North Country Public Radio and WAMC in Albany, N.Y., are feuding over their competing applications to operate a full-power station in Lake Placid. For 21 years, NCPR has broadcast to the community on a translator on 91.7, the only frequency available in Lake Placid for a full-power station. During the FCC’s October filing window for new noncommercial FM stations, WAMC applied to take over the channel. The Daily Gazette of Schenectady first reported on the dispute, but the Albany Times Union reported earlier on WAMC’s plans to expand into the service areas of other regional pubcasters. The Adirondack Daily Enterprise reports on negotiations between NCPR and WAMC for the frequency.

‘PBS gives everyone the opportunity to explore new worlds” — this is the meaning that station communications to viewers and donors should evoke, the network says. PBS plans to test new messages with stations and make a new round of spots for its “Be More” brand campaign based on new research about language that moves people to donate to pubTV. The network’s goal is to create more consistent messaging across the system, says Judy Braune, v.p. of strategy and brand management. “When we set out to do the research,” she says, “we were looking to answer the question, ‘How can we position PBS stations as a cause that people want to support for the long haul?’”

A newly formed consortium of Latino public broadcasters is calling for public radio to expand its service to the nation’s growing Hispanic population by creating multiple program services and strengthening Latino-controlled public radio stations.

Most listeners to classical music radio decide whether or not to listen based primarily on the sound and the emotional impact of the music, not on technical or musicological aspects of the music.

The Midday Classical Music Testing Project, presented by Public Radio Program Directors at its conference in September [2007], is fundamentally flawed in two ways, casting serious doubt that programmers could draw any useful conclusions from it.

Oregon Public Broadcasting’s decision to buy an AM radio station in Eugene, hometown of NPR News and music station KLCC, prompted a spirited discussion on Oregon Media Insiders. KLCC, which has a longstanding news partnership with OPB to fund a news bureau in Salem, has endorsed the purchase.

Public Radio International said Wednesday that it received a three-year, $5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to produce and distribute journalism on global health and development issues. PRI said more of its Our World Initiative remains to be announced.

Independent Lens has launched its second annual Online Shorts Festival of 11 comedy, drama and documentary films. The Grand Prize winner C. Beck was selected by the curators of the series and broadcast on PBS in November. A jury of industry folk selected the 10 online winners and awarded a Grand Jury Prize to Bullet Proof Vest. Viewers can download the shorts or watch them on-site, post comments, and rate films. The audience favorite award will be announced in February.

The FCC released its report and order proposing new protections for low-power FM stations. Accompanying statements of commissioners are posted here.

“A senior Superior Court judge is suing the Georgia Public Broadcasting network because it won’t air a debate the judge orchestrated and paid to produce,” reports the AP. Judge Dann Winn apparently donated $5,000 to GPB and says there was a “handshake understanding” the pubcaster would air a Feb. 6, 2006, debate–featuring Winn–about the morality of dropping atomic bombs in WWII. The debate is available on GPB’s online digital library. Winn, who represented the pro-bomb argument, said he wanted to challenge the idea that “America was barbaric and we were the bad guys.”

Three new Masterpiece Theatre hosts, starting with former X-Files co-star Gillian Anderson, are part of the series’ previously reported makeover, and the familiar theme music will be reduced to a musical mention, the New York Times reported today. The new hosts succeed Russell Baker. Anderson will introduce the Masterpiece Classic period dramas from January to May, followed by two other hosts for the Masterpiece Mystery! shows in the summer and Masterpiece Contemporary in the fall. Anderson appeared on the series in Bleak House this spring. Viewers will see the makeover in January along with the Complete Jane Austen package.

The Sesame Workshop unveiled its Joan Ganz Cooney Center today, named after Sesame Street‘s creator and aimed at literacy development. The center will “conduct and support research, create new media properties, and stimulate a national dialogue on how interactive technologies can be utilized to help accelerate children’s learning,” according to a release. Its first report, “The Enduring Power of Pow! Wham!: Children, Digital Media, and Our Nation’s Future,” finds that while the digital media play a huge role in kids’ lives, they rarely provide educational content. The center has appointed three leaders: Michael H. Levine has been named executive director; Ann My Thai will oversee partnerships with high-tech and gaming industries and direct organization and growth; and Dixie Ching will direct the center’s research.

CPB is seeking proposals for development and launch of a new public radio program service for Latinos in Los Angeles. Its request for proposals, which has a Jan. 17 deadline, identifies first-generation Latinos as the target audience.

WTVP in Peoria, Ill., must restructure its capital loan by Jan. 15 or pay its $6.9 million balance, the station said, announcing that it would postpone its December pledge drive, the Peoria Journal Star reported Saturday. To prepare for DTV and move to new quarters in downtown Peoria, WTVP borrowed $10.3 million in 2001, but was found in default after some 2002 pledge figures slipped below the level required by the banks. Probably unrelated dispatch from Peoria: John Morris, v.p. for development at the station, is a candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress. The former two-term Peoria City Council member has two prominent opponents for the nomination: a state legislator and the head of a big local chamber of commerce/economic development nonprofit.

For one thing, it doesn’t claim to be a “museum” anymore, thanks to Pat Mitchell, former PBS c.e.o. and current head of the recently renamed Paley Center for Media. Mitchell left PBS last year to lead the institution known as the Museum of Television and Radio until Mitchell changed its name, Newsday reports. She made the switch because she wants the center to embrace online media as well. Mitchell told the paper she left PBS because she was exhausted by the demands of the job.