An April Fool’s Day joke, or a quirky tribute to a famous pubcasting painter? You decide. On Thursday, the Gallery Bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side is hosting “Beat the Devil Out of It!: A Bob Ross Tribute.” As the notice says, “Grab a paintbrush and prepare to make some happy little trees.” There’s a Bob Ross lookalike contest, and a performance by the Titanium White Hot Dancers, a, ahem, “Ross–themed dance troupe.” Costumes are strongly encouraged, so be sure to bring your Afro wig.

Llewellyn King, exec producer and host of White House Chronicle on PBS, is fuming over President Barack Obama’s choice of reporters to call on at his recent press conference. “Excuse me, but I am a potted plant,” King writes. “Well, at best an extra, who has been sent over by Central Casting to fill in the numbers.” The problem: Most reporters, King included, “wave our arms in the hope we might be recognized towards the end of a long, rambling session that seems more like the press secretary chatting with his pals who have seats assigned in the front.” His show airs on some 20 stations nationwide.

CPB ombudsman Ken A. Bode writes in his Ombudsman’s Mailbag column about several viewer concerns. Issues include commentator Gwen Ifill’s “unfortunate appearance of a conflict,” as Bode put it, in moderating a presidential debate while her book The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama was just hitting the shelves. Also, complaints arrived on Bill Moyers’ Biblical interpretation of the Book of Deuteronomy that included the statement, “God soaked violence became genetically coded” among Jews. Bode also said his next column will be an analysis of two PBS documentaries about politics.

KUAR/KLRE in Little Rock, Ark., tells this sweet, good-news story about an elderly couple who helped fund the pubradio stations’ move to a new tower and transmitter site. Minnie and Layne Carson donated in honor of her sister, Mary Matthews, who was an avid newspaper reader until she lost her sight. “She took to her recliner and listening to KUAR,” Minnie Carson said. “She was up on everything, national and international,” Carson said, adding that NPR was a “lifesaver” for Matthews.”There is no doubt in my mind that it would have been a difficult time for her if it were not for KUAR.”

Virginia pubcasters statewide are no doubt relieved that Gov. Tim Kaine said Monday he will issue a line-item veto for the $1 million cut for public broadcasting that the legislature wanted, reports The Virginian-Pilot. The governor will, however, leave intact his original reduction of $640,000 for 2009-10. For one station, WHRO in Hampton Roads, the move will restore $200,000 in state funding, station president Bert Schmidt said. “It’s a good day,” he added.

The White House nominated Lawrence E. Strickling to head the Commerce Department’s NTIA, the agency that administers annual rounds of PTFP matching grants to help pubcasters buy equipment. He and Julius Genachowski, the nominee for FCC chair, are both friends of the Obamas from Chicago, the Washington Post pointed out. Both Strickling and Genachowski graduated from Harvard Law and went to the FCC, Strickling as chief of the Common Carrier Bureau and Genachowski as chief counsel. Before serving as policy coordinator in the Obama campaign, he worked at three telecom companies, most recently the optical fiber service provider Broadwing Communications.

PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer has signed a major new corporate underwriter, Intel Corp., through the rest of 2009. As part of the deal, NewsHour staffers will help plan and moderate several small meetings on national issues and a larger conference on innovation this year, says spokesman Rob Flynn. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the program will thank Intel with a 30-second underwriting credit and a short mention at the other end of the show, plus short mentions on Tuesday and Thursday. The NewsHour also has underwriting from Chevron Corp., Grant Thornton LLC accounting and consulting, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and more than a dozen other foundations.

How bad is the economy? So bad that treats for PBS board members are disappearing. At the meeting today in Arlington, Va., Chairman John Porter quipped to the board, “Symbolic of the careful work being done on the budget, there will be no snacks at break time. We’re doing every single thing to make certain the budget is as tight as possible.” Board members didn’t go hungry, as lunch was indeed provided. Also announced at the meeting, good news for stations: PBS dues will remain at fiscal 2009 levels for FY10.

The Huffington Post has unveiled details of its expansion into investigative journalism. With an initial budget of $1.75 million, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund will hire 10 staff journalists who will coordinate stories with freelancers. Work produced by the investigative team will be available for any publication or website to use at the same time it is posted on the Huffington Post, said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief. The Atlantic Philanthropies and other unnamed donors backed the venture. In its report on the HuffPo’s new unit, Poynter’s E-media Tidbits points to other nonprofit and philantrophic efforts to produce investigative reporting, including OhmyNews.com

That brouhaha over a proposed NPR pledge drive? It’s based on outdated assumptions about the potential for pubradio growth, according to marketing consultant John Sutton. “The industry is losing money each year by not allowing NPR to raise money directly from listeners,” he writes emphatically on RadioSutton. “We know from past research that listeners to two stations will support both stations and give average or above average gifts. They have room in their budgets to do both. Even now. Even in this economy….The issue here shouldn’t be whether or not NPR should be allowed to raise money directly from listeners.

Jessica Clark, author of a a recent white paper on public media, shares thoughts on the future of public broadcasting in an interview at MediaShift Idea Lab. One point: “‘Legacy media’ is top-down, one-to-many media: print, television, radio, even static web pages. We’re advancing a more dynamic, relevant definition of public media — one that’s participatory, focused on informing and mobilizing publics around shared issues.”

“Investments are not a sport, not a game, not entertainment,” says NBR co-anchor Susie Gharib, echoing the mantra of the most resolutely serious and uncool business program on television.

PBS station paid dues are running about 4 percent behind last year at this date, network CFO Barbara Landes told the board at today’s meeting in Arlington, Va. As of Friday, figures were down 4 percent compared with this same time last year. That’s actually an improvement since January, when dues were down 8 percent compared with January 2008. Landes said PBS had been “tracking closely” the payment of dues, for both timeliness and amount. “Any threat to the flow of dollars has significant implications for PBS as well as producers,” she added. Landes reiterated that PBS does not waive dues or late fees for stations.

Thanks to the June arrival of the Sands Casino Resort in the industrial Lehigh Valley in east central Pennsylvania, the region can expect the opening of a shiny new public TV station as well.

The nation’s nonprofits are in serious trouble, according to a report released today by the Nonprofit Finance Fund. It’s a survey of 986 nonprofits in markets across the country. Among the troubling findings: 31 percent don’t have enough cash to cover more that one month of expenses; 12 percent expect to operate above break-even this year; 16 percent think they’ll be able to cover operating expenses in 2009 and ’10; 52 percent expect the recession to have a long-term or permanent negative financial effect on their organization. This link offers both a summary and another link to the full PDF report.