The International Documentary Association is hosting a panel discussion, “Doc U: The Future of Docs on PBS,” May 10 in Los Angeles, to examine the impact of NEA funding cuts as well as PBS’s decision to shift the nights for indie showcases Independent Lens and POV (Current, March 12). Negotiations continue among Independent Television Service, POV and PBS about the shows’ timeslots. Appearing on the panel will be Simon Kilmurry, e.p. of POV; Brenda Brkusic, e.p. of program development and national productions at PBS SoCal; Gordon Quinn, artistic director and founding member of Kartemquin Films; and Lyn Goldfarb, award-winning documentary director and producer.

PBS’s draft fiscal 2013 budget would raise member dues by 2 percent. That would add $3.6 million to PBS’s total revenue, bringing the total membership assessment to $185.5 million. The PBS Board also recommended a cap of plus or minus 20 percent on the change to a station’s FY13 dues. There would be no cap for FY14, subject to board approval. In a memo to stations, PBS President Paula Kerger said the board felt the cap “was the best way to ensure that dues accurately reflect the current financial situation of each station.” Total projected revenues are $283.2 million, down from $287 million in FY12.

It’s the last day of work for Valerie Arganbright, managing director of membership at Minnesota Public Radio, first hired by MPR in 1990. So 89.3 The Current had a special Coffee Break chock full o’ tunes with Valerie in the title. Because, as one commenter pondered, “I guess it was too hard to find songs with ‘Arganbright’ in them?” One suggestion: “Ride of the Valleries” by Wagner.

ITVS will launch a bilingual American Graduate Latino this November as part of CPB’s ongoing American Graduate: Let’s Make It Happen initiative targeting the high school dropout crisis. American Graduate Latino will supply American Graduate broadcasts and online programming in Spanish and English to assist viewers, teachers and community leaders in preventing dropouts. At the core of the bilingual initiative are two documentaries executive-produced by director Bernardo Ruiz (American Experience: Roberto Clemente) scheduled to air in 2013 on Independent Lens. The films, produced in association with Latino Public Broadcasting and distributed in English and Spanish, will explore why Latino students are dropping out and tell the personal stories behind those numbers.

Lonna Thompson, c.o.o. of the Association of Public Television Stations, will be a panelist in the FCC’s channel-sharing workshop on May 22. The FCC recently was authorized to conduct spectrum auctions to clear broadcast bandwidth for use by mobile devices; one of the options each station faces is sharing a 6 MHz channel with another broadcaster. The webcast workshop will focus on how broadcasters are approaching the financial and strategic opportunities presented by channel sharing, the FCC said. Thompson and other panelists — John Cunney, head of telecom media technology at Santander Global Banking & Markets; Eric De Silva, partner, Wiley Rein; and John Hane, counsel, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman — will discuss the business and operational challenges and potential solutions faced by broadcasters considering channel sharing.

Video of the most recent Public Media Futures forum, April 28 in Los Angeles, is now online. Focused on innovations in local programming and new models for sustainable funding, the gathering was sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Center on Communication Leadership & Policy, in partnership with American University’s School of Communication. Additional coverage here.

The 13 U.S. journalists just awarded John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships to pursue proposals for journalism innovation at Stanford University during the upcoming academic year include several with public-media ties. Barbara Allen, a producer/engineer at Chicago’s WTTW-TV, will develop a transmedia platform to allow audiences to virtually experience historical events; Andrew Donohue, editor of the nonprofit news outlet Voice of San Diego, will create sustainable investigative news projects built around crowd-sourcing, transparency and narrative storytelling; Latoya Peterson, a former Public Media Corps fellow and editor and owner of Racialicious.com, will work to democratize communication and societal participation through the multimedia and text capabilities of mobile technology; and Eric Westervelt, Berlin correspondent for NPR News, will create a digital international news platform using all aspects of new media.

WLIW21, a WNET station, is premiering a 30-minute local news show, Long Island Business Report, on Tuesday (May 1) as a special, with the aim of attracting sponsors. “We hope to re-launch in the fall,” host Jim Paymar told the Long Island Business News website. “The station is behind the project. It’s a matter of fundraising and getting sponsorships. We’ll be looking for funds from corporations and foundations and individuals who believe in public broadcasting and the type of program we’re doing.” The show is being produced as a collaboration between WLIW and the host’s Paymar Communications Group.

