Public TV’s lobbying group signed on to the Open Mobile Video Coalition, a consortium of broadcast station groups working to establish a mobile DTV standard, Broadcasting & Cable reports. MPH (Mobile-Pedestrian-Handheld), by Harris/LG, and Advanced-VSB, from Samsung/Rohde & Schwarz, are technologies competing to become the mobile DTV standard, which would allow broadcasters to use their DTV spectrum to beam content to mobile and handheld devices.

When Lynn Neary interviewed filmmaker Michael Moore on Monday’s Talk of the Nation, NPR Internet strategist Andy Carvin shot the interview on video and wrote about it on his personal blog. An edited version of the video and Carvin’s behind-the-scenes blog entry is posted on Blog of the Nation. More video is also available on You Tube. “So we have air, web and video all combined and all open,” writes blogger and NPR consultant Robert Paterson. He described the production as a “bit of history.”

At Mountain Lake Public Broadcasting in upstate New York, Alice Recore put $1.2 million into reinforcing and preparing WCFE’s 30-year-old tower for the DTV age. Across the continent at KSPS in Spokane, Wash., Bob Wyatt assiduously maintained and upgraded the station’s 40-year-old tower. But that wasn’t enough in either case. Both towers suffered catastrophic collapses within the past year, at costs that are still mounting. Theoretically, towers don’t have to fail. “If a tower is properly maintained, correctly loaded and meets today’s engineering standards, its life cycle should be unlimited,” says Jean-Alain Lecordier, P.E., co-founder of Tower Consultants Inc. (TCI). But those are big “ifs.”

V-me, the Spanish-language multicast channel launched in February in parternship with public television (WNET New York), is broadcasting this weekend from the National Council of La Raza’s annual conference in Miami, Fla. Viva Voz, V-me’s nightly public affairs program, will air three episodes from the event, including coverage of keynote speeches and interviews with national Latino leaders.

American Public Media Group, parent of Minnesota Public Radio, is negotiating to buy WGTS-FM, a noncommercial station in the Washington, D.C., area, MPR’s newsroom reported yesterday. APMG would launch a station focusing on “global government issues,” said President Bill Kling, noting that APMG had a good track record from its stewardship of KPCC, a Los Angeles-area station it has managed for several years. The Washington Times, citing unnamed sources, said the price could be around $25 million. The station, which now airs Christian contemporary music, is owned by a small, financially pinched Seventh-day Adventist school, Columbia Union College, here in leafy Takoma Park, Md.

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced nominees for the news and documentary Emmy Awards today in New York. Public broadcasting led with with 22 program nominations, including work by Frontline, The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, P.O.V., NOVA and American Experience. Last week, NATAS announced nominations for news and documentary programs made for specifically for broadband. The website for the PBS documentary series Frontline/World (pbs.org/frontlineworld) tied with washingtonpost.com for the top spot–each had four nominations. Awards in news and documentary will be presented on September 24th.

In his July 13 column, PBS ombudsman Michael Getler discusses a recent episode of History Detectives that some viewers felt strayed unnecessarily into political waters. The episode investigated the history of a post-Civil War photograph that showed white soldiers and black soldiers standing shoulder-to-shoulder. “As the program pointed out,” says Getler, “in Reconstruction-era America, such associations were frequently taboo.” The investigation was followed by a commentary from another “detective” about the historical struggle for veterans’ benefits. This discussion turned to John Kerry’s activism against the Vietnam War and, eventually, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group the commentator described as “funded by a wealthy Republican campaign donor [and that] smeared Kerry’s military record and possibly cost him the election.”

PBS announced that Ken Burns now has a place of his own in Apple’s iTunes online media store. Viewers can buy and download Burns’ documentaries and related music, audiobooks and podcasts. Also at the summer press tour, PBS said it has scheduled African American Lives 2 for February, hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and tracing the ancestry of Maya Angelou, Dave Chapelle, Morgan Freeman, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and one “ordinary individual,” yet to be announced. PBS also announced that pubTV’s new digital multicast channel, PBS World, will launch nationally Aug. 15.

Ken Burns told TV critics yesterday that 28 minutes of footage about Hispanic and Native American soldiers is being added to The War, AP reported. Material about two Latinos will appear before final credits at the ends of episodes 1 and 6 and about an Indian solider at the end of episode 5. “It doesn’t alter the vision of the film that we made and completed a year and a half ago,” he said. But adding the material at the ends of episodes may draw complaints from Latino leaders who had already objected to tacked-on heroes. Antonio Morales of the American GI Forum did not object in a statement: “The two Latino Marines who are part of the documentary ‘The War’ represent the honor and patriotism of all Hispanic-Americans,” he said.

The results from Round 2 of the Public Radio Talent Quest were announced yesterday. Three finalists eliminated from the competition were Bee Jellyfish, Carrie Kaufman and Komal Trivedi. The People’s Choice winner from Round 2 is Rebecca Watson, the contestant who also received the ranked highest rankings among PRTQ online voters in Round 1.

In a recent column, PBS ombudsman Michael Getler says his mailbag was slammed with letters from disconcerted viewers on the eve of July 4th. Many were in a tizzy that the “Capitol Fourth” telecast went off the air before the fireworks finale was over. One viewer wrote, “Who made the decision to run credits and leave the air before the Grand Finale of the Washington, DC, 4th of July fireworks display? Is he or she still employed by PBS?” Others wondered whether the extravaganza’s religious content belonged on PBS. “My fiance and I turned on the Capitol 4th PBS special to enjoy a celebration of what has made America great – our diversity,” wrote one viewer.

Round 2 voting on the Public Radio Talent Quest finalists ends tomorrow, July 10, at midnight Eastern time. Online votes and assessments of the PRTQ judges determine which seven candidates move on to the next phase of the contest.

“What we are looking at is really being an old-style, progressive rock station,” said Chris Wienk, WMHT radio v.p., describing the format switch that converted WBKK from a “hip classical” outlet to WEXT, a Triple A station dubbed “The Exit.” The change, which took effect on Saturday, ended WMHT’s 16-month experiment broadcasting two differentiated classical music services to Albany/Schenectady region of New York.

Is this a scam? Not long ago a young woman knocked on a family’s door in western New York state and asked for a donation toward raising $5,000 for a trip to England, where she’d appear with John Cleese on a program that PBS supposedly will air Oct. 17, reports Kansas City Star critic/blogger Aaron Barnhart. But a couple of her statements sounded fishy, including the claim that Cleese worked on Upstairs Downstairs. What’s up with this? Barnhart’s e-mail address.

Jeff Golden, a talk host on southern Oregon’s Jefferson Public Radio, said yesterday that he’ll leave the air while considering whether to run for the Senate against incumbent Republican Gordon Smith, AP reported.