Public television’s Major Market Group has presented its 2012 William Kobin Public Television Leadership Award to Lloyd Wright, president of WFYI Public Media in Indianapolis. The MMG, a consortium of 34 pubTV stations in the nation’s largest broadcast markets, met for its annual meeting Oct. 1 and 2 in Arlington, Va. Wright has led WFYI for more than 23 years, and was recently re-elected to his fourth term on the PBS Board of Directors. For the past two years he’s also served as chair of the MMG’s Board of Directors. The award was established to honor Bill Kobin, among the first producers of national content for National Educational Television (NET), the forerunner of PBS.

Both partners gain new platforms for their programming and can learn from each other’s distribution, audience engagement and fundraising strategies.

Detroit Public Television has created a blog, Modern Day Midwives, to take an updated look at the nursing services that are the focus of Call the Midwife on PBS, which is set in 1950’s London. Georgeann Herbert,  s.v.p. content and community engagement for DPTV, said the idea came to her on an elevator at a local hospital that runs a midwife program through its OB-GYN department. She tells the PBS Station Products & Innovation blog: “I wondered, what is life like for a modern-day midwife?” she said. “Would they be viewing the show? What would they think about how the midwives and their clients would be portrayed?

Shaun Yu, interim co-manager of Classical 88.1 WDPR in Dayton, Ohio, has been appointed president and c.e.o. by the station’s board of directors. Yu succeeds former President Georgie Woessner, who retired in June. During the leadership transition he has been co-managing WDPR with a station volunteer who is also a board member. “It is my honor to lead this organization, which is rooted so firmly in Dayton,” Yu said in a prepared statement. “The fact that we can boast of a full-time classical music station speaks of the extraordinary support of this community.” Search committee chairwoman and WDPR board member, Linda Menz, said 30 candidates were considered for the position.

Telecom attorneys Scott Flick and Paul Cicelski of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman have pored over the FCC’s massive Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for upcoming spectrum auctions and condensed the main points from the 205-page document into a five-page client advisory, Flick reports in a Pillsbury blog post. “In addition to providing a relatively painless way for those interested to learn more about this proceeding,” he writes, the advisory “should provide a road map for parties seeking to identify the issues that will most greatly affect them so that they can focus their attention on those specific aspects of the NPRM when preparing comments for the FCC,” which are due Dec.

Some states get a little sexier every four years: Ohio. Florida. North Carolina. Their pivotal role in deciding the presidential election has made them the backbone of a new ad hoc collaboration, the (Mostly) Swing State Public Radio Network. Spearheaded by New York’s WNYC, the network brings together public radio stations in political battleground states to reflect the concerns and viewpoints of their much-scrutinized voters. WNYC talk show host Brian Lehrer anchors the programs, interviewing callers, chatting with station-based reporters and participating in online chats. The shows present “a mix of people right on the front lines” of where the Nov.

The America’s Promise Alliance gave its 2012 Journalism Award for Action to NPR for Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families, an October 2011 series reported by Laura Sullivan and produced by Amy Walters. The October 2011 series, the result of a yearlong investigation, revealed how the state of South Dakota was failing to follow laws that specify how Native children should be put in foster care. It prompted a federal investigation and a resolution from the National Congress of American Indians. The Alliance’s annual awards recognize the efforts of journalists working to raise awareness about the needs of young people and those who inspire communities to act on behalf of youth.

Former NPR correspondent Andrea Seabrook, who covered Congress until departing in July to launch an independent podcast called Decode DC, crossed the finish line on her Kickstarter fundraising campaign Oct. 17, hitting her goal of $75,000 and ultimately topping out at over $100,000. Seabrook launched the campaign Sept. 25 and met her fundraising target with two days to spare. Seabrook conceded during an Oct. 5 panel discussion at the Third Coast Conference in Evanston, Ill., midway through the campaign, that she “did everything wrong” in her approach to the crowdfunding platform — from distributing a weak promotional video to offering uninteresting gifts.

To the editors, Regarding your recent article about discussions of audience-building strategies for public radio at last month’s Public Radio Program Directors conference, I do note with interest this exchange: During a Q&A in Las Vegas, John Van Hoesen, v.p. for news and programming at Vermont Public Radio, asked NPR Chief Content Officer Kinsey Wilson whether NPR would produce more newsmagazine-like programming for middays. Wilson questioned whether NPR has the capacity to help fill that gap. But both he and David Kansas, c.o.o. of Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media, said that stations and networks could work together more to share content, creating a system for allowing local stations to pick up and air each other’s reporting.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s pledge to defund PBS, which he reiterated during the Oct. 3 televised presidential debate, set off a flurry of advocacy activity by pubcasters working at both the national and local levels. PBS had already spent several months developing its ValuePBS.org site, trumpeting the importance of public TV, and sped up its launch to the day after the debate. Stations sprung into action to alert their viewers and listeners, sending waves of them to the grassroots-advocacy 170 Million Americans website — which has since garnered 50,000 new fans. “Thousands of people are coming to our aid,” particularly on Twitter and Facebook, said Pat Butler, president of the Association of Public Television Stations advocacy organization.

Today marks the premiere of the video “The Emperor’s New Onesie,” based on an excerpt from pubradio producer Hillary Frank’s blog and podcast, “The Longest Shortest Time: The Truth About Early Motherhood.” In a Knight Foundation-backed project, Frank teamed up with former pubradio producer Rekha Murthy, illustrator Jen Corace and animator Joe Posner to visualize the audio short story. Frank’s podcast “pays close attention to an experience that so many share, one that remains largely absent from traditional public radio,” Murthy said on the Knight Blog. “It has attracted a substantial listenership in less than two years with virtually no promotion.