The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has established a Community Lifeline Award (PDF) to recognize pubcasting stations “that have provided exceptionally exemplary service to their communities” during “local emergencies, natural disasters, and other urgent situations.” Any station that receives a Community Service Grant may apply. The station must have provided information and updates in close coordination with government agencies and first responders, presented extensive coverage of the situation, and station staff “demonstrated strong personal commitment” during the crisis through long hours or “calmness under pressure.” The number of recipients of the award will vary; CPB estimates presenting two to three annually.

The Knight Foundation is revamping its Knight News Challenge for 2012, “evolving the challenge to be more nimble and more focused,” it announced Thursday (Feb. 9), with three distinct application rounds. The first concentrates on networks, and ways entities might use existing platforms to drive innovation in media and journalism; applications open Feb. 27 and close March 17. Subsequent rounds will be an open competition, “looking for new ideas broadly,” the foundation said, and a third on a specific topic. First-round winners will be announced in June. The Knight News Challenge is part of  the Foundation’s $100 million Media Innovation Initiative, working to identify new ways to meet community information needs in the digital age.

Contributions and grants to KCET have plunged 41 percent since its departure from PBS membership in January 2011, according to the Los Angeles Times, including corporate as well as individual giving. But the station also received $28.8 million from the sale of its historic studio to the Church of Scientology; the newspaper noted that while the purchase price was $45 million, the station temporarily leased back the property). KCET also “sharply trimmed its spending on programming and production,” the paper said, down 37 percent to $21 million. “We saw an uptick in the fourth quarter 2011,” Al Jerome, the station’s president and chief executive, told the Times in an email.

Joel Kaplan, ombudsman for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, writes in a column Wednesday (Feb. 8) that information redacted from a recent CPB Inspector General’s report on Pittsburgh’s WQED, “is inconsistent with CPB’s pledge of transparency.” Kenneth Konz, the inspector general, conducted an audit of WQED Multimedia, released in December 2011, that determined that because WQED did not comply with certain CPB guidelines for reporting nonfederal financial support, CPB made improper Community Service Grants to the station in excess of $798,000. “If you read the audit report,” Kaplan writes, “you will find that it is filled with redactions about specific monetary expenditures at the heart of the audit report.”

KCET in Los Angeles will premiere several new programs beginning in March, including a four-part original documentary series on caregiving, Your Turn to Care, hosted by actress Holly Robinson Peete. A companion website officially launches Feb. 15, with tips for coping with aging family members from guest experts, including best-selling author Gail Sheehy. Classic Cool Theater premieres March 10, the first project in a $50 million production collaboration with Eyetronics Media & Studios (Current, Aug. 16, 2011). Each episode of the weekly two-hour series will include a retro cartoon, feature film, newsreel, and musical short, each from the 1930s to 1960s.

Elliott Mitchell III, who worked in public broadcasting in Florida, New York and Tennessee, died Feb. 1 in Nashville. He was 67. His obituary in the Paducah (Ky.) Sun said that during his career he produced Today in the Legislature, a statewide program from Florida Public Broadcasting in Tallahassee, as well as At The Top and other music programs at WXXI television in Rochester, N.Y. He was a member of the WPLN-FM community advisory board in Nashville, and a national and regional board member of the Alliance for Community Media, which advocates for Public, Educational and Governmental (PEG) channels. He was also a founding member of the Education Access Corporation, which programs Nashville public-access channels.

Here’s a link to get you caught up on the posts thus far at “The Babes of NPR” on Tumblr, which the New York Observer calls “oddly funny, moderately creepy.” Here’s a typical post on the faces behind the voices: “Sure, Bob Edwards left NPR for XM Radio but how could you stay mad at someone with a hero chin and male model hair? HOT.”

Classical WFMT in Chicago is conducting an experiment with its third annual in-studio Immersion Day on Feb. 11, said Steve Robinson, e.v.p. for radio and project development. The popular event, where fans pay $150 to attend a daylong seminar on a specific aspect of classical music, mingle and share lunch, this time also will be streamed live. Henry Fogel, former president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and a leading expert on opera singers, will discuss how those vocal performances have changed over the past 100 years. Participants attending the seminar will receive full access to the stream, which will be archived online for a year, Robinson told Current.

Mike deGruy, an acclaimed cinematographer with a love of the sea who created several Nature documentaries on PBS, was killed in a helicopter crash in Australia on Feb. 4. He was 60. His employer, National Geographic, said that deGruy and Australian television writer-producer Andrew Wight crashed after takeoff near Nowra, 97 miles north of Sydney. Australia’s ABC News reported that Wight was piloting the helicopter. Fred Kaufman, executive director of Nature at WNET in New York City, told Current that he still remembers his first meeting with deGruy. “Twenty years ago, when I became the executive producer of Nature, Mike’s film, Incredible Suckers was my first commission,” he said, “and I learned something very valuable from my initial conversation with Mike — bring your ‘A’ game because Mike was smart, persuasive and quick.

The late Margaret Cargill, whose Anne Ray Charitable Trust backed last year’s PBS Fall Arts Festival with an $800,000 donation, was the most generous philanthropic donor in America in 2011, according to this year’s Philanthropy 50 list from the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The top 50 donors gave a total of $10.4 billion in 2011, up from $3.3 billion the previous year, according to the Chronicle study. Cargill’s $6 billion bequest created the surge; although she died in 2006, her foundations weren’t able to liquidate her assets until last year, the Chronicle noted. Here is the entire list, and information about how the 12th annual research project was conducted.

Turns out the inhabitants of Downton Abbey watched the Superbowl on Sunday, too. Well, the Super-Proper Bowl, at least. Check it out on YouTube.

The World Channel is announcing its first open call for content, in advance of a new long-form documentary series premiering later this year focusing on “stories of unique and diverse Americans,” it said Monday (Feb. 6). Liz Cheng, World g.m., said the series will run films that “explore individuals, issues and ideas not often seen on mainstream television.” Deadline is March 1; more information here.

The 14 employees at WDSC-TV at Daytona State College must reapply for their positions, which are being eliminated June 30, reports the Daytona Beach, Fla., News Journal. A plan for the station that will be presented to the college’s board of trustees this month contains only six or seven staff positions. “Employees are encouraged to apply not only there but to any other opening they may be interested in at the college,” said Tomas LoBasso, s.v.p. of student development and institutional effectiveness. College President Carol Eaton said state and federal budget cuts have prompted the restructuring, and that the station probably would cut back on local programs and instead acquire more shows.

KIXE-TV in Redding, Calif., received 32 applications for general manager and will interview eight candidates by phone, according to the local Record Searchlight newspaper, to select two or three for in-person interviews. Mike Quinn, station interim g.m. since last August, has applied for the job.

WAMU-FM in Washington, D.C., will soon move to a much bigger home. Licensee American University has purchased a 96,000-square-foot building for the pubradio station and its Bluegrass Country operation. “A first-class radio station depends on great staff and an appropriately-sized and outfitted facility,” WAMU General Manager Caryn G. Mathes said in the announcement. “We have the staff, and now, thanks to American University, we will have the facility.” WAMU, housed in a 23,000-square-foot space since 1993, should be broadcasting from the Connecticut Avenue building early in 2013. The station will use about half the total space, with the remainder for other university purposes.