The G4 — the Association of Public Television Stations, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Public Television Service and National Public Radio — on March 18 filed a 19-page document with the Federal Communications Commission commenting on its notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on spectrum allocation. In it, the orgs say that pubcasting would support “certain goals” by the FCC to maximize efficient use of spectrum (Current, Feb. 8, 2010), “but is concerned with the potential ramifications of a number of proposals.” One topic of talk among stations: Channel sharing. The FCC is pondering letting two or more TV stations — commercial and noncommercial — share a single six-megahertz channel, “thereby fostering efficient use of the U/V Bands,” as it said in the NPRM.

The first episode of “The Civil War” by Ken Burns will debut on the free PBS for iPad and PBS App for iPhone and iPod Touch on Thursday (March 24), 10 days before the entire film is shown on the air. The rebroadcast honors the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. The series will air nationally on PBS from 8 to 10 p.m. Eastern April 3-7 (check local listings). The first episode will also be streamed on PBS.org, April 4-10. The Civil War attracted an audience of 40 million during its premiere in September 1990, and established Burns as a star documentarian.

The board of directors for Austin, Minn.-based KSMQ Public Television announced today (March 21) that they are looking a new station president to replace Marianne Potter. The Austin Daily Herald is reporting that Potter, who had been with the station about two and a half years, left two weeks ago. “A KSMQ spokesperson would not comment on the circumstances regarding Potter’s departure,” the paper said. NETA Consulting is assisting in the search.

Detroit Public Television is opening a satellite studio in the heart of Detroit, in the historic Maccabees Building — former home to the Lone Ranger radio show when it debuted in 1933, and Soupy Sales program in the 1950s, according to webmag Model D. The project builds on the partnership between DPTV and Wayne State University, which has already invested $100,000 in renovations. “We’re going to back up our high-definition mobile television production truck behind the studio and start producing television right away,” said station President Rich Homburg, while rehab work continues. “The good news is, we can immediately start to produce there, with an eye towards expanding the footprint and really expanding the service of that studio to Detroit.”

An analysis of HR 1076, the bill to prohibit federal funding for National Public Radio that won House approval on a March 17 party line vote, details which congressional districts have the most on the line if the legislation is enacted. Alaska Republican Don Young, whose at-large district encompasses 26 public radio stations, has the most at stake — more than $5 million in CPB grants from 2009. Young was one of 11 members of Congress, seven of whom were Democrats, who did not vote on the bill, according to the official tally of the roll call. Minority staff of the House Energy and Commerce Committee crunched the numbers to assess the legislation’s impact and found that 414 stations with listeners in 280 congressional districts would be affected.

Former NPR chief exec Vivian Schiller will keep her April 1 speaking engagement at the University of Texas’s international symposium on online journalism, even though she accepted the invitation prior to her March 9 resignation. U-Texas J-School professor Rosental Alves, organizer of the annual conference, reached out to Schiller after her abrupt departure and asked her to discuss her vision for online journalism, based on her experiences at NPR and NYTimes.com. “The most important work that she has done was moving NPR into the digital age,” Alves tells The Daily Texan, UT’s student newspaper. “That experience alone would be very relevant for us who are concerned with the future of journalism in this country.”

Neither Ron Schiller nor Betsy Liley had eaten before at Café Milano, the upscale see-and-be-seen restaurant in Georgetown, before Feb. 22, when they stepped into an elaborate trap that had been set for them there....

The Capitol Hill hearing on alternative means to fund public broadcasting, which had been announced for April 6, has been canceled due to scheduling issues, House Appropriations Committee spokesperson Jennifer Hing tells Current.

After last week’s House vote on federal funding for public radio, the debate continued to rage on op-ed pages and blogs. Here’s a sampling from pubcasting veterans and other observers with special insights: William Drummond, a founding editor of Morning Edition who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley’s J-School, remakes his case for policymakers to forcibly “wean public broadcasting off the federal dole.” [Drummond mentions his 1993 commentary in Current.] Fox News pundit and former NPR news analyst Juan Williams agrees that pubcasting should lose its federal aid, but for different reasons. In today’s edition of The Hill he writes of “the culture of elitism that has corroded NPR’s leadership.”

“New Public Media Networks: What’s Becoming and What Might Be” is a new animated video from American University’s Center for Social Media that touts the importance of public broadcasting by focusing on one household. In it, members of the Cardozo family — Jenna and Jose, their 10-year-old daughter Liv and twins Max and Carla, 17 — each use pubmedia in very different but beneficial ways, from having fun on PBS Kids to addressing community issues through involvement in the “Not in Our Town” outreach. Max even creates an app that spreads worldwide via his local pubcasting station. The eight-minute film was created by Jessica Clark, director of the Future of Public Media Project at the center, and Ellen Goodman, law professor and co-director of the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy and Law.

After a nearly two-hour battle pitting fiscal conservatism against the value of publicly funded media, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill forbidding stations to use CPB funds to acquire NPR programming or pay network dues.

Neither Ron Schiller nor Betsy Liley had eaten before at Café Milano, the upscale see-and-be-seen restaurant in Georgetown, before Feb. 22, when they stepped into an elaborate trap that had been set for them there. The two NPR fundraisers didn’t get the $5 million donation that was discussed by their lunch partners, and the president of NPR didn’t pose for a photo accepting a phony check, but those were the better results of the lunch meeting. They couldn’t have expected that a hidden-camera recording of their talk with two prospective donors would cost Schiller his next job, put Liley on administrative leave, trigger the ouster of NPR’s president and severely undercut support for federal aid to public broadcasting.

WNET/Thirteen in New York City is launching a local news show, MetroFocus, on Memorial Day, the New York Times is reporting. “One of the futures of public television is making local connections,” station President Neal Shapiro told the paper. “We’ve done a great job of being a national producer; we can do a much better job of being a local producer.” It’ll launch as a website, then a 30-minute monthly or weekly show, then a mobile app.

Did Garrison Keillor, that red-sneakered, 68-year-old host of A Prairie Home Companion, really announce his retirement plans in an interview published last week? You decide. Here are your clues: On March 16, AARP issued a press release, “Public Radio Legend Garrison Keillor Announces Retirement in AARP Bulletin Exclusive Interview.” In the question-and-answer dialogue on AARP’s website, Keillor said, “I am planning to retire in the spring of 2013, but first I have to find my replacement.” Soon after AARP’s piece appeared online, his longtime broadcaster and distributor, Bill Kling, president of American Public Media, told an MPR blogger that “Garrison has been talking about things like this for the last couple of years and when Garrison says it, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything more than that morning’s musings.”

NPR is facing the most serious political crisis in its history with no chief executive to speak for it, no chief fundraiser to make sure its new building can be finished, and no chief journalist to rebuff or heed criticism of its newsroom. “People feel that they’ve been let down, and there’s this vacuum at NPR, and what’s next?” said Dave Edwards, chair of the NPR Board. “Those emotions are felt by people in NPR’s building, at stations and by board members. The board has an obligation to stabilize things. That’s what we’re working on.” Joyce Slocum, general counsel and senior v.p.