The National Endowment for the Arts today announced recommendations for 832 grants totaling $23.3 million through Art Works, its largest funding initiative. The 13 categories include Media Arts, encompassing 47 grants to filmmakers and film festivals. Several of those organizations have ties to public media, including the Center for Asian American Media in San Francisco, under the direction of Stephen Gong, which got $40,000 toward the 31st San Francisco Asian American Film Festival; Firelight Media in New York City (Freedom Riders), $50,000 to support a mentorship and professional development program; and the National Association of Latino Independent Producers, Santa Monica, Calif.,

Actress and soprano Audra McDonald, winner of five Tony Awards and two Grammys, is the new host of Live from Lincoln Center. McDonald will appear on seven broadcasts from December 2012 through spring 2013, including the New York Philharmonic’s New Year’s Eve gala, One Singular Sensation: Celebrating Marvin Hamlisch. The WNET icon performance series has not had a regular host since opera legend Beverly Sills, who died in 2007. “Audra’s Lincoln Center roots run deep and wide,” said Elizabeth Scott, executive in charge of the series, in the announcement. “She’s performed on every major Lincoln Center stage.” McDonald earned her first Tony for her role in Lincoln Center Theater’s 1994 production of Carousel.

Filmmaker Ken Burns’ latest documentary, The Dust Bowl, more than doubled PBS’s average primetime rating during its premiere last week, according to PBS and Nielsen. For Nov. 19, the program’s household average rating was 4.3, with some 6.6 million viewers. Its conclusion the next night scored a 3.5, with around 5.2 million people watching. PBS’s nightly primetime average is around 2.1 million viewers.

Brooke Runnette, who spent a year as a producer at Frontline, is the new president of National Geographic Television. Runnette worked at WGBH’s icon investigative news program from 1999 to 2000. From there she became a producer at ABC News Nightline, executive producer at TLC/Discovery Communications (Little People, Big World) and, most recently, executive producer and director of development at Discovery Channel — where she oversaw the popular “Shark Week” strand for four years. She  joined National Geographic Channels as a vice president of development and special projects earlier this month. In her new role, she will oversee the production arm of National Geographic, reporting directly to John Fahey, National Geographic Society chair and c.e.o.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a nonprofit research and philanthropic organization based in Chevy Chase, Md., is getting into the documentary arena. It announced today the launch of its own Tangled Bank Studios, a film and production company that is already at work “in close collaboration with PBS” on two science documentaries, it said in a statement. Heading the new company is Executive Producer Michael Rosenfeld, a former president of National Geographic Television. The docs under way are the three-part Your Inner Fish, produced in collaboration with the U.K. production company Windfall Films, a science adventure tale about how the lives of our ancient ancestors shaped modern human anatomy; and The Quest to Map the World, also a three-part series, produced with National Geographic Television, telling the story of how scientists and explorers mapped the planet.

The departure of Kevin Clash, the Elmo puppeteer who resigned from Sesame Street last week, is leaving a large void in the close-knit Sesame Workshop community, reports the New York Times. Clash, who left after allegations of sexual impropriety surfaced, played more roles than the furry red Elmo. He also worked with writers on technical problems, he directed, was a co-executive producer and the puppeteer behind many other characters. He also traveled internationally to train puppeteers for Sesame Street productions in other countries. Production of the show is on a pre-planned two-week hiatus. When work resumes, the Times noted, “a therapist may be on hand for those who need support.”

This item has been updated and reposted with additional information. Emily Squires, who won six Daytime Emmy Awards for directing episodes of Sesame Street, died Nov. 21 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. She was 71. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Squires directed more than two dozen Sesame episodes, beginning in 1982. Most of her work on the show came between 2005-07, the entertainment trade publication said. Squires also wrote and directed episodes of Between the Lions on PBS, and earned a Primetime Emmy nod for Sesame Street All-Star 25th Birthday: Stars and Street Forever!, which aired in 1984 on ABC.

Retrieved from NPR.org Nov. 25, 2012 Underwriting credits acknowledge organizations which fund public radio programming. Federal law mandates this identification and further allows for the non promotional description of the sponsors products and services. The following guidelines assist NPR and its underwriters in developing credit language that complies with FCC and IRS regulations for non-commercial broadcasters.NPR underwriting credits must contain: The legal name of the underwriter, to be read immediately after the standard opening phrase, “Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and… Credits may also include the following: Non-promotional, value-neutral, descriptions of organization, products and services. Names of operating divisions and subsidiaries.

Britain’s ITV is commissioning a fourth season of Downton Abbey, it announced on Friday. Filming of the eight new episodes begins at Highclere Castle and Ealing Studios in February 2013. The costume drama now runs in some 200 countries, according to ITV. “Downton has a whole life beyond the episodes themselves,” said Gareth Neame, managing director of Carnival Films, the show’s producer, in the announcement. “It has leapt out of the television set and become part of both the national and global conversation. It is now part of culture and society and that’s a very different experience for all of us involved in making the show.”

An 11-judge federal appeals court panel in San Francisco will reconsider a ruling that would allow public TV and radio stations to air political ads, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. A three-member panel had ruled in April that a 1981 law banning noncom stations from running the ads violated freedom of speech. On Wednesday, the full court said a majority of its judges agreed to grant the federal government’s request for a rehearing, which is scheduled for March.

The number of pubradio stations in the northeastern U.S. has grown in recent weeks with the addition of new stations with signals reaching listeners in Vermont, New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Vermont Public Radio has expanded service in southeastern Vermont and elsewhere with a new full-power station, 88.9 FM WVBA, an 8,800-watt NPR news station in Brattleboro. VPR also moved a translator station in Brattleboro from 94.5 FM to 94.3 FM, boosting its signal from 10 watts to 190 watts and bringing its VPR Classical service to the community. In New York’s lower Hudson Valley area, Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson has launched a new pubradio signal, 88.1 FM WLHV.

For the first major election since NPR Digital Services introduced digital publishing software designed to bolster stations’ online news operations, developers in the Boston-based unit built a platform for local outlets to share and spotlight each other’s election night coverage. Battleground, a live blog that aggregated Election Day tweets and news reports from 11 stations in nine states, was barely promoted on NPR.org, but 33 stations plugged it into on their own websites — often adjacent to their local news blogs. Live blogging commenced on Battleground at 4:00 p.m. EST Nov. 6 and wound down shortly after midnight. The 144 posts took a variety of media formats: live tweets from the headquarters of Missouri Democratic Sen.

Several public radio stations are among those taking part once again in a longtime on-air Thanksgiving tradition, the annual broadcast of Arlo Guthrie’s epic and quirky “Alice’s Restaurant” monologue — all 18 minutes and 34 seconds of it. Listeners to pubcasters from WFUV in the Bronx all the way to KRNN in Juneau, Alaska, will hear Guthrie croon, “You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.” The satirical folk song tells the true (but exaggerated) tale of Guthrie’s near conscription into the Vietnam war, which he avoided due to a littering offense on his record. Guthrie first performed the piece live in 1967 on WBAI, Pacifica Radio in New York City, according to the book Active Radio: Pacifica’s Brash Experiment.

With one of its biggest corporate sponsors pulling back from a multiyear underwriting commitment, NPR has an uphill climb to rebuild its sponsorship revenues from 2011, when the network’s sales reps reeled in enough deals to set a new earnings record. High turnover — or “churn” — among its corporate clients, and the pullback of companies that spend the most money on advertising, cut into NPR’s bottom line in the fiscal year that just closed. After netting $2.4 million in profits in 2011, largely on robust sponsorship sales, the network aimed high for 2012. But sales fell far short of projections.