PBS NewsHour is navigating troubled waters, the New York Times reports. The show’s main corporate underwriter, Chevron, is departing at the end of the year, taking $2 million from NewsHour’s $27 million annual budget; the Knight Foundation, which helped finance the overhaul of the show’s Web site in late 2009, has declined to provide more support. Its political editor, David Chalian, and managing editor for digital news, Maureen Hoch, are both leaving for other positions. MacNeil/Lehrer Productions president and the head of fund-raising and marketing also left for new opportunities. Longtime anchor Jim Lehrer, who stepped away from the weeknight anchor chair in June for a reduced role, may leave permanently in December.

Norman Corwin, a radio writer and producer whose pioneering programs made him one of the most renowned creators of shows during radio’s Golden Age, died Oct. 18 [2011] of natural causes. He was 101. Corwin’s name may be unfamiliar to most people today, but during the 1940s his productions for CBS drew huge audiences and influenced a generation of writers and directors in all media. He wrote on a wide range of subjects in a ringing, poetic tone that had few parallels in its time and would be almost unheard of on today’s airwaves, even in public radio. His most admired works for CBS included On a Note of Triumph, which commemorated the end of World War II in Europe, and We Hold These Truths, a celebration of the Bill of Rights on the document’s 150th anniversary.

How much are simple thank-you calls to donors worth to public television stations nationwide over the course of a year? Potentially, about $4.6 million. That’s one of the bright possibilities emerging from the Contributor Development Partnership, an ambitious effort to identify and disseminate the most effective local fundraising practices. The service, funded by CPB and WGBH (Current, Feb. 7), has been busy all year crunching detailed financial data from 76 participating stations. It will publish its initial findings for stations in its first ROAR — that is, Revenue Opportunity and Action Report —within the next few months. The reports will show the revenue potential for each station, normalizing data where possible to calculate for differences among markets.

PubTV programmers heard welcome details of a long-awaited spinoff of the hit Antiques Roadshow at the National Educational Telecommunications Association Conference in Kansas City, Oct. 18–20. [The reality-TV casting agent behind Jersey Shore is seeking antiques authorities for the roles. See below.] John Wilson, PBS program chief, told attendees that the program, with the working title Market Wars, will debut in spring 2012 under the supervision of Roadshow e.p. Marsha Bemko. Wilson said PBS has ordered 20 episodes initially, “at a very effective production cost per hour.” Programmers have been eager to find a companion show to extend the audience of the Roadshow, which is by far the most-watched PBS series.

In a column in USA Today, GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney vows to “enact deep reductions in the subsidies” for entities including the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with other cuts. “What I propose will not be easy,” he writes. “Washington is full of sacred cows that supposedly can’t be slaughtered and electrified third rails that allegedly can’t be touched. But if we do not act now, the irresistible mathematics of debt will soon lead to unimaginable peril.”

Susan Harmon, a career-long public radio leader and one of Public Radio Capital’s two managing directors, will retire from the position Dec. 31. Ken Ikeda, a relatively new hire and former head of San Francisco’s Bay Area Video Coalition, will succeed her. Marc Hand, who has shared authority with Harmon since founding of the Denver-based nonprofit in 2001, will continue as the other managing director. Harmon’s role has largely involved the organization’s strategic planning, philanthropic support, and investor relations for the Public Radio Fund, a lending source for expansion of public radio. Founded to help public radio expand services by acquiring frequencies, PRC has helped arrange transactions and financing worth more than $270 million in its 10-year life.

Austin City Limits will present a live stream of its Friday night (Nov. 4) show on PBS Facebook — a first for both ACL and PBS. Performing at the new Moody Theater will be electro-pop singer Lykke Li. Fans can tune in online at 9 p.m. Eastern; the program is scheduled for broadcast Jan. 28, 2012.

Connecticut Public Television this month kicks off a 24/7 sports channel running high school, college and other sporting events throughout the state. CPTV Sports will debut on Comcast and Cox cable systems, and expand to over-the-air and additional cable outlets early in 2012, the station said in an announcement (PDF). Coverage will include more than 40 schools and organizations, with mainstream sports (baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer) as well as auto racing, cheerleading championships, and Special Olympics. Future programming brings rugby, softball, cricket and roller derby, along with sports-related shows on topics such as sports medicine. Bob Yalen, formerly with ESPN and ABC Sports, is channel director.

Yahoo News is reporting that it has hired PBS NewsHour’s political editor, David Chalian, as its Washington bureau chief. Chalian came to NewsHour in July 2010 from ABC News, where he won an Emmy for his role in coverage of President Barack Obama’s inauguration. At NewsHour, he directed political coverage across  broadcast and digital platforms, as well as managing editorial content from the program’s congressional, White House, and Supreme Court beats. He also appeared in political webcasts on the Online NewsHour and developed additional digital political content. Chalian will start at Yahoo News on Nov. 14 and report to Will Tacy, executive editor.

Several pubcasting groups are part of the new Future of TV Coalition, just announced by the National Association of Broadcasters, which “unites organizations that have expressed concern that legislative and regulatory initiatives currently under discussion in Washington could jeopardize the future of over-the-air broadcasting.” Pubmedia members include the Center for Asian American Media, MHz Networks, Native American Public Telecommunications, Pacific Islanders in Communications and Vme Media. Vme’s founder and president, Carmen DiRienzo, spoke at the luncheon Tuesday (Nov. 1) announcing the initiative. “Digital television is a huge, free and important part of the digital future,” she said. “Its absence would diminish the amount, quality and diversity of voices, thought and experience that Vme and other networks like it provide.”

NPR announced today (Nov. 2) that Audie Cornish will spend one year as co-host of All Things Considered, as Michele Norris steps down while her husband works for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. Cornish will move from her Weekend Edition Sunday hosting gig to ATC in early January — a spot she recently took over from Liane Hansen, who retired in May. NPR is conducting an internal search for a one-year host for Weekend Edition Sunday. In a note to staff Nov. 1, acting Senior Vice President of News Margaret Low Smith said: “While it was a tough decision to move Audie (albeit temporarily) from a program she has quickly made her own, her skills and experience make her the ideal person to step in.

Bluegrass Underground, the unique public TV show recorded live 333 feet below ground at Cumberland Caverns in McMinnville, Tenn., has caught the attention of  The Associated Press (via Huffington Post). Radio broadcasts from the venue have aired since 2008 on Nashville’s country music stalwart WSM-AM. Now PBS is distributing concerts in HD video and Surround Sound, produced by a partnership of the production company Loblolly Ventures, PBS member station WCTE in Cookeville, Tenn., and Emmy-winning producer Todd Jarrell. The series is recorded in the Volcano Room, a 500-seat venue carved by water over the past 3.5 million years. The series strays somewhat from purist bluegrass, with Season 1 acts including Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, Darrell Scott, 18 South, Mike Farris and the McCrary Sisters, Cherryholmes, Justin Townes Earle, Mountain Heart, Will Hoge, John Cowan, Monte Montgomery and the Farewell Drifters.

As Chicago’s WBEZ works on plans to double its output of original local news programming, proposed scenarios for scaling up production have fueled speculation over the future of its local flagships Eight Forty-Eight and Worldview. Crain’s Chicago Business cited unnamed sources in reporting that Eight Forty-Eight will go on extended production hiatus as its format is reviewed, but WBEZ chief Torey Malatia says those decisions are weeks – and possibly months – down the road. “The idea here is to add hours — not to take away hours,” Malatia tells veteran Chicago media critic Robert Feder. “Over a period of time, we want to add hours and do more live, original talk during the day.