The Congressional Budget Office has issued its economic and budget predictions for FY2009 through FY2019 early to “aid the new Congress in its deliberations,” according to the CBO director’s blog. Outlook details: “A marked contraction in the U.S. economy in calendar year 2009” followed by a “slow recovery” in 2010. It also says America “is in a recession that will probably be the longest and the deepest since World War II.”

Indiana PubTV’s WFYI is facing a total elimination of state funding under Gov. Mitch Daniels’ budget proposals. Due to reductions in private donations, the station last week laid off five staffers and ended production of several programs. Now Daniels wants to strip all state funding, $517,000, or less than 5 percent of the station budget. However, WFYI management said each state dollar helps raise some $8 in funding from foundations, corporations and individuals.

A quiet move to “save” that quiet pubTV legendary show, “Mister Rogers Neighborhood,” has sprung up on the Internet. Save the Mister Rogers Neighborhood Campaign, according to the website, was organized by Brian Linder, a father of twin toddlers from Columbia, S.C., who wanted his children to be able to see a show he grew up watching daily. The show hasn’t been discontinued; last September its distribution changed. PBS now offers the show weekly to allow room for more PBS KIDS’ new series on its daily feed, according to PBS Engage. A Facebook page linked to Linder’s efforts is up to nearly 7,000 members.

“Waltz with Bashir” continues its run of prizes and nominations with a nod in the Best Foreign Language Film category of the Academy Awards. It’s the 10th Oscar nomination for ITVS, and the first for its ITVS International initiative. The presitgious awards show airs Feb. 22 from the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

The Senate has approved a bill that would delay the DTV transition date from Feb. 17 to June 12; it will vote on that next week. Also on Jan. 23, the House OK’d rules governing $2.8 billion for high-speed broadband access, one chunk of the proposed $6 billion broadband update funds that are part of the $825 billion economic stimulus bill.

The Betrayal, a documentary that will air during P.O.V.’s 2009 season, was nominated for an Academy Award. Produced and directed by Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath, the film–23 years in the making–follows the experiences of Phrasavath, a Laotian immigrant, and his family after they come to America. The doc also recently received two nominations for the Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking.

Woody Wickham, 66, a key grantmaker to public broadcasting at the MacArthur Foundation, died of cancer on Sunday at his Chicago home, the Chicago Tribune reported. In more than a dozen years at MacArthur, he helped support such projects as the breakthrough film Hoop Dreams and projects of independent radio producer Dave Isay, including the massive oral history project StoryCorps.

Miami University of Ohio plans to turn over operations of WMUB, an NPR affiliate that has broadcast from its campus for 58 years, to Cincinnati Public Radio. The management agreement is being facilitated by Public Radio Capital and comes less than two years after a university study committee “strongly” recommended that the station pursue partnerships with other news organizations or public stations in Dayton. The university annually contributes $500,000 of the WMUB’s operating budget and provides another $300,000 in indirect subsidies. “[T]he financial obligation of WMUB can no longer be borne by the university with the economic challenges we face,” said Miami President David Hodge.

New York’s WNET-Thirteen will cut 8 percent of its upcoming budget through cost reductions and job eliminations. Also affected will be parent organization WNET.org and sister station WLIW-21. WNET.org’s President and CEO Neal Shapiro told The Observer that of roughly 500 staffers, some 85 positions are targeted. According to Shapiro, individual and corporate as well as government funding for WNET and WLIW all have declined significantly in recent months. Also, N.Y. Gov. David Paterson’s new budget includes a 50 percent reduction in the overall funding for pubTV, which would mean about a $4.5 million cut for WNET.org. “If that happens, we’ll have to take more actions,” Shapiro told the paper.

President Barack Obama has named FCC Commissioner Michael Copps temporary head of the regulatory agency. Copps has been one of the five-member commission since 2001. Tech exec Julius Genachowski is the new president’s reported choice to head the FCC, but that appointment may take weeks or perhaps months.

NewsHour correspondent Gwen Ifill’s new book, The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, was published on Inauguration Day. Ifill, who moderated the vice presidential debate last fall, drew criticism from John McCain supporters when news of her book contract hit the press. Critics assumed she would favor Obama’s camp, but The Breakthrough is “less about Barack Obama’s victory than a generational shift among black politicians and voters, black and white,” says Bob Minzesheimer of USA Today. “Her book is a serious but readable assessment, not a celebration,” he writes. Ifill mentions the debate flap briefly: “I was a hard target to resist — an African-American journalist writing about race could not possibly be capable of thinking bigger thoughts, could she?”

Detroit Public Television laid off 11 employees yesterday–about 16 percent of the station’s staff. Sister radio station WRCJ-FM laid off one employee. The TV station made cuts to the reception desk, accounting and promotions departments, and all who were laid off received a severance package, according to David Devereaux, v.p. of communications. 

Pubcasting ombudsmen Alicia Shepard of NPR and Michael Getler of PBS have received hundreds of complaints about biased coverage of the Israeli incursion into Gaza, and their latest columns analyze to what extent the criticisms are justified. Some listeners say public radio coverage is so biased that NPR is actually “National Palestinian Radio,” Shepard writes, but the biggest issue appears to be a lack of historical or political context in NPR’s reporting. “Context is critical but there are certain time constraints that simply won’t allow the kind of detail some listeners want in every four-minute piece,” she writes. At PBS, Getler agrees with viewers that a Bill Moyers commentary on the Israeli-Hamas conflict was “not only inflammatory but wrong.”

If you thought that media can adopt Web 2.0 commercialism without content- and news-distorting consequences parallel with those that operate so effectively on commercial TV and cable, check out the critique coming from Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, as reported in Britain’s Guardian and on Journalism.co.uk. “Publishers are in danger of being reduced to the digital equivalent of a windsock, shaped by the short-term whims of the news consumer,” says Oxford economic geographer Andrew Currah in a release. If they follow the revenue lure of online traffic, journalists will feel steady pressure to reconsider content decisions, homogenize their subject matter, bend their values and favor star journalists, celebrities and opinion over hard news.

Qualcomm, looking to use analog channels for its MediaFLO mobile TV service after the digital transition, sent letters Jan. 19 to legislators asking stations in Boston, Miami, San Francisco and Houston to drop their signals on the original Feb. 17 date. But Northern California Public Broadcasting, with one of the analog channels Qualcomm wants, says it wants to keep that analog signal on until Congress orders otherwise. Stay tuned.