The San Mateo County Community College District will appeal the $15,000 indecency fine the FCC levied against KCSM-TV for naughty words uttered in an March 2004 installment of PBS doc, The Blues. KCSM was notifed of the commission’s decision last week. Washington, D.C.-based law firm Morrison and Foerster will represent the district on a pro bono basis.

The University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif., has taken its public radio station off the market. The university was not satisfied with the proposals it received for KUOP-FM but will put the station back on the market within a year. Capital Public Radio in Sacramento will continue to operate the station.

The Columbia Journalism Review looks at the case of Clark Parrish, a religious broadcaster whose companies snapped up hundreds of FM translators from the FCC a few years ago only to turn around and sell them. “Based on the average sale price for one of their translators, their remaining spectrum holdings, which the FCC granted free, could be worth as much as $8.7 million,” CJR says. (Earlier coverage in Current.)

New York’s WNYC-AM/FM is moving from the city’s Municipal Building into larger digs in lower Manhattan that will include a 3,700-square-foot performance space.

The Los Angeles Times reports that on April 17 Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre will show free continuous screenings of The Armenian Genocide, the controversial documentary debuting on PBS stations that night. Filmmaker Andrew Goldberg rented the theatre after KCET in Los Angeles declined to broadcast both the film and the panel discussion that PBS commissioned to follow it.

Consultant Robert Paterson has been working with NPR on its series of systemwide meetings, New Realities. On his blog, he shares conversations with WBEZ’s Torey Malatia, KCRW’s Ruth Seymour and Bill Buzenberg of Minnesota Public Radio.

A new commercial AM/FM news-talk station in Washington, D.C., hopes to attract a chunk of public radio’s audience by combining a livelier sound with meatier coverage, reports the Washington Post‘s Marc Fisher. The Post is partnering on the station with Bonneville International, owner of the city’s successful WTOP-AM.

NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin says a recent NPR story took a condescending attitude toward small-town media.

Arbitron will begin rolling out its Portable People Meter, a new audience-measurement technology, in July, reports Radio Magazine. Consultant John Sutton warns that the PPM’s introduction could bring new limitations on some of the most useful data that pubradio gets from Arbitron.

Michael Coleman tells the Detroit Free Press that he did not embezzle from Michigan Public Media in Ann Arbor, his former employer. Coleman is now g.m. of WDET-FM in Detroit. A Detroit News columnist compares news of the embezzlement charges to “hearing that your mother has been brought up on shoplifting charges.”

If pediatricians agree that media screen time is not appropriate for children under age two, why are Sesame Workshop and a leading child advocacy organization co-producing a DVD series for babies? “Essentially it is a betrayal of babies and families,” one critic of the new brand of infant media and toy products tells the Washington Post. Child development experts have asked Zero to Three, the advocacy group that’s co-producing the Sesame Beginnings DVD series, to end its association with the Workshop. “We believe that your partnership . . . is exploitative of both babies and parents and severely damages your credibility as an advocate for the health and well-being of young children,” write the leaders of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, in a March 17 letter.

Breaking with his custom not to write about PBS programs until after they’ve aired, Ombudsman Michael Getler wades into the controversy over The Armenian Genocide.

Consultant and blogger Robert Paterson gives a sneak peek at a New York Times feature about NPR’s growth in the post-Kroc era, dated for Sunday. “To put it in perspective, the [Baltimore Sun] just closed my old Beijing bureau,” says Frank Langfitt, a Sun alum and NPR reporter. “NPR just opened a Shanghai bureau. It’s night and day.”

The Prometheus Radio Project says the FCC could open a filing window for full-power noncommercial FM frequencies within six months, reports Radio World.

The website for the Prairie Home Companion movie is up, complete with trailer. “Radio like you’ve never seen it before.”