The Recording Academy presented a 2004 Trustees Award to jazz pianist and public radio host Marian McPartland. The award recognizes “music people who have made the greatest impact on our culture,” said Neil Portnow, president of the Academy. “Their outstanding accomplishments and passion for their craft have created a timeless legacy that has positively affected multiple generations and will continue to influence generations to come.” Through her public radio series Piano Jazz, McPartland has introduced generations of listeners to the genre. The series, which received a George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting, celebrates its 25th anniversary this spring. McPartland, 85, also operates her own recording label and continues to record, tour, lecture and teach.

The Idaho Legislature is the subject of Frederick Wiseman’s next cinema verite documentary. Starting with his controversial film Titicut Follies in 1967, Wiseman has filmed the day-to-day workings of American places and institutions — public housing developments, high schools and an old Maine seaport town, among other subjects. His last PBS broadcast, Domestic Violence, was filmed in a shelter for abused women and children, called the Spring, in Tampa, Fla. Wiseman, who doesn’t discuss his film projects until they’re near completion, declined Current’s request for an interview. But he told Idaho statehouse reporter Betsy Russell that he chose the Idaho Legislature because he wanted to film an American institution in the West.

Public TV stations adopted this statement of mission at the PBS Members Meeting, Feb. 23, 2004. For more information. See also Current‘s coverage, published March 8, 2004. Public television is the only universally accessible national resource that uses the power and accessibility of television to educate, enlighten, engage and inform. Because of its public service mission, public television is more essential than ever in the cluttered media landscape. In a world of commercial media conglomerates, public television is the only locally owned television provider in most communities. Its array of education and outreach services, combined with local ownership, means that public television stations are actively engaged in their communities, creating content and providing services that respond to local needs.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced today that it will spread $15 million among 16 rural public TV stations to help them switch to digital transmission. Among the grantees are some of the nation’s smallest public TV stations as well as the West Virginia, South Dakota, North Dakota and Kentucky networks.

“There are enough fine children’s entertainments being made that there is no excuse for Clifford’s Really Big Movie, a really lame attempt to expand the marketing reach of the PBS-TV series.” A New York Daily News critic pans the kiddie film opening today at theatres. Scholastic is promoting the popular PBS Kids character and his canine side-kicks in kids’ meals at Wendy’s.

Bill Moyers will retire from TV journalism in November, after the elections. He plans to write a book about President Johnson, whom he served as a young White House aide, AP reported. CPB has sought conservative programming to counterbalance his Friday-night PBS program. In a Current critique, Christopher Lydon called Moyers “the best of our village explainers.”

Iowa regents unanimously approved the request of WOI in Ames to bid on a bankrupt FM station, reports the Iowa State Daily.

Orange County’s Coast Community College District is sounding antsy about delays in its sale of KOCE to the station’s nonprofit arm, judging from the latest Los Angeles Times report. Daystar, the religious broadcaster that bought KERA’s second channel in Dallas and bid unsuccessfully for KOCE, is threatening to sue the college district.

A Maryland state representative says he’ll ask the FCC for a hearing on the pending sale of a Christian station to WYPR-FM in Baltimore, reports AP. Opponents of the transfer say it will leave Frederick, Md., without a locally based Christian station.

The LA Times (subscription required) reports that religious broadcaster Daystar Television Network is has threated to sue over its lost bid for KOCE in Orange County, Calif. “If this were a publicly held corporation, it would be ripe for a lawsuit in which those who control the company are playing favorites with bidders,” comments one legal expert. [Current‘s earlier coverage of the sale.] Dallas pubcaster KERA sold its second TV channel to Daystar, which took control of KDTN last month.

KPBS in San Diego is producing a radio version of California Connected, reports the San Diego Union-Tribune. KPBS and three other California stations already co-produce a TV version of the show.

Iowa State University is planning to acquire a bankrupt FM station that could bring public radio to 44,000 unserved people, reports the Ames Tribune. Iowa regents will consider the purchase Thursday. (More coverage in the Iowa State Daily.)

NPR’s Anne Garrels and a Frontline co-production were among the George Polk award-winners announced yesterday, reports the New York Times (registration required). (Via Romenesko.)

Technology vendors chosen by PBS for its new package of station automation hardware and software were announced today. The optional ACE package for stations includes servers from Omneon Video Networks, scheduling software from BroadView Technologies and other systems from Miranda Technologies. Current described the offer in December.

NPR has closed its Tokyo news bureau and opened another in Hanoi, Vietnam, staffed by reporter Michael Sullivan.