Major unions of BBC workers say they’ll take a strike vote April 4 if management cuts jobs as threatened, BBC News reported. Unions asked for negotiations during a three-month moratorium on cutbacks, no layoffs and pay guarantees for workers whose jobs are being outsourced. BBC managers “have decided to beat themselves up before the government does so,” said Gerry Morrissey, a leader of BECTU, a major union. (BECTU meanwhile said production staffers at the commercial network ITV voted this week to walk out after Easter, rejecting ITV’s offer of a 3.3 percent pay raise.) Director General Mark Thompson aims to save 355 million pounds to reinvest in programming, especially drama, news coverage, regional broadcasts and on-demand news services.

Did NPR overreact in terminating its relationship with longtime freelance arts reporter David D’Arcy after his controversial December piece exploring the fate of artist Egon Schiele’s “Portrait of Wally”? The painting, seized from its original owner by Nazis in 1939, was loaned to New York’s Museum of Modern Art several years ago and has since become subject of a fight over its rightful ownership. D’Arcy’s story treated MOMA unfairly, according to NPR, which later issued a correction, and ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin, who defended the correction in a recent column. But nothing in D’Arcy’s report “seems particularly surprising or stunningly accusatory,” says this story in the Los Angeles Times, which says NPR’s decison to sever ties with D’Arcy “raised questions about how its news operation sets and enforces journalistic standards.”

Employees’ unions fear the BBC will lose up to 6,000 jobs overall, the Guardian reported. The latest round of cuts, to be specified Monday, may include 400 in the big-budget doc production unit, Factual and Learning. Director General Mark Thompson says cuts are needed to persuade the government that public money is being well spent. The head of the journalists’ union replies: “You can’t sack thousands and then ask hard-working staff to take on huge amounts of extra work and still expect to maintain high standards.”

Union leaders say they’ll fight massive layoffs at the BBC, Edinburgh’s Scotsman reported. The BBC is expected to announce a second wave of staff cutbacks on Monday, mostly in news and other program jobs. The first round made public last week affects 1,730 jobs — 980 layoffs and 750 jobs outsourced, mostly in finance, human resources and marketing, said the media workers’ union BECTU. The Culture Minister earlier recommended keeping the BBC’s tax on TV sets, but pressed for efficiency in the government’s Green Paper [118-page PDF] on the BBC’s future.

The FCC announced changes to its low-power FM service yesterday and asked for feedback on other possible tweaks. (Release and order, both PDFs.) It also froze granting of FM translator permits for six months, following the Media Access Project’s filing of a petition charging that shell companies have been acquiring and reselling the free permits, sometimes for hundreds of thousands of dollars. (PDFs of petition, releated release.) Coverage in the Los Angeles Times.

Anti-quack crusader James Randi criticizes Diane Rehm and public TV stations for featuring Deepak Chopra, Dr. Christiane Northrup and a psychic.

MJ Bear, former head of online at NPR, has co-authored a study of media coverage of the Iraq War. It found that many media outlets have self-censored their coverage to avoid offending their audiences. (Via Romenesko.)

“Twenty-four hours at KBOO reveals what potential listeners will find at Portland’s noncommercial community radio station: the bizarre, the political and, in the dead of night, even the ambitious,” reports the Oregonian.

“Topics about the arts, the environment, or identity politics seem overrepresented, while stories about business seem underrepresented,” writes a conservative columnist of public radio in New Hampshire’s Union Leader.

“To get any information at all from the Bush administration is a triumph, for it has become the all-time champion of information control,” said Bob Edwards in a recent speech in Danville, Ky. (Via Romenesko.)

Tom Church, founder of the Radio Research Consortium, died over the weekend at the age of 61.

Chicago Public Radio plans to make its primary signal all-news and program two additional stations with music, reports the Sun-Times.

The Department of Education published a request for proposals for the Ready to Learn program. The department’s new priorities for the next five-year grant period focus the program on literacy-based programs and outreach targeting low-income children and their families. Applicants who propose rigorous, scientifically-based research on the effectiveness of their programs will receive favorable consideration. [Scroll down to lower right-hand corner of first page.]

Jacques Pepin tells the Hartford Courant his marriage survived because they put his 30-by-22-foot kitchen (and sometime TV studio) in a building in the back yard. His Fast Food My Way series from KQED launched in APT syndication last fall.

CPB President Kathleen Cox hired a top FCC exec, Ken Ferree [his CPB bio], to fill her old job. The former Media Bureau chief will be c.o.o. Also appointed: David Creekmore, new v.p. finance and administration, replacing Betsy Griffith, and Nancy Rohrbach [bio] in the frequently vacant position of senior v.p., corporate and public affairs. Ferree is a lawyer and tall guy (FCC photos) who has pushed and pulled for the DTV transition. A Washington Post feature earlier cited him as an example of federal aides who move on when their bosses do. Chairman Michael Powell, who knew Ferree in law school and hired him, leaves the FCC this week.