WYES in New Orleans is fretting over how the pending Louisiana Homemade Beer Law will affect its long-running International Beer T asting, a popular fundraiser that features home brews, according to the Times-Picayune. The bill would set limits on how much home-brewed beer can be transported from a household to beer tastings, and make the sale of homemade beer illegal. Randall Feldman, station manager, said he needs to know whether admission charged would be classified as a sale of home brew. Also, he noted, restrictions on amounts can be transported per household would result in a smaller festival. “I have many questions I want to follow up with,” he told the newspaper.

CBC Radio has canned Barbara Budd, co-host of As It Happens — radio that’s too cheeky to be Canadian. She leaves the nightly call-out news program April 30. “I would never, never, ever walk away from a show that I still truly love,” Budd told the Toronto Globe & Mail. As with NPR decisions that led to Bob Edwards’ departure from Morning Edition, the CBC is putting more reportorial folks in hosting jobs, Guy Dixon wrote in the Globe & Mail. “In a general sense, it’s true that with the evolution of the show, we are looking to put more of a focus on hosts who are also journalists,” a CBC spokesman told Dixon.

“New Muslim Cool: Engaging Stakeholders in the Filmmaking Process” is the latest Public Media 2.0 Field Report from the Center for Social Media at American University. The ongoing series of case studies, funded by the Ford Foundation’s Future of Public Media project, focuses on participatory and multiplatform work. “From development to production to distribution and outreach, all stages of this media project are characterized by a strong connection to the community portrayed in the film,” the Muslim hip-hop world, according to the report. Find out the challenges overcome and creative approaches used in the PBS film here (PDF).

Lonna Thompson will serve as interim president and CEO of the Association of Public Television Stations in the wake of Larry Sidman’s departure (Current, March 14). The Board of Trustees approved the appointment effective today. Thompson also will continue in her current role of executive veep and general counsel for APTS.

WPBS in Watertown, N.Y., got a jolt early last Saturday when a car crashed through one of its walls, reports Newzjunky.com, a northern New York news site. Fortunately, no one was inside the station. A 19-year-old was driving by the station at 4:27 a.m. when, he told police, he swerved to avoid a dog. The car veered into oncoming traffic, struck a curb, went airborne and landed in the side of the PBS affiliate’s building. Timothy Ames, director of technology and chief engineer at the station, told Current no word yet on costs to repair the damage. The driver was treated for a leg injury and charged with failure to keep right and driving at an unreasonable speed.

It’s cherry blossom (and pledge) time in Washington, D.C., and WETA is offering an e-card on its website to share a bit of the springtime splendor. The images and music are part of the station’s The Washington Cherry Blossoms: Beauty on the Basin program — available for a $60 pledge, WETA reminds visitors.

Planning to watch Food, Inc., on April 21 on PBS? Great opportunity for a potluck, POV points out. It’s encouraging viewers nationwide to meet, eat and watch the Oscar-nominated doc. Potluck hosts can register for prizes including books, gift cards and sustainable food items (dub those winners “potlucky”). Don’t know what dish to bring? Fear not, there are recipes too. The POV staff is throwing its own potluck next week in the office, sort of a test run for the big event. Simon Kilmurry, POV’s executive director, tells Current he’s bringing cloth napkins to ensure it’s a classy affair.

Famed educator Jaime Escalante, of PBS’s Futures with Jaime Escalante, died early yesterday morning, reports the Associated Press. He was 79. Escalante also appeared in two PBS specials, “Math…Who Needs It?!” and “Living and Working in Space: The Countdown Has Begun.” He received more than 50 awards for his PBS work, including a Peabody. Escalante was portrayed by Edward James Olmos in the 1988 hit film “Stand and Deliver.” In a statement, Olmos said: “The best way to honor the life and work of this great man is to keep it going and I, along with others whose lives he touched, intend to do that.”

