In Washington, D.C., Jennifer Lawson’s successor as g.m. of Howard University’s WHUT-TV is Jefferi K. Lee, a 30-year TV veteran with 17 years at the D.C.-based cable network Black Entertainment Television. Lawson, who was the top program exec at CPB and PBS in the 1980s and ’90s, returned to CPB as program chief early this year. Lee served as BET’s executive v.p. of network operations and programming and in other roles while the cable network expanded to 24 hours, added new channels, built a corporate campus in D.C., and went public on the stock market. Since leaving BET more than a dozen years ago, Lee headed his communications consulting firm, Lee Productions, and, during the homeland security rush, served as chief exec of Bio-Defense Research Group Inc.,

I can’t tell you how glad I am to be here.  Or maybe I can.  Last Friday, after filming in Washington for our new series, I was waiting at Union Station for the train back to New York when a woman about my age approached me with a quizzical look on her face. She asked: “Weren’t you Bill Moyers?” “Once upon a time,” I answered. She said, “I’ll be darned . . . I didn’t think you were still with us.” “Well, I think I am,” I answered.  I guessed that she was a news junkie, so I said: “Maybe you have me confused with other on-air journalists, old-timers like David Brinkley.

PBS International announced today it has signed a multi-year broadcast and distribution agreement with China Educational Television (CETV) in Beijing, part of the country’s ministry of education that operates five TV channels and 11 IPTV channels. It will provide a weekday primetime slot for PBS-branded programming on CETV-3, a series titled Clear View produced and presented by Chinese anchor and producer Jim Fang that will premiere in January 2012. “This is, by far, the largest deal we have done in China,” Tom Koch, PBS International’s vice president, said in a statement. CETV’s distribution arm, Beijing Zhongxian Media, will be PBS International’s sales agent in China for its library of more than 500 hours of documentary, children’s and lifestyle programming.

Bill Moyers, speaking at the American Public Television Fall Marketplace going on this week (Nov. 9-12) in Memphis, today called for a “makeover” of the public broadcasting system, “a rebirth, yes, of vision, imagination, and creativity, but above all a structure and scheme for the 2lst century,” beginning with a weeklong brainstorming convention of station managers, programmers, producers, viewers and other interested parties. “We could even stream it live on every public station website in the country,” he said. Currently, public broadcasting in America is “just hanging on, leaking away, fraying at the margins; scrambling year by year to survive, hoping all the while for what in an era of trillion-dollar deficits and austerity will never be — more and more funding from Congress,” Moyers told the crowd.

The next International Wildlife Film Festival, May 2012 in Missoula, Mont., will honor Nature executive producer Fred Kaufman with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Media. Janet Rose, IWFF festival and executive director, told the Realscreen doc news website, “I cannot think of a more worthy recipient. Nature, the television series, and Fred Kaufman as its driving force and guide, have helped to expose millions of people worldwide to the brilliance and inspiration of nature.”

For the first time, NJTV, the new incarnation of the New Jersey Network, presented a live newscast on Monday (Nov. 7) and also aired live election coverage Tuesday, reports The Associated Press. NJTV general Manager John Servidio said the station has “done the best we can with what we have” and broke into programming to run live several times in the past month, including coverage of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s endorsement of 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and during the October snowstorm. “I think if you look at the first show we aired on July 1 until now, you’ll see a pretty big curve of growth,” Servidio said.

KCET in Los Angeles, the largest independent pubTV station in the country, has revealed the initial lineup of its new original series produced with a $50 million investment from Eyetronics Media & Studios in Encino, Calif. (Current, Aug. 16). All five shows, highlighting life in Southern California, are available for distribution both domestically and internationally. The programs are Ocean Alive with host Jean-Michel Cousteau, in a program that “combines the beauty of Southern California and the glamour of Hollywood with the powerful message of conservation”; Department of State, a public affairs show with a rotating group of global media correspondents; California Game Changers, profiling innovative industries, inventors and their products; Classic Cool Theatre, which draws on Eyetronics’ large library of vintage Hollywood films, beginning with the 1945 film noir classic Detour; and Retrostory, using Eyetronics’ library of historic newsreels for a bi-weekly documentary on social phenomena, influential political and entertainment figures and revolutionary technical advancements of the 1900s.

