The Maine Public Broadcasting Network is considering a six-month pilot of an over-the-air channel covering the state legislature, premiering perhaps as early as February 2013. Programming would include daily Maine House and Senate proceedings as well as select committee hearings and press conferences. MPBN President Mark Vogelzang said in the announcement that the State House Channel “would, for the first time, provide open access to public policy debate and the decision-making process of our state government” to all citizens. MPBN’s Board of Trustees and Maine’s Legislative Council must approve the proposal before launch. UPDATE: The channel was approved on Jan. 29, 2013.

This story has been updated. KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., is the only radio station to partner with streaming music service Spotify on its upcoming new music discovery platform, debuting early next year, and one of only 25 American outlets to be included. The station will offer several themed playlists — such as a “Rainy Day Music Mix” — as well as the most-played tracks on KCRW’s signature music show Morning Becomes Eclectic. KCRW was the first American station to launch a music discovery app on the Spotify platform, KCRW Music Mine for Spotify, which is now one of the most popular apps on the site.

After a two-year fight, documentary filmmaker Phillip Rodriguez has gained access to autopsy results, investigative documents and coroner’s photographs relating to the controversial 1970 killing of journalist Ruben Salazar by a Los Angeles Sheriff’s deputy, according to MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Rodriguez is working on a film about the murder, Ruben Salazar: The Man in the Middle, for PBS. The project was funded by Latino Public Broadcasting in 2010. Over the past two years, MALDEF said, the Sheriff’s Department had claimed the documents were exempt from public records requests. Sheriff Lee Baca allowed a limited public inspection of the records in March 2011, but refused to allow copies to be made.

NPR fans will get a new chance to get up close and personal for the holidays Dec. 14 and 15, when the network will open the doors of its Washington, D.C., headquarters to the public for a two-day NPR Shop Warehouse Sale-a-bration. The event, the first of its kind, will allow visitors to buy official NPR merchandise for deep discounts, enter NPR Shop raffles and meet and mingle with some of public radio’s stars as they give live talks and performances. The lineup of NPR personalities will include Susan Stamberg, Ken Rudin, Guy Raz, Scott Simon and Carl Kasell, with a live performance from NPR Music’s Alt.Latino

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint (South Carolina), a longtime public broadcasting foe, is departing the Senate to lead the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. DeMint has circulated letters on Capitol Hill attempting to defund CPB, and sponsored several bills to do the same.

The start-up accelerator unveiled a year ago as an experiment in bringing Silicon Valley’s culture of innovation to public media has rebranded itself in a move to attract a wider range of ideas and investors.

For the next year StoryCorps, the public radio group collecting and presenting life stories told between family members and friends, will undertake a new initiative to record oral histories of veterans and active-duty members of the armed forces serving in  Iraq and Afghanistan. The Military Voices Initiative, or MVI, plans interviews of more than 2,000 people, enough to produce more than 700 stories. Funded by CPB and the Boeing Company, MVI is StoryCorps’ eighth initiative focused on a specific ethnic community or news event.  The Griot initiative, for example, collected stories of African-American family life. Some of interviews conducted for MVI will be broadcast on NPR’s Weekend Edition while the entire collection will be housed at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

PBS President Paula Kerger is No. 31 of the Hollywood Reporter‘s “Women in Entertainment 2012: Power 100.” The 21st annual ranking tallies up the most powerful women in the entertainment industry. Topping the list is Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks and president of Disney/ABC Television. Just above Kerger is Hannah Minghella, president of production, Columbia Pictures; right below is Jacqueline Hernandez, c.o.o. of Telemundo Media. Masterpiece Executive Producer Rebecca Eaton is also on the list, at No. 82.

The Copyright Royalty Board of the Library of Congress has issued new regulations for pubcasting royalty rates from 2013 to 2017, reports Courthouse News Service. The federal Copyright Act requires the government to update its license terms for noncoms every five years. PBS and NPR will pay slightly more across the board, in eight categories, to use musical compositions. For instance, PBS will pay $232.18, up from $227.58, for performance of a work in a feature presentation. NPR will pay $23.53, up from $23.07, for the same use. College pubcasters will also see an increase in their annual fees. The smallest stations, at schools with fewer than 1,000 students, will pay $319 a year, increasing to $339 by 2016.

Local members of NABET (National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians — Communications Workers of America) at WGBH in Boston voted Dec. 1 to accept a new five-year contract. “The negotiations were collaborative and productive, and reflected the NABET members’ understanding of the challenges facing the media industry,” said Ben Godley, WGBH c.o.o., in a statement. “We appreciate their focus on the issues, their commitment to WGBH’s mission, and their dedication to their members and their craft.” “Our members have dedicated years to the success of WGBH,” said Brad Hawes, engineer and president of NABET, in the statement. “We hope the ratification of this contract will lead to a stronger WGBH.”

Pubcasters and their advocates in the state capital credit the change of heart to help from sympathetic lawmakers, the governor’s willingness to change his mind and agreement by pubcasters to strengthen their case for support.

Chip Rogers, the outgoing Georgia State Senate majority leader, is resigning from office to work for Georgia Public Broadcasting, according to the Marietta Daily Journal, in a move that was initiated by Republican Gov. Nathan Deal. Rogers, also a Republican, made news in October when he organized a lecture for GOP lawmakers “in which a birther activist said that President Barack Obama and the United Nations are using ‘mind-control’ to implement a sustainability agenda,” reports Huffington Post. “A state lawmaker needs a quick exit from the Legislature, and a position at Georgia Public Broadcasting appears,” writes Jim Galloway, political columnist for the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Public radio is adapting too slowly to the competitive challenges it faces from Internet-based media platforms, and the pace of change must increase if local stations are to thrive in the years ahead. It’s a warning that public broadcasters have heard many times before, and research that I conducted this fall revealed that a large majority of radio station leaders have absorbed and begun acting on it. What were the most important changes you made in the last three years? Changes cited among the 89 managers surveyed How many cited this Added news programming 65 Made organizational changes, including replacing a ce.o.