The big audience statistic reveals for the first time a comprehensive estimate of public media users across all platforms.

Current is likely to have a new publisher in January — the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C. Details of the contract to transfer the print/web publication remain in negotiation, but the governing boards of the university and Current’s longtime publisher, New York’s WNET, have approved the deal in principle. The unanimous approval by the WNET Board, Dec. 9, prompted a story in a New York Times blog Dec. 12. WNET has published Current since 1983, for most of its 30 years. The editor and staff will keep their jobs, the publication will continue to cover public media, and the School of Communication has said Current will be editorially independent.

One year ago, on Dec. 10, 2009, Curtis Monk had a heart attack. Monk, president of Commonwealth Public Broadcasting, which operates Virginia’s Community Idea Stations, doesn’t remember anything about that day after his wife called 911. But his rescuers, paramedic Julie Anderson and emergency medical technician Desirée Myers, spent the year wondering how he was doing: They had to shock his heart three times to bring it back to life, and soon after turned Monk over to the hospital. On the anniversary of his rescue, the Richmond (Va.) Ambulance Authority reunited Monk and his lifesavers, as part of an employee appreciation day.

KCET in Los Angeles, going independent of PBS membership on Jan. 1, 2011, has announced its lineup. Pubcasting programmers have been waiting to see how the station will fill its schedule without longtime PBS staples like Frontline, Masterpiece and Antiques Roadshow. According to the station, KCET will have a “new on-air look” and organized “themed viewing blocks” to make it easier for viewers to find shows. On primetime: Sunday: Hollywood movies. First Works looks at how directors approach their craft. The new Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies offers film critiques, and KCET Presents runs popular movie titles. Monday: Action and travel.

The good news: 2011 promises to be a big year for 4G, with new mobile devices hitting the marketplace, and networks upgrading. The bad news: While many industry players remain enthusiastic, few will see much 4G revenue in 2011. That’s the outlook from the Yankee Group, the Boston-based tech research and consulting firm. Among its 21 specific predictions: — Mobile users will flock to the simplicity and savings of hotspots, which will reduce 4G subscriptions in the long run. — Mobile video won’t be “the killer 4G app” everyone is expecting. Consumers will spend more time with music services like Pandora and Slacker.

The New Jersey Network, which Gov. Chris Christie wants to cut from the state coffers, could be heading to a new steward, Richard Stockton College. College President Hermann Saatkamp has asked the governor to make NJN part of a college nonprofit managed as a broadcast and radio operation in conjunction with a group of state colleges. The station would be administered through Stockton’s 501c3 organization. The college has been home to WLFR-FM since 1984. The proposal could keep NJN on television and the radio into next year, when budget cuts were expected to end programming (Current, July 6).

What if PBS NewsHour had been approached by WikiLeaks with its raw, secret diplomatic cables? How would the news staff have handled the material? On Nov. 29, the cache of documents was given to journalists at the Guardian, Der Spiegel and Le Monde (the New York Times also received the data, via the Guardian). That was one question for Hari Sreenivasan, online and on-air correspondent with the show, in today’s (Dec. 9) online Reddit chat marking the one-year anniversary of its revamp (Current, Jan. 11). “We don’t have nearly as many staff members as those institutions but we would have reached out to partner perhaps with someone the likes of ProPublica to help sort through the data,” Sreenivasan replied.

Barrett Golding, indie curator of NPR’s Hearing Voices, on Tuesday (Dec. 7) was named a USA Rasmuson Fellow by United States Artists. He is one of 52 artists receiving $50,000 each from the grant-making and advocacy organization. Winners include “cutting-edge experimenters and traditional practitioners from the fields of architecture and design, crafts and traditional arts, dance, literature, film and media, music, theater arts, and visual arts,” the group said. The fellows were announced at a celebration Wednesday night at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. US Artists has also unveiled USA Projects, an online microphilanthropy initiative to encourage direct connections between artists and the public, catalyzing new funding for artists and helping to complete creative endeavors.

The New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority — whose future is set to be debated yet again today (Dec. 9) in Trenton — has approved two long-term lease agreements, hopeful that the New Jersey Network will remain in the state after it is cut loose from state funding (Current, July 6). So far interested buyers include WNET/Thirteen and WNYC in New York City and Philadelphia-based WHYY. The Senate State Government Committee is expected to discuss today disbanding the authority and could consider a bill to give control of NJN’s future to a bi-partisan committee of legislators.

Nonprofits remain upset with Apple’s ongoing ban on making donations on the iPhone through charity apps. Donors are directed out of a nonprofit’s app and to its own website, making the process of contributing more cumbersome. CPB and the Public Radio Exchange met about three years ago with Eddy Cue, the Apple exec in charge of iTunes, which handles the App Store. “We heard there were really serious internal discussions about this at Apple after that, but we haven’t gotten any traction,” Jake Shapiro, executive director of PRX, told the New York Times in a story Wednesday (Dec. 8). “One of Apple’s major objections,” he said, “has been that if donations were to go through its payment mechanism, it would have to be in the business of managing and distributing funds and verifying charities as well.”

The Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) and Independent Television Service (ITVS) have teamed up to survey the field of independent journalists who have been paid or commissioned to produce reporting for public radio, TV or digital platforms within the past two years. The Scan of Public Media’s Independent Journalists, to be conducted by MarketTrends Research through Dec. 31, was commissioned by CPB to provide a more complete picture of the journalistic capacity of the field. It complements findings of the census of public radio and television journalists conducted this summer by Public Radio News Directors, Inc. This survey seeks insights about formats and distribution outlets for indie media makers, as well as their sources of income outside of public media.

Veteran Chicago newsman and former Vocalo writer Robert Feder has joined Time Out Chicago, a weekly cultural magazine, as media critic. Feder left Vocalo in November, just as the blogs were moving from an independent site to WBEZ’s online home.

The new chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee is Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.). That’s good news for pubcasters, because also in the running was Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), who favors halting all federal funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Rogers, on the other hand, voted in June 2005 to restore $100 million for CPB. And earlier that year, when Kentucky Educational Television reached out to him, Rogers helped raise awareness of public broadcasting’s role in public safety efforts, culminating in a partnership between APTS and the Department of Homeland Security/FEMA on the Digital Emergency Alert System (DEAS).

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), sponsor of a bill to defund CPB, has asked the Government Accountability Office to audit CPB and NPR funding. Two Texas congressman sent a similar letter to the independent investigative agency on Nov. 18, singling out NPR. In a Tuesday (Dec. 7) press release, Lamborn said that “it is imperative that an accurate and complete snapshot of CPB’s use of taxpayer funding be available to lawmakers and the public. Unfortunately,” he said, “the charts, figures, statistics and documents posted on these entities’ websites — and often cited in the news media — do not sufficiently account for the complicated revenue streams between and within these entities. 

WBUR in Boston has a new general manager. Charles Kravetz, longtime news and programming director of New England Cable News, is stepping into the position to be vacated by Paul La Camera on Jan. 1, 2011. Upon arriving at the new cable channel in 1992, Kravetz assembled a news operation from scratch. Within five months he supervised the building of a newsroom, hired 90 staffers and started 24-hour programming. He also opened four new state bureaus and led the news team to Peabody, Murrow and duPont-Columbia awards.