Despite some impressive social-media cheerleading by several worthy competitors, the winner of KPCC’s Public Radio Brackets is This American Life. More than participants 50,000 chose their fave programs and as one commenter noted, “This was the toughest decision I ever had to make as a voter.”

Many broadcasters may be in for “unpleasant repacking surprises” following the FCC’s upcoming spectrum auctions, writes Washington, D.C., telecom lawyer Michael Berg on the TVNewsCheck media site. Stations on channels below 31 think they won’t be moved or reconfigured, but this will vary by market, he writes. And a station can be repacked even it it remains on its current channel. “It is important for television broadcasters to be aware of ongoing developments, and not to assume prematurely that repacking won’t affect your station,” Berg notes.

Facing a $400,000 funding shortfall, Maine Public Broadcasting Network said Friday it will lay off up to 12 percent of its workforce and put a locally produced show on hiatus.

Pledge results reported by public TV stations from recently concluded on-air fundraisers were down 20 percent to 25 percent from the March 2012 drive, according to Kristen Kuebler, director of station research for Arizona-based TRAC Media. For most stations, the March fund drive is typically the biggest of the year, and revenues generated from it influence budgeting for the next fiscal year. Stations reported to TRAC and PBS that audience response to the latest pledge shows was tepid at best. The top-performing show among TRAC’s client stations was Magic Moments: The Best of ’50s Pop, a program that was first released for public TV broadcasts in 2005.

Radio for the deaf,” a captioning technology developed and refined through an NPR Labs partnership, is moving into mainstream broadcasting with Latino USA

Google released updates to its Google Currents news-curation app March 20, including enhanced audio capabilities, and Minnesota-based American Public Media is taking advantage of them. The free app, currently available on Android platforms, has a structure similar to those offered by other digital news curators such as Flipboard and Pulse. Users subscribe to feeds from news outlets that appear as simple RSS lists or, if the provider has signed a licensing agreement with Google, as enhanced magazine-style content. Its latest updates include audio playlists and media bars with options to pause and skip tracks. More than 10 million users have installed Currents since its December 2011 launch.

Louisville Public Media topped its $4,000 Kickstarter campaign goal for Unbound, its new short fiction series, six days ahead of schedule. As of 4 p.m. April 3, the Kickstarter project had secured pledges totaling $4,153 from 141 backers. The campaign will conclude on April 8, so could secure additional pledges before it winds down. The first 10-episode season of Unbound is budgeted at cost $9,000. LPM sought $4,000 from Kickstarter backers and the remaining $5,000 from a sponsorship deal with Spalding University in Louisville. Unbound will feature short stories read by authors Frank Bill (“Crimes in Southern Indiana,” “Donnybrook”), Gwenda Bond (“Blackwood”), Holly Goddard Jones (“Girl Trouble”), Neela Vaswani (“Where the Long Grass Bends,” “Same Sun Here”), Silas House (“Eli the Good”), Matt Bell (“In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods”), Roxane Gay (“Ayiti”) and Kyle Minor (“In the Devil’s Territory”) LPM operates Louisville’s three public radio stations: NPR news/talk station WFPL, Triple A music WFPK and classical WUOL.

Susie Hernandez, a past president of the Public Television Programmers Association, has accepted a newly created position at KQED in San Francisco as associate program director. Hernandez will work under veteran pubTV programmer Scott Dwyer. Most recently she was television program director at Arizona Public Media in Tucson, and previously worked at Independent Television Service in San Francisco in several capacities, including as director of broadcast for more than a decade. Hernandez begins work May 1.

TED, the nonprofit behind the high-profile conferences about ideas in technology, entertainment and design (as well as NPR’s new weekend series), and WNET will co-produce TED’s first original television show this spring. TED Talks Education will tape before a live audience Thursday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The New York City station is partnering with PBS and CPB for the hourlong program of short talks by education advocates on the theme of teaching and learning. TED Talks Education will air nationally May 7 on PBS as part of CPB’s American Graduate high-school dropout initiative. Musician John Legend will host.

Peter Sagal, host of NPR's Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me! and PBS's upcoming Constitution USA, makes an appearance on the latest episode of comedian Marc Maron's WTF interview podcast, posted April 3.