PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler, the NewsHour‘s Jim Lehrer and NewsHour viewers respond to the recent New York Times column, “Is PBS Still Necessary?” Lehrer tells the New York Observer: “I read that and I said, my god, this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t know where he got his position. But it wasn’t based on any reporting.”

The New York Times reports on what two local stations have done and are doing (here and here) to keep music alive on pubradio.

Three weeks after Baltimore’s WYPR-FM dumped Marc Steiner, fans of the longtime talk-show host are still registering their dissatisfaction. Online hubs of activity include the glitzy Bring Steiner Back and the somewhat humbler Save the Steiner Show. Supporters of Steiner can also sign a petition, buy T-shirts and join a Facebook group. More than 300 Steiner fans attended a meeting of WYPR’s Community Advisory Board Feb. 20 to voice their unhappiness, reports the Baltimore Sun. “Without Marc Steiner, I don’t listen to WYPR,” said one. “I’m not going to renew my membership unless Marc Steiner is back on the air.”

Recent coverage of Sen. John McCain’s conflicts of interest has refocused attention on his role in the attempted sale of WQEX-TV, sister station of Pittsburgh’s WQED, and his ties to lobbyist Vicki Iseman, who was involved in the deal. Iseman was “terrific, very aggressive and very supportive of what we were trying to do,” said WQED President George Miles in a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article. In a defense of McCain published on the Huffington Post, Lanny Davis, WQED’s lobbyist at the time, says “what I wanted Senator McCain to do, he refused to do. And he did so out of a concern of appearances of impropriety.

Todd Mundt, until recently the director of content and media for upstart network Iowa Public Radio, is leaving for the Public Radio Partnership in Louisville, Ky. He’ll serve as director of new media strategies at the Partnership. Donovan Reynolds, president of the three-station network, previously worked with Mundt while head of Michigan Public Media in Ann Arbor.

New Hampshire Public Television is separating from the The University System of New Hampshire, reports the Portsmouth Herald News. USNH will continue to hold NHPTV’s broadcasting license, but the station’s board will take over management of day-to-day operations, including employment. Steps to make NHPTV, which has been part of the university since 1960, a separate nonprofit will take place over the next year. “This change is an opportunity for NHPTV to more nimbly adapt and respond to viewer needs and interests,” said station head Peter A. Frid, “and to provide targeted educational programs, partnerships and services to the greater New Hampshire community.”

“There’s a fundamental difference between paying for radio and paying for a channel on TV,” writes syndicated columnist Ben Grabow. People don’t give money to PBS, he says, because “television, unlike radio, requires a subscription” and viewers don’t want to “pay twice” for a TV connection and content. Not accounting for digital over-the-air signals, Grabow writes, “a new television fresh from the box, unlike its black and white predecessor, offers nothing but fuzz” and “with local stations scaling back the analog signal, [it] all but requires a monthly cable or satellite fee.”

“Public radio and TV has so much wonderful inventory–if I cannot find it, has it any value?” asks Robert Patterson in his blog. Writing from the FASTForward tech conference about “search-driven innovation,” he writes, “I have come to the conclusion that higher levels of search–enabling me to have it my way and to reflect back in real time my preferences to the producers–is going to be key to any system that public media rolls out.”

“This is novel in public radio,” says classical DJ Greg Kostraba about his live, in-studio program on WGTE-FM 91 in Toledo, Ohio. “You have to go to big cities for programs like this,” he tells the Toledo Blade. Kostraba invites local and visiting musicians into a Steinway-equipped studio for the half-hour Live from FM 91, and he recently won a producer-of-the-year award from eTech, a state agency focused on education through technology. 

KMBH-FM in Harlingen, Texas, canceled its February fundraising campaign after receiving only six pledge calls in three days. “[T]his lack of financial support only aggravates our situation and may force us to make drastic changes on our service to the Rio Grande Valley,” KMBH warned visitors to its website. “[T]hose who HAVE NOT GIVEN THEIR FINANCIAL SUPPORT will not have any right to complain when their favorite radio station changes or even vanishes from the air!!!” The station, a joint licensee operated by the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville, has been under scrutiny of the local newspaper for lack of transparency in its governance and financial reporting.

The blog “Stuff White People Like” explains why Caucasians love public radio so much. Be sure to read the comments and follow the link to “Does Anything Make You Feel Instantly Older than Donating to Public Radio?”

Five years after the collapse of the CPB-backed OnCourse project, public TV is training for another run at the target. Which is: a comprehensive online digital library that gives teachers just the right video snippet, image, audio clip or interactive simulation that they can plug into a lesson ...

Listeners are flooding the station with emails, posting angry comments and picketing the studios.

The San Francisco Chronicle profiles Chris Boskin, a member of the CPB Board with a long career in the magazine business. “I would call her a ‘Bay Area Republican,'” says Nick Donatello, chair of KQED’s board. “She’s not at the extreme. But because she has been close to the Washington scene, she knows how the game is played.”

Officials in Montgomery County, Md., have made a pitch to lure NPR to the city of Silver Spring, reports the Gazette. NPR has narrowed its search for 400,000 square feet of office and studio space to Silver Spring and two sites in D.C. The network has said it will choose a location by the end of May.