The Al Jazeera Network, which broadcasts news in Arabic and English, has signed on to provide daily content to WLIW’s Worldfocus. All Al Jazeera content will run with its logo on the screen.

Layoffs and budget woes in the pubcasting system have “negatively impacted the quality of news and public discourse in the country,” the Writers Guild of America, East, told President-elect Obama’s transition team in a meeting last week. Its members write and produce for such shows as Frontline, Nova, Nature, Great Performances, American Masters, American Experience, Sesame Street and The Electric Company.

A summary from the House Appropriations Committee of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009, a.k.a. the stimulus package, proposes $650 million in additional funds for the DTV converter box program and $6 billion in broadband and wireless grants to reach underserved areas. Broadcasting & Cable has the details.

Hundreds of pubcasters at the NETA conference plus two elevator outages equals close quarters. With half of the four hotel lifts temporarily shut on Jan. 15, many attendees are finding themselves, well, getting to know each other very well. As one pubcaster quipped in a stuffed ‘vator, “This is the typical office layout of a public television station.” Judging from the hearty guffaws, fellow riders were in agreeance.

SoundExchange and CPB finally have an agreement on Internet performance royalties to be paid to artists and copyright holders. The agreement sets royalties to be paid by CPB for the noncomm pubradio system for streaming music on their websites from Jan. 1, 2005, through Dec. 31, 2010. The pact covers some 450 pubradio webcasters, including CPB-supported stations, NPR, NPR members, NFCBroadcasters members, APM, Public Radio Exchange and PRI. Details on the Broadcast Law Blog.

The FCC on Jan. 15 approved the analog nightlight program, which allows stations time after the DTV transition to keep analog signals for DTV educational and community emergency messages. The rule applies to 310 of the 1,749 stations making the DTV transition; they must prove the nightlight won’t cause more than 0.1 percent of interference to digital stations. Stations can still apply to be included.

Forget station budget woes and towers falling over and that pesky, moving-target DTV transition. Let’s talk awards. On Jan. 15 at the NETA conference, 23 pubcasters received 39 trophies for 2008 program production, promotion, outreach, and instructional media. Special recognition — “The Best of the Best” — went to two stations, OETA in Oklahoma City for its Gallery: The People’s Art (program production) and WETA in Arlington, Va., for The War (outreach).

Leaders of CPB, PBS and APTS related both pubcasting challenges and victories Jan. 15 to a crowded ballroom at the NETA conference, ongoing in Tampa. First, the good news: PBS head Paula Kerger said some 44 percent of pubTV website traffic now consists of visitors 35 or younger. After years of talking about how to lure the younger audience, “we’ve got them. Now we need to figure out how to draw them in, get them even more involved,” she said. In Capitol Hill news, APTS will be visiting lawmakers in the next week or two to lobby for pubcasting’s economic stimulus requests.

A Washington Post analysis piece on the probable next FCC head Julius Genachowski says that President-elect Barack Obama’s choice may signal increased focus on new Internet technologies for the regulatory agency.

Penn State Public Broadcasting is exploring taking underwriting into an additional and creative direction: Multiplatform opportunities. In a Jan. 14 session at the ongoing NETA conference in Tampa, Greg Petersen, WPSU director of programming services, said there may be room for underwriting spots on, say, streaming video or archived clips on the Internet. One attractive aspect is that Internet content doesn’t have noncomm restrictions, so the spots can actually suggest that viewers visit underwriters — more of a true ad. Petersen envisions, for instance, a spot before a video clip saying it’s sponsored by an underwriter. When pubcasters ponder multicasting, Petersen added, it takes “not thinking outside the box but thinking completely differently.”

Pubcasters brought many questions and nearly as many suggestions for handling the DTV transition to NETA’s Jan. 14 session on the topic. Stations are struggling with the possible date shift and wondering, will they be required to remain in analog until that later date? An NTIA rep said legislation is still pending so it’s impossible to know. What if the station advises a viewer to purchase equipment that ultimately doesn’t work, is there a liability issue? Hard to say. More liability issues include station staff entering viewers’ home to fix reception problems. WKNO in Memphis is partnering with a local senior volunteer organization that has the necessary insurance; those volunteers are being trained to do the fixes.

A spokesman for San Francisco’s KQED-TV/FM confirmed the gist of a Jan. 10 blog report about imminent lay-offs at the station but denied that they would be the largest in station history, as reported by BNET media analyst and former KQED exec David Weir. KQED is “seeing declines and looking to the future of how do we preserve what we have with integrity and all of that, but no decisions have been made,” said Scott Walton, communications director. Layoffs are “not necessarily coming from radio or tv production,” but will probably “a few here and around the building,” he said.

“If we were starting out today as public service media,” said David Liroff, “universal broadband would be our distribution method of choice.” Liroff, former CPB sr. v.p. and longtime pubmedia analyst, opened this week’s NETA conference Jan. 13 in Tampa with his keynote speech. He discussed how universal broadband will affect pubmedia for better and worse, and what role the industry should play during development of the nationwide high-speed network. It’s absolutely necessary for stations to get involved at the state level during planning for increased broadband access, he contends, because pubmedia “needs to ensure that the public interest is served” in broadband decisions.

Jim Lehrer will conduct an extended interview with outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney about his past eight years in office tomorrow night on The NewsHour. Anne Bell, public relations manager, says producers expect the interview to be at least 20 minutes long. 

A fire destroyed the programming, business and development offices of WNIT-TV on Sunday, but the broadcast facilities in a separate building were not affected. No staff members were injured and the station remains on the air. See a photo and updates on the station’s website. The cause of the fire remains undetermined.