An agreement between NPR and Triton Digital, a provider of digital services to radio stations, will give NPR stations a new option for measuring and monetizing online audiences while also allowing the network to access analytics and metrics for all participating stations. The master agreement between NPR and Triton, announced March 27, provides two services to stations: Webcast Metrics, which measures listening to live streams, and Ad Injector, a system that replaces on-air underwriting credits with online sponsorship credits. “They’re independent products, but the idea is that they can work hand in hand,” says Bob Kempf, v.p. of NPR Digital Services.

CPB is evaluating proposals from six regional journalism hubs for another year of operation and will furnish the centers with a shared set of best practices to follow if they receive additional funding. The guidelines will be designed to address challenges that the seven Local Journalism Centers have encountered during their two years of growth, such as negotiating editorial control and finding paths toward financial sustainability. Launched in 2010 with $10.5 million in CPB funding, the LJCs brought public broadcasters together in regional collaborations to report on focused areas of coverage, such as agriculture, border issues and health care. With the hubs entering their third year of operation, CPB hired a consultant to review which LJCs have succeeded, which have struggled and which factors have made the difference.

The FCC’s tentative agenda for its April 27 public meeting includes several items of interest to public broadcasters. The commission will consider a report and order establishing a regulatory framework for channel sharing among TV licensees. Stations face the option of relinquishing some spectrum and sharing a 6 MHz channel  — possibly pairing commercial and noncom broadcasters — as part of the upcoming spectrum auction and subsequent repacking (Current, Feb. 28). Also on the agenda is consideration of a notice of proposed rulemaking inviting public comment on allowing non-CPB grantees “to conduct on-air fundraising activities that interrupt regular programming for the benefit of third-party non-profit organizations.”

The Media Access Project, a public-interest law firm focused on media issues, announced last week that it will close its doors May 1 due to a lack of funds. Raising funds for public-interest groups has become more challenging, said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, MAP’s senior v.p., and the firm’s “sophisticated, inside-the-Beltway” work is a hard sell for supporters. MAP had recently lost support from Open Society Foundations, the philanthropic organization established by liberal financier George Soros. Founded in 1973, the Washington, D.C.-based firm has added its voice to debates over diversity in media ownership, the FCC’s creation of its low-power FM service, net neutrality and other issues.

Philanthropists in California and New York contributed separate gifts of $1 million to two public TV shows last month. With her six-figure contribution to the Masterpiece Trust, Darlene Shiley of San Diego made the largest gift to date to the fund, established in January 2011. Shiley, one of the first donors to the trust, made a gift of $250,000 last year. Her $1 million contribution was made on behalf of her and her late husband Donald and will be split with KPBS in San Diego. The Masterpiece Trust allows major donors to directly support the Masterpiece strand of British drama programs on PBS while designating part of the gift to their local station.

WTCI plans to launch a new multicast channel of local programming with seed funding from the city of Chattanooga. The Voyager channel will carry live coverage of civic events, such as city-council meetings throughout the region and issue-focused town hall events. It will also feature a new weekly series on arts and culture. Local documentaries and WTCI’s own five weekly series would also get additional plays on the channel. Content will be accessible across multiple platforms and promoted via social media. The station requested $250,000 from the Chattanooga City Council to develop the channel and solicit support from foundations and corporate sponsors, according to Paul Grove, WTCI president.

For its foray into e-book publishing, Public Radio International chose “Teacher Redesign,” in which a New York design firm created a branding campaign on behalf of the nation’s educators, and adapted it for Apple’s iPad. The iBook features 32 pages of content adapted from the Studio 360 episode, produced as part of its ongoing series on graphic design and cultural symbolism. With its strong visual elements, the program was naturally suited for the iPad, according to Peter Edstrom, a project manager for PRI. “Our core content is audio, but we’re continuing to experiment with different ways to get PRI content out to people.”

PBS is seeking a 2 percent increase in membership fees in its draft budget for fiscal 2013. Although still subject to review by station execs and formal approval by the PBS Board, the proposed dues hike would be the first since fiscal 2009. “A key focus of this budget is the performance of critical maintenance on PBS’s technology infrastructure that is necessary to maintain reliable distribution of content to stations,” PBS spokesperson Jan McNamara told Current in a statement. “The majority of station dues [are] dedicated to content. This will continue to be the case in the coming fiscal year. In order to retain the system’s investment in content, key infrastructure issues must be addressed in FY13.”