Rebecca Eaton, e.p. of Masterpiece and the woman who brought the hit Downton Abbey to America, admits she’s “pretty addicted” to her job, in a Q&A with Collider.com (which describes itself as “the homepage for young men the world over obsessed with staying ahead of the curve in the marketplace’s most lucrative leisure pursuits”). In her role, Eaton says, “There’s always a crisis somewhere, and you get the satisfaction of solving the problem. And then, there’s always the mystery of whether a program will work or not, and waiting for the reviews or seeing what the audience figures are.” Eaton also reveals a fairly hands-off approach: Once shows are in production, “my motto is to leave them alone.

Ian Burrell, media columnist for The Independent in London, talks with PBS President Paula Kerger, who was in Great Britain to promote the fledgling PBS UK channel that launched last year. The channel “is struggling to find the audience its content deserves,” Burrell notes. Richard Kingsbury, PBS UK general manager, “admits that 20,000 is currently considered a good rating — a poor return for the quality of the output.” Concludes Burrell: “PBS cannot compete with the BBC in this country, and nor would it try to, but it does offer a similar hallmark of quality and a welcome new insight into American life.”

Now online, Current’s roundup of this month’s NEA Media Arts grants, which includes several high-profile first-time recipients with strong digital components. Open-source pioneer Mozilla Foundation of Mountain View, Calif. — parent of the Firefox browser — won $100,000 for Open(Art), which will commission collaborations between artists and technologists to create and exhibit artwork on the Web. The Bay Area Video Coalition in San Francisco also received $100,000, to support the Factory Hybrid Filmmaking Project, a pilot for young filmmakers producing digital and web-native short films. Larry Josephson received $10,000 for his ambitious multimedia project, The Complete Ulysses. Josephson, a pioneering host on Pacifica’s WBAI in New York, has celebrities lined up to read James Joyce’s masterwork, estimated to take 30 hours or more.

Soon, listeners will hear celebrities read James Joyce’s entire masterpiece Ulysses via satellite and Internet radio; a New York City theater will use video-game technology to invent a new medium for the performing arts; and a San Francisco-based organization will craft computer data into interactive visual artworks. The projects are made possible through the newly expanded Arts in Media category from the National Endowment for the Arts, which this year branched out from primarily supporting public TV and radio programs. Last week the NEA announced 78 grants totaling $3.55 million, with an increased emphasis on technological innovation and multiplatform reach (Current, April 23).

Here’s an update on the partnership announced last October between Sesame Workshop and Microsoft to use Xbox 360 consoles fitted with Kinect motion-sensor technology to create interactive educational experiences for kids, including Sesame Street. Soho Studios, a new Microsoft unit in London, is working on Kinect Sesame Street TV, due out this autumn, reports C21 Media, a site focusing on cutting-edge content. “With Sesame Street from 1969 onwards, the characters have looked out of the TV and asked the kids a question and assumed they were answering,” said Soho Studios’ Senior Design Director Josh Atkins. “What we’ve done is allowed kids to answer.”

The challenges and importance of local pubmedia TV production — from East Harlem to San Diego — was the topic of the latest Public Media Futures forum, on Saturday (April 28), sponsored by USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy and American University’s School of Communication. Presentations at KUSC in Los Angeles included an update on KCET’s local initiatives since its independence from PBS in 2010, from Al Jerome, president of the L.A. station; an inside look at how KPBS in San Diego is raising support for its robust multiplatform news-gathering operation; and an overview of the strength of local programming at Nashville Public Television from TRAC Media’s David LeRoy.

The FCC on Friday (April 27) unanimously adopted the basic regulatory framework for broadcast channel-sharing after the auction to free up bandwidth for mobile devices, reports Broadcasting & Cable. Any channel sharing will be voluntary and flexible; stations may decide how to divide a shared 6-MHz channel, as long as each delivers at least one standard-definition digital primary channel. Each primary channel will be subject to all FCC obligations and must-carry rights. Under spectrum auction legislation approved earlier this year, a broadcaster may opt to give up entirely its license to broadcast on a TV channel of 6 MHz, keep only part of its 6-MHz channel and share the rest with another station, or swap its UHF channel for a VHF channel (Current, Feb.