“Nonprofit media continues to hold itself out as a beacon in today’s media world, which is dominated by ever-coarsening public dialogue,” writes Jonathan Berr in AOL’s Daily Finance site. “These high ideals, however, may not be compatible with the current fiscal reality.”

Public access TV is in danger, writes Jonathan Nichols-Pethick, assistant professor of communication and theatre at DePauw University. Pending legislation in various states threatens to make the local channels extinct. “As media educators, activists, practitioners, and just plain concerned citizens, we need to focus our critical attention on the proper target,” he contends, urging readers to take actions including putting pressure on city councils, working with nonprofit organizations that oversee the channels, and encouraging students to produce programs for the stations. His essay is titled, Terminating Public Access Television.

Caroll Spinney, 75, has played Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street for the past 40 years. As Sesame Street turns 40, Spinney recalls: “When, I joined Jim [Henson], I asked, ‘what is Big Bird like?’ He said, ‘That’s up to you. I’m giving you free reign on developing the character.'”

TV stations have until March 17 to tell the FCC when they will be transitioning to DTV before June 12. The commission released the order (PDF) Friday. It also recommends that stations not transition before April 16.

How to better appeal to individual donors is the topic of the next online discussion hosted by The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Click there at noon Feb. 24 to participate.

Thomas Gensemer, the brain behind then-Sen. Barack Obama’s Web-based election campaign, says nonprofits should forgo email newsletters and focus on short, more personal email notes providing specific instructions for participation in fund-raising efforts. “Email newsletters don’t get read, yet they take more effort to prepare than a 250-word email,” he told an audience at City University in London this week. “Email is still a killer application, but only when used properly.”

The economic stimulus package was the biggest topic in the blogosphere last week, but guess what else showed up? Some 6 percent of bloggers mentioned Sesame Street’s Muppet characters, according to a weekly survey by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. After CNN posted a story from the archives of the Mental Floss blog, online writers began to ponder their own fave Muppets. As one wrote, “My nickname in middle school was Fozzy the Bear because I was always constantly telling bad jokes.”

BBC Radio’s World Service offers an audio feature by Alan Hall about the Kitchen Sisters, Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson. “Programme one captures Davia at the duo’s production office in Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope building in San Francisco. It then travels south to glimpse Nikki on the commune where she lives and where their radio stories take shape.”

Callers to the FCC with DTV-related issues complained most about technical and reception problems, according to documents from the commission. Around a quarter of nearly 28,000 calls on Feb. 17, the original transition date, focused on those topics. Nearly as many calls that day, just over 21 percent, were about problems with converter boxes or coupons. While many stations chose to wait until the new date, June 12, to drop analog broadcasts, 421 stations transitioned this week.

If your station is considering using social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace) for fund raising, check out the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s recent online discussion. You’ll find answers to questions such as, how do you put a fund-raising page on Facebook? And, are there enough baby boomers comfortable with technology to make this approach an effective tool?

Kevin Klose has been named dean of University of Maryland’s journalism school. Klose will oversee the school as it revamps its curriculum to focus more on digital and multimedia reporting. Klose was NPR president from 1998 to 2006. In November 2008, he was named president emeritus of NPR and president of the NPR Foundation.

Did your pubTV station turn off its analog broadcasts yesterday? If so, Current would like to hear how things went. Did you get many calls from viewers, were there any technical glitches? Can all your viewers get the digital signal? Drop Editor Steve Behrens a note at behrens@current.org.

The Western New York Public Broadcasting Association is cutting staff and salaries. WNED’s eight corporate officers took a 7.5 percent pay cut; all other employees had a 5 percent cut. Nine positions of a total 93 full-time employees were eliminated. Six of those had been vacant. The service includes WNED-TV, ThinkBright TV, and two radio stations, classical WNED-FM and WNED-AM, mainly news. WNED also is facing a $900,000 drop in state funding. Officials from New York’s eight other public TV stations are currently lobbying the governor and state legislature to amend the cuts.

Public television is asking Congress for a $211 million supplemental appropriation for fiscal year 2010 on top of the usual CPB funding, presenting it as disaster relief rather than another bailout.

Northern California Public Broadcasting, licensee of KQED-TV/FM and KTEH-TV in San Jose, laid off 30 employees and cut its budget 13 percent as it reacted to double-digit losses in corporate support and major-donor revenue. The restructuring, announced Feb. 2, also eliminated 14 vacant jobs and shuttered the broadcast studios of the San Jose station, which merged with KQED in 2006. The layoffs included 10 KTEH employees. A core staff of eight, including a small field production team, remains at San Jose. The Bay Area pubcaster cut spending $8 million, reducing total outlays to $54 million. “This exercise is intended to keep us in good stead through this year and carry us through 2010,” said Jeff Clarke, NCPB president.