Maryland Public Television can thank the Baltimore Ravens this week for helping the station win a supply of sourdough breads and chocolate. The station laid some local cuisine on the line with San Francisco’s KQED as part of a friendly wager leading up to the Feb. 3 Super Bowl match between the Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers. If Baltimore won, KQED promised to ship the bread and chocolate to MPT. If San Francisco won, MPT would send crab cakes and Bergers cookies, a Balmer fave, across the country. But despite a second-half comeback attempt from the 49ers, the birds emerged victorious, 34-31, and KQED remained true to its word.

KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., has struck the opening chords for The Organist, a monthly arts-and-culture podcast from McSweeney’s. The program is the latest collaboration between the station and the irreverent San Francisco–based publishing house, founded in 1998 by acclaimed author and screenwriter Dave Eggers. Produced by the editors of the McSweeney’s-published culture magazine The Believer, The Organist will produce 10 hourlong episodes per year covering a wide gamut of pop culture, with the help of some famous voices. The inaugural episode launched Feb. 1. The Organist will function solely as a podcast for now as it builds an audience, with KCRW providing financial support and acting as executive producers and distributors, according to Harriet Ells, the station’s program director for arts and culture programming.

Frontline and the nonprofit investigative newsroom California Watch each won George Polk Awards, the prestigious journalism honors presented annually by Long Island University. Correspondent Martin Smith and producer Michael Kirk of the pubTV investigative icon series won for coverage of “Money, Power and Wall Street.” The judges said, “In blunt, first-hand accounts, viewers were given an unprecedented look inside key decisions that affected the lives of ordinary people around the country and a play-by-play road map of what ultimately would shatter the global economy.” Assisting Smith and Kirk were producers Marcela Gaviria, Mike Wiser and Jim Gilmore. Reporter Ryan Gabrielson of California Watch won for his “Broken Shield” series, for what the judges called his “dogged persistence in exposing how California’s Office of Protective Services does an abysmal job of curbing abuse at state clinics.”

Downton Abbey Executive Producer Gareth Neame tells Entertainment Weekly that PBS’s decision to delay the season opener of Masterpiece Classic hit from September, when it airs in England, to January is “unrealistic” — yet “sensible and pragmatic.” (Here’s the interview, with this spoiler alert warning: If you haven’t yet watched the Season 3 finale that aired Sunday, back away now because he talks about it in detail.) Here’s what Neame specifically said about PBS’s scheduling decision, which is still being debated at headquarters in Crystal City: “[T]the idea that in this day and age people have to wait four months before watching a show that has aired in another part of the world is clearly unrealistic.

The elections supervisor for the boards of Pacifica’s five radio stations has recommended that the network revamp its process for selecting board members because the current system is “too costly, time consuming, factionalized and factionalizing.” In a report on the latest round of elections, which concluded in January several months behind schedule, Pacifica National Elections Supervisor Terry Bouricius described numerous flaws in a process that’s been in effect for nearly a decade. Pacifica’s elections favor “ego-driven individuals,” he wrote, and bring in votes from roughly 10 percent of the total membership of the five stations. The small percentage of those who do vote are likely not representative of the whole.

The Pacifica National Board passed a resolution barring individuals who have clashed with the network’s leadership from election to the boards of its five stations, a move that critics decried as a political witch hunt. The resolution, which passed Jan. 24 by a vote of 11–10, denies seats on Local Station Boards to three classes of people: “Individuals whose actions have been declared by a court of law to be breaches of fiduciary duty, or breaches of the duty of loyalty or the duty of care;” “Individuals who have been separated involuntarily from foundation employment for cause;” and “Individuals who have been banned from station premises due to threatening behavior or creating an unsafe environment for others.”

Maryland’s Salisbury University  is backing away from a consultant’s plan to farm out operations of its two Delmarva Public Radio stations. A proposal unveiled Feb. 14 would provide funding to WSDL in Ocean City, Md., and WSCL in Salisbury for at least three years. The proposal calls for the Salisbury University Foundation, Delmarva Public Radio’s license holder, to transfer the license to the school, said Salisbury University President Janet Dudley-Eshbach in a statement.  Salisbury would maintain current operations  for three years,  but would require that WSCL and WSDL hew even closer to the school’s agenda. At the end of three years, the university would reassess the situation.

Wendy Levy, the director of arts consultancy group New Arts AXIS, called for documentary filmmakers to embrace big data tools as a permanent part of their storytelling process during the keynote address at the Media That Matters Conference, held Feb. 15 in Washington, D.C.

PBS’s pending decision on whether to air the next season of Downton Abbey on Masterpiece in the fall — when it runs in Great Britain — or keep it at its usual January premiere date continues to generate chatter among media analysts. Last month, PBS President Paula Kerger told members of the press at the TCA Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif.,  that the network is indeed considering a fall launch. “We’re going to end up making the decision based on what we think will be best for the viewers and what will serve them well,” Kerger said. But if PBS did premiere Downton in the fall, it could be lost among all the other network shows, notes SNL Kagan, a news site that covers media/communications and other sectors.

Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, a documentary developed with pubcasting support, will have its theatrical release April 5, presented by BET Networks. The 2012 film marks the 40th anniversary of social activist Angela Davis’s acquittal on charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy in connection with a botched kidnapping attempt. Film funders included Independent Television Service, BET and CPB. Director Shola Lynch previously worked as a visual researcher and associate producer for Ken Burns and Florentine Films before her 2004 debut documentary, Chisolm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed. Free Angela is distributed by Codeblack Films, a division of Lionsgate, and will open in select AMC theatres in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C.,

Dana Davis Rehm, NPR’s senior v.p. of marketing, communications and external relations, will leave the network May 6 due to a reorganization of her division under new Chief Marketing Officer Emma Carrasco. The restructuring is intended to “put more emphasis on marketing than on communications,” said NPR President Gary Knell in a Feb. 14 email to station leaders. “Though I have only known Dana for a little more than one year, I can’t think of anyone who has demonstrated a deeper commitment to NPR and public radio, or who better reflects our values,” Knell wrote. “As our longest serving head of Marketing & Communications, she has established effective communications strategies and practices and a built a staff that has given me confidence that we could deal with anything that might come our way.”

The author of The Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey died in January 2010 after living for more than 50 years as a recluse in Cornish, N.H. Shortly after news of his death emerged, Hollywood screenwriter Shane Salerno announced he had been covertly working on Salinger, an independent documentary probing the author’s sheltered existence. Susan Lacy, American Masters executive producer, learned of Salerno’s film while attempting to procure the rights to an unrelated Salinger biography for the program. Salerno — whose screenplay credits include Alien vs. Predator: Requiem and Oliver Stone’s Savages — agreed to produce his film for American Masters after Lacy contacted him.

Latitude News, an online news outlet exploring world events and their reverberating effects in local U.S. communities and vice versa,  surpassed the fundraising goal of its Kickstarter campaign to launch a new podcast. As of Feb. 14, 307 backers had pledged $46,200 towards a goal of $44,250. The newsroom currently produces an eponymous monthly 15-minute podcast distributed by Public Radio Exchange; it now will expand its output by introducing “The Local Global Mashup Show,” a weekly 30-minute podcast. Latitude News will use its Kickstarter contributions to fund the first three months of the program and hire a business development staffer to develop a paid subscription model for the podcast.