The local president and vice president of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET) have been laid off from Twin Cities Public Television, reports the online news site The Twin Cities Daily Planet. A NABET statement said that in August, after union contracts were renegotiated, TPT announced layoffs of four of 11 NABET employees and at least three IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) members. The NABET workers were on the production crew for Almanac, the station’s weekly pubaffairs program. TPT President Jim Pagliarini said the station was “absolutely not” trying to quash the unions. “We need to free up resources,” Pagliarini said.

With $5 million in backing from San Francisco businessman and investor F. Warren Hellman, KQED and the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism will launch a local nonprofit Web-based news service for San Francisco. “The Bay Area has a voracious appetite for news and is one of the most engaged and community-minded regions in the nation,” Hellman said, when announcing the Bay Area News Project yesterday. “We are confident that this is an ideal place to create a new economic model that will sustain original, local quality journalism, and we believe the Bay Area will step up to support these efforts.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee today approved the Satellite Television Modernization Act of 2009. Among other things, the legislation allows for the importation of signals into markets that lack a network affiliate. Larry Sidman, president of the Association of Public Television Stations, complimented the committee “for acting quickly and wisely on providing a much-needed legislative solution to allow state public television networks to reach all their state residents with important news and public affairs programming.”

Several of PBS’s recent Emmy winners are now streaming online at the PBS Video site. There’s Masterpiece’s “Little Dorrit,” Nova’s “A Walk to Beautiful,” POV’s “Inheritance” and Between the Lions.

Firefighters had to make two trips to extinguish a blaze sparked by a generator at New Hampshire Public Television in Durham, reports The Union Leader in Manchester. The emergency crew had to cut a hole in the roof to put out the fire. The generator had been running for several hours due to a power failure.

Creating short website “documercials” for commercial businesses is a growing way for documentary filmmakers to supplement their income, according to The Independent. The story cites numbers from Kelsey Group, an advertising research firm, that in 2007, small businesses spent $10.9 million on Internet video ads and that’s projected to hit $1.5 billion in 2012. “The trend also focuses on portraying a company’s corporate message in a more sincere format,” it notes. So more companies are turning to docmakers for their unique approach to subjects.

Howard J. Blumenthal, c.e.o. of Philadelphia’s WYBE-TV, has been named interim executive director of the state-owned New Jersey Network and interim president of its fundraising arm, the NJN Foundation. He will keep the WYBE job as well, NJN said in a clarification. NJN has had temporary top execs since the former e.d., Elizabeth Christopherson, took a foundation job last November. Blumenthal is a former media exec and onetime e.p. of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?

Ari Shapiro, NPR justice correspondent for four years, and Emilio Delgado, who’s been “Luis” on Sesame Street for 38, were guest singers with Thomas Lauderdale’s retro mini-orchestra Pink Martini at the Hollywood Bowl Sept. 19. Delgado performed “Sing a Song,” the Carpenters hit by Sesame Street songwriter Joe Raposo, with the band’s vocalist China Forbes (a duet captured in this video recorded at KCRW). And Shapiro’s global singing debut (here on YouTube) is a suaaaave interpretation of what he calls “a big-band swing number.” In an interview with Alex Cohen on L.A.’s KPCC, Shapiro, who sang in college, tells how he fell in with this band.

Philadelphia’s WXPN celebrates Bruce Springsteen’s 60th birthday today with special programming and a tribute concert originating from World Cafe Live, its partner performance venue. Beginning at 10 a.m., Helen Leicht hosts four hours of wall-to-wall Springsteen, and she’s taking requests for Bruce classics and covers here. Leicht also hosts tonight’s event, The Boss’ Birthday Bash, which will feature the Phill-E Street Band performing Springsteen’s seminal 1975 release Born to Run cover to cover. The concert will be broadcast and webcast live from 7:30-10. And for those Bruce fans who just can’t get enough, WXPN has produced a webstream of Springsteen songs covered by Local XPN Artists.

WGBH is suing a North Carolina antiques and collectibles trader for its use of the phrase “The Famous ‘Roadshow’ Tour” to promote its events in the Northeast, according to The Boston Herald. The trademark infringement lawsuit accuses WeBuyTreasure.com of damaging WGBH’s reputation by using what it considers deceptive newspaper ads. It was filed in U.S. District Court in Boston Friday.

Viewers are still talking about Saturday night’s Georgia Music Hall of Fame Awards on Georgia Public Broadcasting: F-word or not? A posthumous tribute to inductee Shakir Stewart of Def Jam was given by members of his family. But as the segment ended, a woman in the groupwas heard yelling as the mics were still open, “Get the [expletive] off me! Don’t touch me!” The Peach Buzz blog in Atlanta said there’s been no explanation for what caused the ruckus, or even confirmation of what exactly was said.

PBS scored the most statuettes of any network at the 30th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards last night in New York. It’s the ninth consecutive year the network has won the most awards. The six went to Frontline, with two; POV (team pictured), NOVA, Bill Moyers Journal and National Geographic’s “Illicit: The Dark Trade.” PBS had 38 nominations, also more than any other broadcast or cable network. A full list of the news and doc winners is at the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences site. On hand to accept POV‘s honor, from left: Exec Director Simon Kilmurry; V.P.

The Ford Foundation has finalized its $1 million grant to the PBS Foundation for the PBS Digital Learning Library (formerly known as EDCAR). The network revealed the grant to attendees at Showcase in May. The money will help create the online repository of pubcasting-created educational content for K-12 teachers and students, such as video, audio, images, games and interactive learning activities designed specifically for classroom use, flowing to teachers through local stations. CPB also will provide content grants to PBS member stations.

Another commercial classical station will join the pubcasting fold under a deal announced yesterday by WGBH. The Boston pubcaster is acquiring WCRB-FM, a 27,000-watt station that draws a weekly audience of some 340,000 listeners, from Nassau Broadcasting Partners of New Jersey. The purchase allows WGBH-FM to shift its music programming to a new channel and go all-news in direct competition with Boston NPR News powerhouse WBUR, the Boston Globe reports this morning. “This lets us save classical music and look at opportunities to expand our journalism and give folks in Boston more of the public radio journalism that they love,’’ WGBH President Jon Abbott tells the Globe.

Indie movie fave Maggie Gyllenhaal will be host of the new season of Independent Lens, premiering Oct. 13. Former hosts include Edie Falco, Angela Bassett, Don Cheadle and Susan Sarandon.