make sense.” In June, NHPTV laid off 20 full-time employees in an effort to offset a loss of about $2.7 million in state funding. That’s about a 30 percent reduction for the station’s $8.8 million operating budget.