Idaho’s Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee is recommending that Idaho Public Television receive a boost in state support over the governor’s recommendation, mainly for equipment replacement, according to the Spokesman-Review. Gov. Butch Otter had recommended a 2.6 percent hike in state funding in next year’s budget, to $1.6 million. IPTV’s request was for a 78.2 percent rise to $2.8 million. The legislature’s Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee on Tuesday approved a 9.8 percent increase to $1.7 million. Included is funding to replace $34,000 worth of failed, 22-year-old equipment that has knocked out service to the communities of Challis, Salmon and Leadore, the newspaper noted.

When the board of Iowa Public Radio voted to remove Mary Grace Herrington as c.e.o. Feb. 25, the directors were responding to mounting evidence of declining staff morale at the state network. Dissension over Herrington’s leadership was sparked at least in part by her decision to fire a popular news director last year. The sole “no” in the IPR board’s 6-1 vote was cast by a newly appointed director who was attending his first meeting. Herrington had been chief executive since 2009, leading IPR through a signal expansion and format differentiation that created two distinct public radio channels for Iowans. She had previously served as assistant vice president for advancement operations at Creighton University.

This item has been updated and reposted. CPB on Monday sent a memo to public broadcasting stations detailing the 5 percent sequester of its $445 million 2013 appropriation. “Reflecting our continued concern about the potential for additional budget actions in FY 2013,” CPB President Pat Harrison told pubcasting executives, CPB will base this fiscal year’s second Community Service Grant payments on an appropriation level of $421.415 million, which will incorporate a recalculation of the first CSG payment at $421.415 million. CSGs should be ready by April 1, she added. By statute, Harrison said, the 5 percent cut will be allocated across all CPB functions (numbers  rounded): System support, a total $26.7 million appropriation, will receive a $1.33 million cut; administration, $22.3 million, drops $1.11 million; television station grants, $222.8 million, drops $11.1 million; television programming, $74.3 million, drops $3.7 million; radio station grants, $69.3 million, drops $3.5 million; radio programming acquisition grants, $22.8 million, drops $1.1 million; and radio programming, $6.9 million, drops $347,000.

Greg Schnirring, vice president for radio at CPB, is a finalist for the executive director/general manager post at Iowa Public Television, the Des Moines Register reports. Also vying for the job is Molly Phillips, currently IPTV’s director of communications and community engagement. The IPTV Board will interview the candidates Friday, the report said. Dan Miller, e.d. and g.m. since July 2002, has been with the station for 37 years. He announced his retirement in December 2012 to focus on his health, after receiving a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, according to the Register.

Puppeteer Kevin Clash, who resigned his Sesame Street role as Elmo after multiple charges of sexual impropriety surfaced last year, is seeking to have the charges dropped, according to The Wrap, an entertainment news site. An attorney for Clash filed papers in U.S. District Court in New York on Friday. Clash contends the three lawsuits against him should be dropped because the statute of limitations on the allegations has expired.

The New York Times is quoting unnamed pubTV employees who say that PBS is close to a decision on adding weekend broadcasts of PBS NewsHour for the first time since the show began in 1975. The programs would be produced at WNET in New York City instead of longtime presenting station WETA in Arlington, Va., the report said. The NewsHour employees also told the Times that program producer MacNeil-Lehrer Productions is facing a shortfall of up to $7 million this fiscal year from what had been a $28 million budget. In the proposed deal, PBS would provide $3 million to WNET to produce the weekend shows.

CPB is losing 5 percent of its $445 million appropriation for 2013 due to the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration, according to a memo released by the White House on Friday. The corporation had received previous estimates of either 5.1 percent or 5.3 percent cuts, and is carefully considering how it handles Community Service Grant disbursements to stations. Last November, the Office of Management and Budget told CPB officials that sequestration would reduce its appropriation by 8.2 percent, so CPB tucked 10 percent into 90-day CDs in preparation for cutbacks.

Taking too long to confer 501(c)3 status to startup nonprofit news organizations not only undervalues journalism but also has stymied new approaches to community journalism when they are needed most, according to a report released today by the Nonprofit Working Group of the Council on Foundations. The group was created by the Council on Foundations with a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to study the impact of the IRS’s recent approach to granting nonprofit status to media organizations. The report cites the IRS’s “antiquated” methods of granting tax-exempt status as hobbling efforts to create new media outlets.

During a conference at the U.S. Institute of Peace Feb. 28, the makers of human rights documentaries discussed the techniques and challenges of using modern technology to gain a following for a cause.

The White House has sent two nominations to the Senate for confirmation for openings on the CPB Board, it announced Wednesday. President Barack Obama has nominated Maryland educator Jannette Lake Dates to replace former Board Chair Ernest Wilson, whose term expired in 2010; and put forth Los Angeles attorney Bruce Ramer for a second term. Ramer left the board in 2012.

The fourth season of the Minnesota Public Radio-produced St. Paul variety show Wits, which piloted as an MPR-only broadcast, will be the first debuting in national distribution. All MPR News stations carry the show, as well as “more than a dozen” other stations, according to MPR spokesperson Tara Schlosser. The season premiere, featuring Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me! panelist Paula Poundstone and rock musician Robyn Hitchcock, will tape March 15 at the Fitzgerald Theater — the regular home of Wits as well as A Prairie Home Companion — and be released for broadcast March 22.

George H. Rogers Jr., who worked as development and community relations director at WCET-TV in Cincinnati in the early years of the station, died Dec. 27 at his home in suburban Florence, Ky. His death at age 83 followed a three-year battle with lung cancer. Rogers started at the station, now branded as CET, almost 50 years ago. In 1972, CPB honored him for his work in promotion and development. His daughter Mary Clair Smoot, of Lexington, Ky., told the Cincinnati Enquirer that during her father’s years at WCET, “we eight kids were all enlisted to help ‘rubber stamp’ thousands of envelopes for mass mailings.”