It’s official: After nearly 10 years on Capitol Hill, the Local Community Radio Act has passed both the House and Senate and now heads for the president’s signature. The House approved it Friday (Dec. 17) and the Senate, on Saturday. Free Press released a statement that said in part, “Woo hoo!” The law will repeal restrictions on the LPFM (low-power FM) spectrum approved by Congress in 2000 at the request of commercial broadcasters. The restrictions limited the frequencies available to LPFMs to every fourth frequency instead of every third. When low power FM was approved by the FCC in 2000 (Current, Jan.

MJ Bear, a former vice president for online at NPR and a founding board member of the Online News Association, died Friday (Dec. 16) in Seattle after battling leukemia for seven months. At the time of her death she was based in Vienna for Microsoft as an executive producer in central and eastern Europe, and the Middle East and Africa. She was 48. Bear ran NPR online operations from 1996 to 2001, as manager and director of new media services, and vice president for online. She created more than 35 NPR.org websites; acquired online properties such as Fresh Air with Terry Gross; and created the web-only music destination All Songs Considered.

KOCE in Orange County, Calif., stepping up to the primary station role in the L.A. market in January, will now be known at PBS SoCal. It’s launching a new website where viewers can find the schedule for their fave shows. KOCE used to be secondary to KCET in the second-largest media market, but that station is dropping its PBS membership — and all PBS programming — as of Jan. 1 (Current, Oct. 18).

Actor Patrick Stewart had no idea the Screen Actors Guild nominations were to be unveiled Thursday (Dec. 16) so he was especially stunned when his name was among them, for his title-role work in the Great Performances presentation of “Macbeth.” “That is always the nicest way to receive good news,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. “When you’re not expecting it and it comes, it’s especially pleasing.” His was PBS’s sole nomination. (Image: PBS)

NPR’s Howard Berkes won the November Sidney Award for a seven-month investigation into Massey Energy, which owns the West Virginia Upper Big Branch mine where 29 miners died in April (a Dec. 13 Berkes piece on Massey here). One finding: NPR obtained court documents and state and federal records citing persistent and widespread safety violations. Berkes spearheaded a team of NPR journalists that included Susanne Reber, deputy managing editor of investigations; producer Robert Benincasa; and reporter Frank Langfitt. Berkes conducted a dozen on-air stories for NPR about Massey, and wrote or co-wrote another 15 pieces for the NPR website.

According to Nielsen ratings, PBS Kids had four of the top 10 spots in children’s programming among kids 2 to 5 years old for September, October and November. Curious George was ranked No. 1 in September and tied for the spot in November. And The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That was No. 1 in October. Results are based on national ratings for PBS and select competitive cable networks (Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, the Hub, Nickelodeon, and Nick Jr.) and unique program names for shows telecast at least three times each month.

There’s been lots of coverage of Sesame Workshop’s recent news out of China. But Hollywood Reporter has the coolest photo. Interesting story, too, of the Workshop’s history in the country, from the movie “Big Bird in China” in 1983, through Sesame Street’s run on Shanghai TV from 1998 to 2001.

CPB is continuing its work to support the burgeoning collaboration among the three PBS member stations in Los Angeles (Current, Aug. 9, 2010) with an RFP for an organizational consultant. Deadline is quickly approaching: Jan. 3, 2011.

HistoryMakers, the nonprofit African-American archive of oral histories and a longtime contributor to PBS programming, is wrapping up a busy year. Its archives — already the largest of its kind in the world — increased are still growing; this year brought interviews with Maya Angelou, Bishop T.D. Jakes and Minister Louis Farrakhan. Appearances by individual history makers at schools reached 10,000 students at 105 schools in 50 cities. That led a four-week National Endowment for the Humanities-funded Summer Institute on oral history techniques and African American political history. It also received a $2.3 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct 180 ScienceMakers interviews, provide educational public programming for children and adults, and produce a ScienceMakers DVD Toolkit .

NPR station execs tell the Washington Post today (Dec. 16) that the controversy over the firing of commentator Juan Williams in October didn’t significantly affect their fall pledge campaigns. New Hampshire Public Radio raised $473,000, a record amount. Another record set at WAMU in Washington, D.C., which hit $1.7 million — up $400,000 from last year’s fall drive. WMFE in Orlando is running pledge this week; contributions are above the goal. Any fallout from the controversy during your station’s fall fundraising? Drop us a line.

Elvis Mitchell, host of KCRW’s The Treatment, will not co-host the new Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies as was announced in September.The reason remains somewhat of a mystery. Since the pilot was shot, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, there had been “growing concern about whether Mitchell was the right person for the job.” A source who saw the show’s pilot said that Mitchell and his co-host, Associated Press movie critic Christy Lemire, had “little on-air chemistry.” But Ebert shot down that possibility in a Tweet: “Elvis and Christy had great chemistry, as anyone could see who bothered to watch the pilot we posted.”

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has made good on his promise to slice public broadcasting out of next year’s budget. His office announced today highlights of his budget proposal that will be unveiled Dec. 17. McDonnell said that ending support of public broadcasting by the Commonwealth will save $2 million in fiscal 2012 and a full phaseout by the end of FY 2013. His total package of recommendations would save Virginia some $191 million. McDonnell included pubcasting cuts in budget amendments he submitted to the legislature in the spring; they were rejected. Overall funding for public stations has declined in recent years, dropping from $3.6 million annually during the 2006-08 biennium to $1.9 million in the current two-year budget, reports the Virginian-Pilot.

Diverse Voices Project IV, offering up to $100,000 in co-production funding per documentary project, is accepting applications. The fund, a P.O.V. initiative backed by by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, fosters emerging and diverse doc filmmakers with production support and mentoring. Deadline is Jan. 14.

NPR’s use of an outside blog comment moderation firm has come in handy — particularly in the days after the Juan Williams firing in October, when “we had tens of thousands of comments coming in that week,” NPR Senior Strategist Andy Carvin tells the American Journalism Review. ICUC Moderation Services now monitors all blog posts. “NPR was forced to take defensive action after barrages of inflammatory posts by trolls and spammers polluted its discussion boards and threatened to become a persistent problem,” as AJR reports. Previously, interns and NPR staffers deleted offensive posts. But the online comments have become so plentiful that they simply couldn’t keep up.

NPR’s Senior National Correspondent Linda Wertheimer has decided to move to to half-time status in 2011. She will continue as a substitute host of Morning Edition and other NPR news programs and as an anchor for special events, including Congressional hearings. A memo to stations noted that “Ms. Wertheimer emphasizes she does not expect to spend more time with her family.” (Image: NPR)