The Washington Post charts public TV’s worrisome financial decline.

The FCC has adopted rules for digital “plug and play” cable compatibility, which will allow viewers to plug their cable directly into their digital TV sets without the need for a set-top box. (PDF.)

Torey Malatia, president of Chicago Public Radio, chats tonight at 8 pm Eastern Time on the website of the Association of Independents in Radio.

The bad news: Public radio is a small part of a rapidly expanding nonprofit sector. Competition with other nonprofits for mind-share and donor support will intensify. Moreover, public radio lacks the financial transparency that donors increasingly expect.

Scott Simon and Mara Liasson made remarks that some journalists and colleagues thought went too far.

Fundraisers got an outsiders’ view of pubradio from a former insider at the Public Radio Development and Marketing Conference, July 10 [2003], in Snowbird, Utah. This article is adapted from remarks by longtime public broadcaster Robert G. Ottenhoff, president of GuideStar, a leading source of information for monitoring the performance of nonprofits of all kinds. Ottenhoff founded Newark’s WBGO-FM, served as executive director of the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority and then became chief operating officer of PBS. I was asked to come here today and give you an outsider’s perspective on public radio. I’m an avid listener of public radio.

Discovery Communications plans to expand delivery of its media content to schools through its acquisition of United Learning, a major partner with public TV stations in delivering streamed instructional content to schools.

“From the very moment the troops came in on the ground it was clear not enough thought had gone into what would happen when the war was over,” says NPR’s Anne Garrels about Iraq in the Buffalo News. (Via Romenesko.)

Want to know who owns a station or cable company? The Center for Public Integrity, an investigative outfit in Washington, D.C., has put 65,000 scraps of FCC info into a searchable database at openairwaves.org. Data on commercial stations is extensive, on public stations incomplete.

Record label honchos salivate over PBS’s upcoming musical extravaganza, Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues, in a Billboard wire story. “If the films convey the excitement and the intensity of emotion of blues, then people will want the music,” says Bruce Iglauer, owner of Chicago-based label Alligator Records.

The FCC has released its notice of proposed rule making for the digital conversion of low-power TV stations, translators and booster stations. The commission announced the proposal at its Aug. 6 meeting (PDF). The agency also extended the filing deadline by a month for comments on an interference study of low-power FM. NPR and IAAIS had asked for 90 days. [Coverage in Current.]

The performing rights organization SESAC will use a new “digital fingerprinting technology” to keep tabs on which of its artists are being played on college and other noncommercial radio stations, reports Radio World.

Bill Moyers discusses the Bush administration’s environmental record in the online mag Grist: “You have to go all the way back to the crony capitalism of the Harding administration to find a president who invited such open and crass exploitation of the common wealth.”

Isothermal Community College in Spindale, N.C., will hold on to noncommercial station WNCW-FM, reports The Greenville News.

Members of the Association of Independents in Radio recently discussed the Public Radio Exchange at length with PRX‘s executive director, Jake Shapiro.