Woodward A. (Woody) Wickham, 66,  a strong supporter of independent documentary films and public media producers, died of cancer Jan. 18 [2009] at his home in Chicago. In more than a dozen years at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 1990 to 2003, Wickham helped support such projects as Kartemquin Films’ documentary Hoop Dreams, the Creative Commons alternative to copyrights, and Dave Isay’s StoryCorps, for which Wickham was the founding board chair. With MacArthur’s money, Wickham was a consistent supporter of P.O.V. and Frontline, local media arts centers and Kartemquin, says Alyce Myatt, who worked with him at the foundation.

The Public Radio Tuner has a big fan in blogger Wade Roush, chief correspondent at Xconomy. “Since my commute to work is a disappointingly short 12 minutes—and I often bike or walk—I only hear infrequent, short snippets of [NPR] shows,” he writes. He says he was “ecstatic” when he recently found the app. Now, “I just turn on the Public Radio Tuner, pull up my favorite local station [WBUR] and listen to my heart’s content over my phone’s 3G data connection.”

NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard examines the roles Juan Williams plays on both her network and Fox News, where he recently said Michelle Obama “has this Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going” (YouTube video). His comments prompted several dozen angry e-mails to NPR. Such criticism of Williams may arise because the “news analyst” (his title at NPR) “tends to speak one way on NPR and another on Fox,” Shepard writes. Managers in NPR’s newsroom spoke with Williams after his comments on the First Lady, Shepard says, and network news veep Ellen Weiss asked the commentator to request that Fox no longer identify him as an “NPR News Political Analyst.”

The Maine Public Broadcasting Network has backed down from its plan to save money by cutting off three broadcast towers in rural areas, reports the Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel. Listeners had complained, and a state legislator is sponsoring a bill that would cut state funding for MPBN if the network reduces its reach. MPBN President Jim Dowe said he does not yet know how the network will offset the expense.

The FCC has denied about a quarter of TV station requests to stop analog broadcasts on Feb. 17, the original DTV transition date. All denials were of commercial stations. The primary issue in turning them down, according to an FCC statement (PDF), was “to ensure that viewers relying on over-the-air television do not lose access to local news, public affairs and emergency information.” Of 491 station requests, 368 will be allowed. Of those, more than 100 will keep running analog transmitters for at least two weeks past Feb. 17 for DTV education and emergency information. According to FCC filings, a total of 138 pubTV stations either went to digital early or are planning to on Feb.

With a looming deadline to make a $175 million bond payment, Sirius XM Satellite Radio is negotiating a possible deal with Direct TV, the nation’s leading satellite TV service, according to the Los Angeles Times. The bonds are held by EchoStar satellite company, which has been buying Sirius XM’s debt since December. Sirius XM, which has $3.25 billion in total debt, may also file for bankruptcy protection, the New York Times reported yesterday.

Michael Davis has some juicy tidbits in an interview with CNN from his book, “Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street.” He says Joe Raposo and Jeff Moss, who wrote the show’s songs, were locked in an intense creative competition. In fact, he writes, Raposo “fairly seethed with envy” when Moss’ “Rubber Duckie” became a Top-20 hit. Davis also says that producer Jon Stone was “the Orson Welles of ‘Sesame Street.’ … Without him, the show wouldn’t have been what it became.”

WSKG-TV in Vestal, N.Y., is extending its winter pledge drive, reports the Press & Sun-Bulletin. Last week’s drive was two-thirds off its goal. Fewer than 250 new or lapsed members signed on, from a goal of 700. Last year, the one-day drive took in nearly $72,000; last week, just $42,000, down some 42 percent. Last year the station went to a one-day pledge format in response to viewers calling for less on-air fundraising. The station met its goal for that previous drive, drawing around 600 new and former members.

Revenue shortfalls and reliance on subsidies aren’t a new trend for public radio stations, writes pubradio marketing consultant John Sutton. He questions the research behind CPB’s recent study on the financial troubles of pubcasting outlets, and says that CPB could have taken steps to address this problem years ago. “Asking the government to help financially strapped stations this year might be the only way to keep those stations from going dark or losing their local identity, as is happening to WMUB in Ohio,” Sutton writes. “But becoming more reliant on subsidies is not a long-term solution.”

The Senate has just passed the economic stimulus package, with money for broadband cut from $9 billion to $7 billion, reports Broadcasting & Cable. Next up, the House and Senate bills must be conferenced to reconcile differences.

Former CPB board member Cheryl F. Halpern is mentioned in the Feb. 9 Washington Post story, “Bush faithful rewarded with jobs.” The article details how former President George Bush made more than 100 appointments to various important boards and panels at the end of his presidency, many of them rewarding close aides and top political supporters. Halpern, identified in the story as a “major GOP donor,” landed on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

The indie doc Made in L.A., which ran on PBS’ POV in 2007, “demonstrates successful community engagement in every stage of a media project – from fundraising and development to outreach and distribution,” writes American University’s Center for Social Media in its blog. The post provides an in-depth examination of the project, from funding (the filmmakers raised money through four house parties and a concert) and early development through obstacles and, ultimately, awards.

Some PBS viewers were concerned that the recent NOVA episode “The Spy Factory,” which details the National Security Agency’s intelligence gathering methods, provided secret or sensitive information to would-be terrorists, writes PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler, who praises the film for “[capturing] the extraordinary frustration among some of those in government” who observed how U.S. intelligence agencies–the CIA, FBI and NSA–failed to communicate with each other and connect the dots prior to the 9/11 attacks.  Getler includes viewer letters and a reply from NOVA execs: “Neither the producers nor NOVA sought any access to classified information, nor did the program reveal any classified information.

A profile of Nashville Public TV President Beth Curley in The Tennessean highlights her investment in local productions and NPT‘s popularity among viewers. “Perhaps best known to many Nashvillians for her on-air appearances during pledge drives, Curly can come across as a bit buttoned-up in the fitted blazers she throws on for such appearances. But she knows how to cut loose, too. The mother two adult sons keeps a hula-hoop in her office closet and likes to belly dance. She’s also known to play a mean game of Scrabble. And she doesn’t like to lose. An avid knitter, she’s often working her needles and yarn during business meetings.”

Slate media critic Jack Schafer lays out the case against proposals to save the Washington Post and the New York Times by converting them to nonprofit endowed journalism organizations, and NPR President Vivian Schiller joins the fray to point to NPR’s example. “We are the living, breathing prototype” of an endowed news organization that others are “imagining to be revolutionary,” she writes. “Shafer worries that an organization with an endowment and board means there’s no one to yell at. Fear not – we get yelled at just as much as every other news organization.”