The editorial pages of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have become a battleground over the future of WDUQ, the NPR News and jazz station recently offered for sale by Duquesne University. Supporters of WDUQ’s current management, who formed the nonprofit Pittsburgh Public Media to buy the station and preserve its service on 90.5 FM, are fending off a take-over bid by WQED-TV/FM, which has been public about its interest in picking up NPR News programming should PPM fail. “Unless 90.5 FM is taken over by an entity with a financially solid base, such as WQED, I’m worried that the station would not be able to afford the high standards of national and local news programming to which we’ve become accustomed,” William Byham, a WQED board member, editorialized on March 24.

Pubcasters are celebrating lots of George Foster Peabody Awards today. PBS received six — double the amount won by any other organization. Those winners are: “Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About” on American Masters; “The Madoff Affair” on Frontline; two for Independent Lens, “The Order of Myths” and “Between the Folds”; “Endgame” from Masterpiece; and KCET’s “Inventing LA: The Chandlers and their Times.” KCET also scored for “Up in Smoke,” on medical marijuana. Other pubcasting winners: Sesame Street; “The Great Textbook War,” from West Virginia Public Broadcasting; “Hard Times” from Oregon Public Radio; Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson’s coverage of Afghanistan for National Public Radio; WAMU-FM’s The Diane Rehm Show; and NPR.org

Scott Jagow, author of Marketplace‘s Scratch Pad blog since last February, will write his final post today. “The grant paying for my position is running out, and it won’t be renewed. Such are the times,” he explained to readers yesterday. The blog, funded through a CPB initiative for web-based economics coverage, will end. Matt Berger, the new web producer for Marketplace.org, plans to add more contributors, new multimedia features, and updates to the homepage and site design. Jagow, who gave up his job hosting Marketplace Morning Report to create the blog, is off “to new and exciting adventures.”

The critically acclaimed documentary Eyes on the Prize is returning to PBS next month. DVDs will also be available for the first six programs. For years, rights clearance complications had prevented broadcast or video sales of both of Henry Hampton’s famed civil rights history series (Washington Post, Jan. 17, 2005; Current, Nov. 21, 2005). In January 2005, the copyright advocacy organization Downhill Battle initiated its Eyes on the Screen project, “a nationwide campaign to distribute digital versions of Eyes on the Prize — the most important civil rights documentary ever made — and have screenings of it in towns and cities across the US on February 8th at 8PM,” in defiance of copyright laws.

Two years ago New Jersey Network leaders couldn’t get the state to transfer operation of the network to a nonprofit, as Oregon and Hawaii have done, but last week Gov. Chris Christie (R) got behind the move, according to an NJN news release. The proposed state budget for fiscal 2011 calls for the public TV and radio networks to be moved out of the budget by Jan. 1, so it allots only $2 million — half of this year’s state appropriation. Former NJN Executive Director Elizabeth Christopherson couldn’t win the support of former Gov. Jon Corzine (D) or the legislature before she left the job (Current, May 12, 2008).

New Hampshire Public Television is part of a $66 million broadband grant proposal, reports the New Hampshire Business Review. The request is being spearheaded by Network New Hampshire Now, a collaboration led by the University of New Hampshire and the Department of Resources and Economic Development. The proposal to the National Telecommunications & Information Administration’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program would be to fund a “critically needed broadband expansion” in the state. Part of the plan includes construction of a middle-mile microwave network for public safety, pubTV broadcasts, and mobile broadband communications on mountaintops.

Can nonprofit news orgs step up and rescue American journalism? CPB just announced five local journalism centers in one of many efforts nationwide. It’s a grant of some $10.5 million, “with an expectation that each Center will become self-sustaining by the end of the two-year funding period,” according to CPB. But at least one media analyst says, nonprofits just can’t achieve what needs to be done. In fact, Alan D. Mutter, a longtime newspaper editor and adjunct faculty member of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley, titled his blog post today, “Non-profits can’t possibly save the news.”