Arguing that cable must-carry rules for DTV would be a huge giveaway to broadcasters, progressive groups are asking Congress and the FCC to set minimum standards for broadcasters’ coverage of elections and civic affairs. That’s the point of an online petition by Common Cause, for example. In Columbia Journalism Review, Neil Hickey watches as media reformers enter what was previously a joust between two media industries.

Orlando Sentinel TV critic Hal Boedeker urges anyone with $6 million in spare change to aid Masterpiece Theatre: “Won’t someone step forward and save TV’s classiest program?”

Lefty columnist Norman Soloman challenges Jim Lehrer to “set the factual record straight” on a (mis)statement he made during an April 7 NewsHour interview.

Thirteen stations around the country are using KQED’s “You Decide” feature on their websites, says the University of Maryland’s J-Lab Director Jan Schaffer. The interactive doodad asks you to take a position on questions like “Should Saddam be executed?” and then systematically argues the other side against you. The feature doesn’t take sides–it’s ready to debate you either way.

The FCC asked for comments today on the rule changes required as radio moves to digital broadcasting. (PDF.) The commission specifically asked for comments on whether it should allow supplemental channels, and how digital broadcasting will affect noncommercial stations and LPFMs. The FCC’s site links to commissioners’ statements. Also today, CPB announced more than $5 million in grants helping 76 public radio stations convert to digital broadcasting.

NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin sizes up Air America, the liberal talk radio network, in his latest column: “NPR would do well to pay close attention to Air America’s fortunes to see if monolithic and conservative commercial radio has begun to run its course.”

Democracy Now host Amy Goodman talks with “Book Babe” Margo Hammond: “The media has simply served as a conveyer belt for the lies of the administration.”

Sponsorship Group for Public Television, WGBH’s new national underwriting sales group, launched a new website at sgptv.org. The group reps Sesame Street and Barney & Friends as well as WGBH’s own shows.

Two segments from a new pilot episode of Public Radio Weekend have been added to the show’s website.

PBS and APTS announced today that Cox Communications, the fourth largest cable operator, has agreed to carry pubTV stations’ HD and multicast digital signals.

The Village Voice reports that a subcontractor to McWane Corporation, the subject of a major investigative reporting series last year by the New York Times, Frontline and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, filed a libel suit against the three news organizations. Last week the Times won a Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism with its reporting on worker injuries and deaths at plants owned by McWane.

Helen Mirren talks with the New York Times about getting naked on screen.

NPR acknowledges in the Washington Post that it’s polling listeners about whether Bob Edwards’ departure from Morning Edition will affect their tuning in.

A telemarketing call goes awry for WVIZ.

A leading advocate for independent producers and openness in the governance of public broadcasting, Laurence S. Hall died Feb. 21 [2004] after a recurrence of cancer, according to one of his sons, Ole Hall. He was 74. Hall was one of “the three Larrys” — the others being Lawrence Daressa and Lawrence Sapadin — who were among the leaders of the 1980s movement to secure a role for independent producers in public TV. If there was one person responsible for that “modest miracle of legislation,” Daressa said recently, it was Hall. “He’s the person who should have won a Ralph Lowell Award,” said Jeff Chester, an activist who worked for the legislation.