Oregon Public Broadcasting is a partner in a $554,000 project funded by the National Science Foundation for a three-year computer science camp for middle-school girls, according to the organizer, Pacific University. The camp, dubbed Girls Gather for Computer Science (G2CS), will provide mentors, field trips and beach housing. The funding also goes toward tracking the participants for a decade. A total of 90 girls will attend starting next year. OPB will create video profiles of women computer scientists and interactive games.

Three public broadcasters will head to USC Annenberg’s School of Journalism in Los Angeles next month as part of the annual National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater, the school announced this week. Attending will be: Ian Buckwalter, a theater critic on NPR.org; Elizabeth Kramer, arts and humanities reporter, Louisville Public Media in Kentucky; and Emiko Tamagawa, associate producer, WBUR’s “Here and Now,” Boston. Participants will engage in writing workshops and individual master classes May 17-27.

Pubcasting show Saddle Up With Dennis Brouse is caught up in a tax-credit controversy, reports the DesMoines Register. The director of the state film office, which lures film and TV productions companies to Iowa to generate revenue, was fired last September. He’s charged with official misconduct and goes on trial Friday. The state wants to hold him responsible for approving what the attorney general’s office calls “blatantly false, fraudulent and exaggerated” claims for state tax breaks. The newspaper obtained documents detailing the projects involved, which include Saddle Up. The paper reports that Brouse’s show was awarded the most tax credits of any production in the past two years, some $9.3 million.

Amid all the buzz over the launch of Apple’s iPad last weekend, the free app and specialized website that NPR created for the device are getting lots of attention–and generating lots of downloads. Some 30,000 proud new iPad owners downloaded the NPR app on Saturday, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Apple says it sold more than 300,000 iPads as of Saturday, which means about one of every 10 iPad buyers on day one downloaded the NPR app,” the Journal reports. “We’re excited about this latest innovation because we think it brings us closer to capturing NPR’s unique identity on a digital platform,” blogs Kinsey Wilson, senior v.p.

Round 15 is now open for Digital Distribution Fund grants from CPB. Funding for television transmission facilities, digital translator projects and digital centralcasting projects is available. Stations should note that CPB is now accepting applications only for centralcast master controls that serve more than one station (Current, March 1, 2010).

Barrett Golding, producer of Hearing Voices, describes the ins and outs of public radio distribution in a two-part series for AIRblast, the newsletter of the Association of Independents in Radio. He talks with program directors and other producers about how they use Public Radio Exchange and the Public Radio Satellite Service’s Content Depot. Part I covers the basics–what are PRX and PRSS, and how do they work? Part II examines what types of programs are most likely to be acquired by p.d.s. and how producers are compensated (or not). Richard Paul, an indie producer who sells a lot of programs on PRX, advises his indie colleagues: “Producers should put a value on their show.

Comcast has won an important lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission that may threaten its ambitious broadband agenda, reports the Washington Post. In a unanimous decision (36-page PDF), three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that FCC doesn’t have authority to require Comcast, America’s largest broadband services provider, to treat all Internet traffic equally, a concept known as “net neutrality” (Wikipedia). The judges examined whether the FCC has authority over broadband services, categorized separately from phone, cable television and wireless; the FCC now has only “ancillary authority” over broadband. The ruling says in part: “The Commission may exercise this ‘ancillary’ authority only if it demonstrates that its action .

  Producers for public broadcasting — and developers for its websites — received 14 Peabody Awards, announced March 31, 2010 Regarding websites, the judges honored two in public media: Sesame Street’s (“prodigious adaptability . . . delightfully educational, interactive,” the Peabody announcement said) website NPR’s (“one of the great one-stop websites. And there’s music you can dance to”) website Peabodys went to six PBS programs — double the number won by any other organization: “Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About,” about the great New York choreographer, from WNET/American Masters, produced and directed by Judy Kinberg, with Susan Lacy, e.p.

This paper began with a simple question. A station manager wanted to compare the sizes of her station’s web audience with its radio and television audiences — an apple-to-apples comparison. When she saw the results, her reaction was “OMG, why is that web audience so small?!”

The masterminds of efforts such as NPR’s Bryant Park Project and Chicago Public Radio’s Vocalo know well the difficulties of cultivating new, younger and more diverse audiences for public radio. Now imagine giving it a go in one of the country’s most competitive media markets, Los Angeles. That is the assignment from CPB accepted by L.A. Public Media, a multiplatform service managed by Fresno-based Radio Bilingüe and tailored for younger listeners of color. Imagine further, eight months after taking the assignment and a $2 million grant, there’s still no FM channel to use. LAPM is preparing to launch in July, but probably online instead of on the air.

Paula Kerger wants public TV stations to know that the combination of flat station dues, dwindling resources and balanced budgets may be slowly strangling PBS’s ability to fund new-media innovation. “We can’t continue to go down this path,” the network president told her board March 26 [2010]. PBS’s member stations are strangling, too, and the network probably can’t count on them to contribute more in dues for fiscal year 2011, which starts in July. The board endorsed a balanced budget — to be sent to stations for comment — that relies on no increases in assessments for member services, program services or fundraising programming.The

PBS convened and CPB supported the PBS Quality Group’s evangelism for DTV quality in 2010 and 2011. The group, including tech specialists from stations, series producers and PBS, and consultants, held a series of workshops around the country, and members prepared these articles. Here are PDFs of the pieces published in Current. 1. Maintaining quality You can’t always ‘fix it in post.’ Station engineers, PBS join to identify best practices for DTV system. By Jim Kutzner, PBS. Published April 5, 2010. 2. HD image capture A welter of interacting choices. By Mark Schubin, production engineering consultant. Published May 3, 2010.

The MacArthur Foundation awarded a two-year, $200,000 grant for production of The Moth Radio Hour, a series of live story telling performances that debuted last year. Jake Shapiro, executive director of Public Radio Exchange, recently announced that PRX will begin releasing new episodes for public radio broadcasts next month. “The Moth Radio Hour is the realization of a ten-year long dream to bring The Moth to public radio,” said Lea Thau, executive and creative director of the New York-based nonprofit that stages popular story telling performances. “We have long felt that radio was the perfect medium for our stories to reach a wider audience, and we are grateful to the MacArthur Foundation for making this possible.”

Baltimore’s WEAA has begun piloting the Michael Eric Dyson Show, a midday talk show that is being reincarnated for a second try at pubradio syndication. CPB awarded $505,000 to WEAA last fall to create a new public radio home for Dyson after an earlier production by the African American Public Radio Consortium folded (Current, Oct. 13). After Dyson and the consortium parted ways, the group created a new program last fall, Upfront with Tony Cox, but it has suspended production to raise money, according to the show’s website. Dyson is a Georgetown University sociology professor, author and social critic who frequently appears on television talk shows.

Thanks to PBS’s History Detectives, Andrew Jackson’s mouth will be returned to his head. It’s part of an upcoming episode filmed on the USS Constitution, according to Military.com. Puzzled? Here’s a hint, a quote from the New York Times: “I believe in destiny, and I truly believe that somehow the mouth was meant to be held safe for these many years by the various members of a boating business family.” That should clear things up for you. Anyway, huzzah to the History Detectives team for the important find.