Four new American Indian radio stations are on the air across northern Minnesota, reports Minnesota Public Radio. The stations, in Callaway, Nett Lake, Cloquet and Cass Lake, all benefited from a new Federal Communications Commission policy that gives tribal entities priority for radio frequencies that cover tribal lands, MPR notes. Loris Ann Taylor, president of Native Public Media, said 90 percent of tribal members nationwide don’t have access to broadband Internet, and about one-third don’t even have basic phone service. The stations “come from different angles,” Taylor says. “There’s not one single template. All the stations will have different needs; it all depends on what’s happening locally and on the ground.”

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS today (Nov. 7) announced the 11 public television stations that will serve as demonstration sites to test math and literacy content developed through Ready To Learn’s Expanded Learning Through Transmedia Content initiative. The project features video, online games, mobile apps and off-line activities using PBS Kids characters. The stations: Detroit Public Television; Iowa Public Television; Eight, Arizona PBS;  KBTC in Tacoma, Wash.; Maryland Public Television; Montana PBS; Vegas PBS; WFSU, Tallahassee, Fla.; WGBY, Springfield, Mass.; WNET/Thirteen, New York City; and Cleveland’s WVIZ/PBS ideastream. The stations will introduce the new Ready To Learn content, funded by the U.S.

A drop in dues-paying members over the last three years has diminished the resources of the Association of Public Television Stations at an especially critical time for the Washington-based lobbying organization. APTS’ membership has fallen to 75 percent of public TV licensees from a high of 85 percent in 2008. With dues from fewer of the 170-some station licensees, APTS is short about $1 million in annual membership revenue and unable to fill several key positions, including vice presidents for government relations and communication and a regulatory counsel, in a year when the recession, anti-deficit worries and political opposition are bearing down on pubcasting funding.

An unexpected intervention from an anonymous lender has saved Salt Lake City’s KCPW-FM from defaulting on a loan, ensuring that it will continue operating for the foreseeable future. Leaders of the news station learned Oct. 25 [2011] that they could borrow up to $250,000 from the anonymous lender, enough to enable them to repay a loan from National Cooperative Bank due Oct. 31. The anonymous lender will give KCPW six months to repay, says Ed Sweeney, KCPW’s g.m. The breakthrough came after a roller-coaster month for KCPW. Sweeney had thought the station was in the clear on Oct. 11, when the Salt Lake City Redevelopment Authority approved a $250,000 loan to the station.

For more than 25 years, we have been studying public television stations and programming, and for all those years we sat on one of the best-kept secrets in the system. We knew that some of the most-viewed programs on public television were locally produced shows, and the responsible stations certainly knew that piece of good news. But local shows don’t show up in the national ratings, and there are very few reliable ways for people outside of those stations to see the numbers. After years of schedule-watching, we began seeing related patterns in the stations’ performance: Many of the stations with very popular local programs were among the broadcasters with the greatest success in viewership, in community partnerships, and in public support.

Here’s a look back over the first year of NewsWorks, WHYY’s ambitious hyperlocal news site for northwest Philly. It was the station’s first attempt at online news, and is powered by around $1.1 million from CPB and $100,000 from the Knight Foundation, in addition to several other foundations. Chris Satullo, the station’s executive director for news and civic dialogue, told the Nieman Journalism Lab that traffic to the site peaked in August, with 301,000 unique visitors and 1.9 million pageviews. And in May, WHYY created a NewsWorks radio show based on the web-based reporting — “maybe a first for public broadcasting,” Satullo said — called NewsWorks Tonight.

American Public Media’s president, Jon McTaggart, won re-election to the NPR Board this summer but won’t be taking the seat after all. McTaggart resigned from the board at NPR’s request after an outside legal analysis determined that his promotion to president of APM and Minnesota Public Radio presented a potential conflict of interest with his service on the NPR Board. Since his first election to the board three years ago, McTaggart had been promoted from chief operating officer to chief exec of American Public Media Group, the parent company of APM/MPR. That put him uniquely and simultaneously on the boards of the two largest producers and distributors of public radio programming.

“Unless we find an angel, our television program will go off the air at the end of its current season,” writes Roger Ebert on his Sun-Times blog. ” There. I’ve said it. Usually in television, people use evasive language. Not me. We’ll be gone. I want to be honest about why this is. We can’t afford to finance it any longer.” He says that since going on the air in January 2011, Ebert Presents At The Movies has been almost entirely funded by he and his his wife, Chaz, plus $25,000 from the Kanbar Charitable Trust. “We can’t afford to support the show any longer.