PubForge, a group of veteran web programmers collaborating on open-source tools tailored to the needs of public broadcasters, is conducting a survey to determine what tools and resources programmers and producers need the most. The group’s wiki already offers some applications and invites others to share expertise and collaborate on problem-solving. KJZZ webmaster John Tynan, a PubForge organizer, describes his objective for convening the group here.

Two initiatives led by NPR will soon offer station websites greater automated handling of editorial content and national sales of underwriting to help support those sites.

The Public Radio Exchange announced this week that it received a $250,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to support expansion of its website, creation of unique content and strategic planning. The online marketplace received a MacArthur grant earlier this year to support similar efforts (coverage in Current).

Fifteen pubcasters received CPB grants to support programming about national issues in this year’s elections. The grants are part of the funder’s Station-Based Election Programming Initiative.

Nova’s “The Bible’s Buried Secrets,” scheduled to air Nov. 18 and still in production, is already raising the ire of the conservative Christian American Family Association, whose members have written scores of letters to PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler (scroll down). Apparently prompted by an Orlando Sentinel story that referred to a clip of the program and panel discussion from the summer Television Critics Association press tour, AFA founder Donald E. Wildmon sent out an “action alert” asking his flock to sign “a petition urging Congress to stop using tax dollars to fund PBS.” Wildmon wrote: “The Public Broadcasting System, probably the most liberal network in America, will present a program this fall that says the Old Testament is a bunch of made-up stories that never happened.”

“Sesame Street‘s new website is no ‘Gabba Gabba’,” writes Maria Russo in an Los Angeles Times review. “It pains me to says this as someone who grew up loving PBS–overall, on Noggin and Playhouse Disney, the creativity factor is in another league,” and those networks have “more fun computer games,” she writes, referencing Nick Jr.’s “funkadelic variety show” Yo Gabba Gabba. Sesame‘s game-driven site, which officially launches August 11 (sneak peak here), is hosted by Sesame Workshop instead of PBS, the show’s primary broadcaster, and cost $14 million to develop, according to an earlier New York Times story.

The Commission on Presidential Debates has announced the moderators, schedule and locations for the three presidential debates and one v.p. debate. The Newshour‘s Jim Lehrer will moderate the first presidential debate on Sept. 26 at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss., and Gwen Ifill, Newshour correspondent and Washington Week anchor, will moderate the v.p. debate on Oct. 2 at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. Tom Brokaw and Bob Schieffer will moderate the last two debates in Nashville and Hempstead, N.Y. 

Blair Feulner’s exit from KPCW in Park City, Utah, is the “end of a sleazy era,” writes Salt Lake Tribune columnist Rebecca Walsh. Some online commenters point to “sleaze” elsewhere. The Tribune also reports that KPCW withdrew its late-filed FCC applications to build six new noncommercial stations. “Part of what you’re seeing is the effect that a stronger and more independent board of trustees is having on the direction of Community Wireless,” says Joe Wrona, spokesperson and executive committee member for KCPW’s licensee.

In a brief filed today with the Supreme Court, ABC, CBS and NBC claimed that the legal underpinnings of the landmark Pacifica decision and other content regulation precedents are no longer valid, Broadcasting & Cable reports. The filing is in support of Fox in an indecency case that the Court will hear later this year — the FCC asked the justices to reconsider a lower court’s finding that the commission was wrong to fine Fox for airing curse words uttered during a live awards show broadcast. The FCC wants the justices to consider only narrow legal questions specific to the case, but the networks in their filing urged the Court to broadly examine the legality of broadcast indecency enforcement as a whole.

A devoted Mister Rogers fan has started a campaign to restore daily broadcasts of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood to PBS stations. Brian Linder is protesting the network’s decision to feed episodes of the show on a weekly basis starting next month. “As long as children need to be nurtured, then there is a place for this program because there’s nothing else like it,” Linder tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

NPR and Public Radio International announced yesterday that NPR will acquire Public Interactive, PRI’s web services company. PRI will continue to manage sales and marketing for PI until the end of the year. A memo to NPR stations excerpted on PRPD’s blog said, “Public media’s web capabilities are dramatically under-resourced and clearly, we need to pool resources to develop our collective potential.”

Producer Doug Gordon offers his Modest Proposal for Making Public Radio More Entertaining and invites your comments and ideas on DirectCurrent.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas will replace Sen. Ted Stevens (Alaska) as the GOP’s ranking member on the Commerce Committee, which oversees broadcast legislation, while Stevens is under indictment, TV Week reports. Congress is about to recess for its August break and the party conventions and won’t be back in session until mid-September.

WMUB in Oxford, Ohio, is adopting an all news/talk format next week. The format switch moves longtime evening host Mama Jazz to WMUB Jazz, a 24-hour HD-2 channel and online stream, and clears evening slots for repeats of the Diane Rehm Show and Talk of the Nation. The station invited listener feedback on its Directions blog, where a couple of commenters questioned why WMUB would drop the music programs that differentiated it from Cincinnati’s WVXU, a nearby NPR News station. “By focusing our format, we believe we will increase our ability to attract and retain new listeners as well as serve the great majority of current listeners,” said Cleve Callison, WMUB g.m.,

“The nation’s largest food and beverage companies spent about $1.6 billion in 2006 marketing their products to children [ages 2-17], according to a Federal Trade Commission report released Tuesday,” reports the Washington Post. About 200 million of that went to cross-promotional campaigns using films, TV shows, video games. “The Internet–though far less costly than television–has become a major marketing tool of food companies that target children and adolescents, with more than two-thirds of the 44 companies reporting online, youth-directed activities,” the report said. The FTC recommended that media companies license their characters to healthier food and drinks and that food and beverage marketers expand their efforts to educate kids about healthy choices.