A Flagstaff, Ariz., man who told members of the Navajo Nation that he could help them launch a public radio station has been indicted by federal authorities on 18 criminal charges (PDF) including theft, wire fraud and money laundering, reports the Arizona Republic. John Pegram Bittner allegedly used more than $100,000 meant for radio equipment on trips, legal and medical expenses, and child-support payments. In 2007, when Alfreda Beartrack, a health-care administrator for the Navajo in Shiprock, N.M., heard that the FCC was opening a window for noncommercial educational FM licenses (Current, June 25, 2007), she looked for someone with technical expertise to help launch a station.

Do motivational speaker Wayne Dyer’s pledge programs violate PBS’s Editorial Standards and Policies to provide “nonsectarian” content? “My sense is that they do,” writes PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler. “PBS feels strongly that they do not.” In a PBS online promo for Dyer’s latest, Wishes Fulfilled, he is identified as a “beloved spiritual teacher.” Getler writes that in 2009, in connection with a dispute involving five local stations (Current, April 13, 2009), the PBS Board defined sectarian content as “programming that advocates a particular religion or religious point of view.” There is no definition of “nonsectarian” in PBS editorial standards adopted in June 2011, Gelter notes.

NPR is one of 10 news organizations that filed an objection Thursday (April 5) to plans by the Pentagon to close a hearing next week on alleged mistreatment of a detainee by the CIA. The Miami Herald, one of the signatories to the 15-page letter, posted the document online. The objection focuses on the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, allegedly involved in the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors. In a hearing set for April 11 at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, al-Nashiri’s attorneys plan to argue that he shouldn’t be shackled while interviewed because it would remind him of trauma he experienced while in CIA custody.

Members of the Maine Legislature’s Appropriations Committee late last night (April 5) unanimously rejected a proposal from Gov. Paul LePage to eliminate all $1.7 million in fiscal 2013 state funding for the Maine Public Broadcasting Network by July 1, the network reports. Republican Sen. Roger Katz of Augusta proposed an amendment, unanimously adopted, that directs the state to work with MPBN to determine costs for its emergency alert system, and requests reports from MPBN on its future plans and on how MPBN may use its bandwidth to provide other fee-based services to the state. “A plan whereby over the next five years,” Katz said, “the appropriation which is provided by the state to MPBN would gradually be reduced and replaced by fee-for-service contracts to be agreed to by the parties for the kinds of services I was just talking about.”

This week, host Jim Nayder is marking the 20th anniversary his show, Magnificent Obsession: True Stories of Recovery, on Chicago pubstation WBEZ-FM. Each 30-minute weekly episode presents an individual’s personal battle with addiction, in his or her own words, writes Time Out Chicago media critic Bob Feder. The program grew out of interviews Nayder conducted years ago during marketing work he did to supplement his radio income, for a suburban hospital’s new chemical dependency unit. “I thought writing notes might be distracting, and, being in radio, decided I would simply record the conversations on a little cassette,” he said.

Variety reports that This American Life host Ira Glass — along with actor Owen Wilson and Veronica Mars showrunner Rob Thomas — is developing and executive-producing an HBO drama series. The project, tentatively titled Thrillsville, will be a fictionalized adaptation of “Midlife Cowboy,” a TAL segment that originally aired March 12, 2010. That segment told the true story of James Spring, a meth smuggler turned advertising copywriter who, right before his 40th birthday, attempted to rescue two young girls kidnapped by Mexican drug traffickers and smuggled to Baja California. Glass will be joined by Alissa Shipp, a producer who handles TV and film rights and development for TAL, as a fellow executive producer on the HBO show.

KBTC, public TV in Tacoma, Wash., is partnering with that state’s public affairs cable channel, TVW, on a weekly book discussion and author interview show, Well Read, that premiered this week. For each 30-minute episode, host Terry Tazioli, a former editor with the Seattle Times, talks to local writers and then chats with Mary Ann Gwinn, book editor at the Times. First up for its premiere April 3 was Kent Hartman of Portland, author of The Wrecking Crew, which tells the story of a group of Los Angeles musicians who weren’t credited for performances on hundreds of Top 40 hits in the 1960s and early ’70s.