WGBH is instituting a one-week staff furlough, cuts in executive salaries and suspension of employee retirement matching funds in an attempt to ease a projected $3 million budget gap for fiscal 2009, according to the Boston Business Journal. CEO Jon Abbott announced the moves in a memo to employees Thursday. He’s also asking members of the unions at the pubTV and radio stations, the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians and the Association of the Employees of Educational Foundation, to agree to a furlough; those savings would exceed $500,000. All all vice presidents are taking a 5 percent pay cut.

Next week PBS stations should begin receiving requests for input for the network’s Dues Review Task Force. John King, the task force chair, reported at this week’s PBS board meeting there will be a new dues model for the 2011 fiscal year. “The principle focus of meetings now is to define the purpose, scope and principles of the review,” he told the board. The group is examining dues models used by other organizations as well as PBS. The next face-to-face meeting will be June 7, probably in Washington. Public comments will be allowed. King realizes the tough job ahead. “Any time you look at dues for PBS it’s always tricky,” he told Current.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, a popular host of PBS’ Nova, says the humans must do something about the approaching asteroid Apophis. “I don’t want to be the laughing stock of the galaxy and go extinct as a species because we didn’t do something about it,” he said at the 25th National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs this week. The massive asteroid is predicted to pass between the Earth and communication satellites on April 13, 2029. (That’s a Friday, by the way.) Tyson received the Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award at the confab.

PBS newsman Jim Lehrer, out on tour for his latest novel, Oh Johnny, paused for a question and answer session with The Sacramento Bee. How has he found time to write 19 novels, two memoirs, two screenplays and three stage plays? “It goes back to when I had a heart attack 25 years ago. I was recovering and the doctor said, ‘You ought to prioritize the rest of your time.’ So I did. By not doing the things I don’t want to do, I have plenty of time to do the things I do want to do.”

Oprah Winfrey is confirmed as the first guest on the Michael Eric Dyson Show launching April 6 on public radio stations in 18 markets. Dr. Dyson, an author, academic and social commentator who previously hosted a talk show syndicated by Radio One, said his public radio series will deal with “several topics about which I care deeply–politics, religion, economic policy, arts and culture.” The African American Public Radio Consortium, which partnered with NPR to create The Tavis Smiley Show, News and Notes and Tell Me More, teamed up with WEAA in Baltimore to produce the one-hour series, airing weekdays.

PBS ombudsman Michael Getler’s latest column is up. An interview with Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Now on PBS prompted much of the viewer feedback. Arpaio is sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona, which borders Mexico. In the show critics accused him of racial profiling.

NPR Labs will do additional research to determine how much broadcasters should increase power to increase the reach of digital HD Radio signals without unduly interfering with analog FM reception. The study, funded by CPB, would be completed in time for the NAB Radio Show in Philadelphia Sept. 23-25. NPR Labs said last fall that boosting HD Radio power tenfold, as proposed by major commercial radio groups, would have significant costs in listening quality in certain geographical areas. The earlier study found that 41 percent of pubradio stations could no longer be heard on one-third or more of the car radios they can now reach.

Bonnie Erbe, host of To the Contrary on PBS, is drawing attention with her U.S. News & World Report blog post titled, “In a Recession, Abortions are Not a Bad Choice.”

John McCoskey, PBS’ chief technology officer, spoke with TV Technology about ongoing financial and DTV challenges, as well as the upcoming PBS Technology Conference. PBS’s continuing goal for stations, McCoskey says, “is to have normal workflows [that] require little human interaction, freeing-up staff to focus on things that need expertise and decision-making.” He cited the NOC staff in Springfield, Va., that is remotely managing station operations for some members, “so they can run unattended for several hours a day to reduce operational costs.”

In a first move toward reforming the Universal Service Fund, leaders of the the House Energy & Commerce Committee are requesting information on the program from FCC Chairman Michael Copps. Telecom firms pay into the fund to support rural communications services. Word on the Hill is there’s support on both sides of the aisle for the committee’s work on the issue. One idea: Extend the fund to cover broadband access.

Pubcasters swept the radio category in the Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards, presented yesterday by one of the nation’s top journalism organizations. Receiving the certificate was “36 Years of Solitary: Murder, Death and Injustice at Angola,” by NPR’s Laura Sullivan, Amy Walters and Steven Drummond on All Things Considered. It was praised by the judges as a “chilling tale of injustice” told in a “graceful and compelling way.” The piece was an in-depth look at the 1972 murder of a prison guard. Finalists in the category: “Natural Gas Drilling: Is New York Ready?” by WNYC’s Ilya Marritz, Abrahm Lustgarten, Andrea Bernstein and Karen Frillmann; “Dirty Money” by NPR’s John Burnett, Marisa Penaloza and Quinn O’Toole; and “Witnesses Wait” by PRI’s Ingrid Lobet.

“I think we gave people kind of a way to sit with the information, like a perspective,” says NPR’s Adam Davidson in describing the narrative approach behind “Giant Pool of Money,” the award-winning This American Life documentary that delivered the first, definitive explanation of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. “You know, we’re kind of shocked or sometimes angry. We’re often confused, but we can figure it out.” Revealing the journalists’ “process of discovery,” Davidson says in this video interview by the Neiman Journalism Lab, strengthened the credibility of the documentary. “[B]ecause it’s closer to the actual truth, and it’s closer to the world that our audience experiences on a day-to-day basis.”

Comcast has announced that PBS programs now will be available through its On Demand service, in HD. Included will be Antiques Roadshow, Nova, Masterpiece, American Experience, History Detectives and Frontline. On Demand allows viewers to play, pause, rewind and fast forward shows.

Here’s some good news on the funding front: The more than 75,000 grantmaking foundations in America increased their giving 2.8 percent in 2008 to an estimated $45.6 billion, according to the Foundation Center‘s new report, Foundation Growth and Giving Estimates: Current Outlook. Findings suggest that this year foundation giving will decrease in the range of the high single digits to low double digits, despite estimated foundation assets declining 21.9 percent in 2008. The report also says corporate foundation giving held steady at $4.4 billion last year. (Entire PDF report here.)

“Giant Pool of Money,” the ground-breaking story on the sub-prime mortgage crisis that was jointly reported by NPR’s Adam Davidson and This American Life‘s Alex Blumberg, is one of nine pubcasting recipients of 2008 Peabody Awards announced this morning. NPR won two additional Peabodys: one for its exclusive coverage of the earthquake that devastated China’s Sichuan province last May and another for a three-part series by Laura Sullivan that questioned the guilt of two inmates in Louisiana’s Angola prison. Six Peabody-winning programs were presented on PBS, which topped all other media organizations (including HBO) in collecting the most Peabody medals for programs aired in 2008.