A unique local-national hybrid talk show on Southern Oregon Public TV proves that a passion for bridging philosophical divides and a (sometimes shaky) Skype connection can lead to Immense Possibilities. The Jan. 10 [2012] episode of the half-hour weekly roundtable introduced four local activists, two from the Tea Party on the right and two from the Occupy movement on the left. They found common ground on the air and are now working together on the ground. Funders, too, have pitched in. As the show starts its second season, it has already brought in nearly $50,000, close to what SOPTV sees in an entire pledge drive.

NPR National Correspondent Alex P. Kellogg has left the network after 14 months on the job, he told the Journal-isms blog on Monday (Jan. 16). “We’re parting ways amicably,” Kellogg said. The blog noted that Kellogg is “one of NPR’s two black male on-air journalists.” The Harvard-educated Kellogg had previously reported for the Wall Street Journal and Detroit Free Press. While at NPR he reported on topics including deportations, interracial marriage and the racial gap in homeownership.

Audience numbers for news WESA-FM, the former WDUQ jazz/news station in Pittsburgh, have dropped 50 percent since June 2011, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, from a 1.6 Arbitron share that June to a .8 share in December. “It’s not surprising there’s some audience loss because of the jazz loss,” pubradio consultant John Sutton told the paper. “What is surprising: Usually when you streamline your format, you see an increase in listening among the remaining listeners. And that hasn’t happened yet.” Tammy Terwelp, WESA director of content and programming, said she considers the downturn typical for a new format, and the low December number doesn’t concern her.

The governor of South Dakota is criticizing an NPR investigative report on foster care for Native American children in the state, according to the Daily Republic in Mitchell. The yearlong project, “Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families” ran as a three-part series by NPR investigative correspondent Laura Sullivan on Morning Edition and All Things Considered in October 2011. Sullivan found that nearly 700 Native American children in South Dakota are removed from their homes every year, and that the vast majority of those children are placed into nonnative homes or group homes. According to the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, Native children must be placed with their relatives or tribes.

Nominees for the 62nd annual American Cinema Editors’ Eddie Awards include several public TV include Downton Abbey from Masterpiece Classic and Freedom Riders from American Experience. The Eddies honor excellence in film editing. Here’s a full list of nominees.

Some new Ford cars will let their drivers shout “hourly news!” or “topics!” and choose public radio programming either on their local stations or through a smartphone streaming audio from the Internet. Bringing in webcasts and on-demand streaming gives drivers a vastly greater range of listening options and could make it even easier for them to hear public radio without help from their local stations. That ability is already within reach for drivers who have a smartphone and a cable or adapter to connect it to a car stereo. But coupling a smartphone with the new NPR app to Ford’s SYNC AppLink system may help popularize web audio listening, a scenario that dismays some pubradio station leaders.

Independent Lens has unveiled its winter/spring 2012 season, which includes two films on the “short-list” for Academy Award nominations: Hell and Back Again, about the human costs of war, and We Were Here, a look at the early days of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco. Here’s a full rundown of the 2012 offerings, to be hosted by actress Mary Louise Parker. This season, the program moves to Thursday nights on most PBS member stations.

Downton Abbey, the PBS hit from Masterpiece Classic, received the Golden Globe for best mini-series or motion picture made for television in ceremonies Sunday night (Jan. 15) in Hollywood. Downton had received four nominations. A complete list of winners and nominees is here.

Judy Jankowski, who held top management positions at several public broadcasting stations, died Dec. 17 [2011] at Kindred Hospital in Westminster, Calif. She was 61. She started her long pubcasting career as a traffic manager at WOUB in Athens, Ohio, worked as g.m. of Pittsburgh’s WDUQ from the mid-1980s until 1994, and then managed another leading jazz station — KLON, now KKJZ in Long Beach, Calif. — until retiring in 2005. She also held executive positions at stations in Houston and Birmingham, Ala. “I first knew Judy when we both worked in Texas in the early 1980s, and from then on she was a friend, colleague and collaborator,” said Scott Hanley, another former g.m.

Bob O’Rourke, a former v.p. for public relations at the California Institute of Technology who helped develop several pubcasting science features, died Dec. 27 [2011] of complications following a lung transplant several years ago. He was 72. O’Rourke conceived AirTalk: The Caltech Edition, a collaboration with local NPR member station KPCC in Pasadena, Calif., as well as The Loh Down on Science, designed to be “the fun way to get your daily dose of science in less than two minutes” and hosted by comedian/Caltech physics major Sandra Tsing Loh. He also was a driving force behind Curious, a four-part pubTV series from WNET that focused on the work of scientists at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Dave Creagh, an early All Things Considered executive producer who went on to lead other programs and major-market stations throughout his influential 22-year pubradio career, died Dec. 16 at his home in Blowing Rock, N.C., following a short illness associated with treatment of a cancer diagnosed in November. He was 60. “Dave was in the vanguard of public radio pioneers who laid the foundations for a vital communications network,” said John Dimsdale, Washington bureau chief for American Public Media’s Marketplace and a former colleague at NPR. “Over his career, he established high standards for engineering, journalism, production and station management. We are all in his debt.”

James A. Fellows, 77, an advocate of high ideals, strategic planning and executive training for public television, died in his sleep Friday, Jan. 6, at a nursing home in Millville, N.J. He had been besieged by Parkinson’s disease and the lasting effects of a nearly fatal car accident in 2003 and a stroke in 2004. Jim represented stations on the national scene for 40 years, serving as the last president of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, a forerunner and parent of PBS and NPR. Recognizing that few station leaders had ever been trained as managers and budgeters, he arranged for development of intensive short courses taught at business schools.

NBC will share stories, resources and content distribution with two public broadcasters, ProPublica and two local nonprofit newsrooms under the FCC agreement clearing Comcast’s 2011 takeover of NBC Universal. If the preexisting, five-year collaboration between NBC-owned KNSD in San Diego and the nonprofit Voice of San Diego news site is anything to go by, news consumers may see real benefits. Boosting NBC Universal stations’ local content through partnerships with nonprofit news organizations was one of the conditions placed on the network to complete its deal with Comcast. ProPublica, the Pulitzer-winning investigative enterprise that frequently partners with other top news outlets, will work with WNBC-TV in New York, as well as with all 10 NBC-owned stations in the country.