Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, a documentary developed with pubcasting support, will have its theatrical release April 5, presented by BET Networks. The 2012 film marks the 40th anniversary of social activist Angela Davis’s acquittal on charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy in connection with a botched kidnapping attempt. Film funders included Independent Television Service, BET and CPB. Director Shola Lynch previously worked as a visual researcher and associate producer for Ken Burns and Florentine Films before her 2004 debut documentary, Chisolm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed. Free Angela is distributed by Codeblack Films, a division of Lionsgate, and will open in select AMC theatres in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C.,

Dana Davis Rehm, NPR’s senior v.p. of marketing, communications and external relations, will leave the network May 6 due to a reorganization of her division under new Chief Marketing Officer Emma Carrasco. The restructuring is intended to “put more emphasis on marketing than on communications,” said NPR President Gary Knell in a Feb. 14 email to station leaders. “Though I have only known Dana for a little more than one year, I can’t think of anyone who has demonstrated a deeper commitment to NPR and public radio, or who better reflects our values,” Knell wrote. “As our longest serving head of Marketing & Communications, she has established effective communications strategies and practices and a built a staff that has given me confidence that we could deal with anything that might come our way.”

The author of The Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey died in January 2010 after living for more than 50 years as a recluse in Cornish, N.H. Shortly after news of his death emerged, Hollywood screenwriter Shane Salerno announced he had been covertly working on Salinger, an independent documentary probing the author’s sheltered existence. Susan Lacy, American Masters executive producer, learned of Salerno’s film while attempting to procure the rights to an unrelated Salinger biography for the program. Salerno — whose screenplay credits include Alien vs. Predator: Requiem and Oliver Stone’s Savages — agreed to produce his film for American Masters after Lacy contacted him.

Latitude News, an online news outlet exploring world events and their reverberating effects in local U.S. communities and vice versa,  surpassed the fundraising goal of its Kickstarter campaign to launch a new podcast. As of Feb. 14, 307 backers had pledged $46,200 towards a goal of $44,250. The newsroom currently produces an eponymous monthly 15-minute podcast distributed by Public Radio Exchange; it now will expand its output by introducing “The Local Global Mashup Show,” a weekly 30-minute podcast. Latitude News will use its Kickstarter contributions to fund the first three months of the program and hire a business development staffer to develop a paid subscription model for the podcast. 

Sesame Street is closing in on a truly remarkable achievement: 1 billion YouTube video views. So today it’s asking for a bit of help to put it over the top. The number reflects a “rarified digital milestone,”  according to The Associated Press. It will be a first on YouTube for a nonprofit or U.S. children’s media outlet, and “reflects the increasingly multimedia nature of kid entertainment. Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch are now about as likely to be watched on an iPad, phone or laptop as they are on PBS,” the story notes. Sesame Workshop launched the Sesame Street YouTube channel in 2006; so far, the most popular video is “Elmo’s Song,” watched some 86 million times since being uploaded in 2009.

A pair of documentaries to be released for public TV broadcasts next month focus on two of the most difficult aspects of the nation’s dropout crisis — under-performing schools and at-risk youth. 180 Days: A Year Inside an American High School will be presented in conjunction with Tavis Smiley Reports: Education Under Arrest as part of CPB’s American Graduate initiative. Both premiere in late March, and were previewed during a Jan. 30 webinar from the National Center for Media Engagement. For 180 Days, “our goal was to share the perspective of students, how they view the things they have to go through,” Alexis Phyllis Aggrey, production manager of National Black Programming Consortia, told webinar participants.

NPR announced today that this summer it will move production of Weekend All Things Considered to NPR West, its production center based in Culver City, Calif. “Moving the show west will broaden and deepen our coverage and allow us to bring strong geographic diversity to our programming,” said Margaret Low Smith, senior v.p. of news, in a press release. “In addition, this plan gives us a new level of business and editorial continuity. By having a full team stationed at NPR West, we will be able to respond quickly if weather or a major news event incapacitates NPR headquarters.” NPR said the move will give the show access to the Los Angeles area’s pool of program guests in the fields of science, technology, entertainment and international trade.

The FCC is urging all broadcast stations to make immediate changes to prevent unauthorized users to take over the Emergency Alert System, writes telecom attorney Scott Flick of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. “The haste with which these instructions have been generated is demonstrated by the fact that they are not even on FCC letterhead, nor formatted for such a release,” Flick writes. “It is also worth noting that they are not described as ‘recommendations’ or ‘guidelines,’ but as actions EAS Participants ‘must’ or ‘are required’ to take.” What’s all the fuss about? A hacker accessed the EAS system Monday and informed viewers at several stations — including pubcasters WNMU-TV, in Marquette, Mich.,

The project solicits questions from listeners about Chicago to investigate on-air.

Updated Feb. 13 at 4 p.m. to add KNME-TV among stations impacted. Management at WNMU-TV, a Marquette, Mich.-based pubTV broadcaster, said it had identified the hacker behind a zombie hoax that compromised the Emergency Alert System on that station as well as others in the Upper Peninsula, Montana, New Mexico and parts of Wisconsin. Viewers expecting to see news programming around 4 p.m. on Monday on WNMU were instead treated to an emergency ticker warning that the dead had risen and had begun attacking the living. Another pubcaster, KENW in Portales, N.M., was also hit by the hoax. Pubcasters weren’t the only ones hit, an ABC affiliate in the area also  had its system hacked during the evening broadcast of The Bachelor.

A PBS NewsHour report on population growth and food scarcity in the Philippines prompted an increase in donations to the PATH Foundation Philippines Inc., an organization with a pilot program promoting family planning in rural areas of the Southeast Asian country. The report explored the foundation’s community-based approach of making contraceptives accessible to villagers who want to limit the size of their families. The story, which aired in January 2012, was produced as part of the public media collaborative project Food for 9 Billion, and has also been used by educators to set up discussions of the links between population and the environment.