The Federal Communications Commission is getting closer to creating new low-power FM stations and approving rebroadcasting programming from other stations, according to the Blog of the Legal Times. With a 4-0 vote Tuesday (July 12), the FCC “breaks a longstanding logjam on spectrum,” said chairman Julius Genachowski. The problems have been ongoing since 2000, when Congress put low-power radio in urban areas on hold after commercial broadcasters complained about interference. In Tuesday’s Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (PDF), the FCC approved lifting a freeze on processing translator applications and resuming licensing of translator stations in most smaller and rural markets.

KOTO, broadcasting to Telluride, Colo., and surrounding environs from its purple house on Pine Street, is really feeling a financial pinch — particularly because it’s one of only six pubradio stations in the country that does not accept underwriting. Its news staff was recently pared to just one reporter, and its executive director got a salary cut; other pay and benefit reductions could follow. So the station soon will survey its members to ask if online or on-air underwriting would be acceptable, reports the Telluride Daily Planet. KOTO’s support from CPB has dwindled from $170,000 three years ago to less than $92,000 this year.

Bruce Ramer, board chairman for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, has been selected by the Hollywood Reporter as one of its Power Lawyers for 2011. Gang Tyre Ramer & Brown “is one of Hollywood’s top talent boutiques,” the paper says, and Ramer’s longtime clients include Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood.

Ronnie Agnew, executive editor of the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., for nearly a decade, is the new head of Mississippi Public Broadcasting, the newspaper reports. MPB’s former executive director, Judith Lewis, resigned last September after her controversial decision to discontinue Fresh Air (Current, July 26, 2010). Agnew was selected as the 50th recipient of the Samuel Talbert Silver Em Award, the University of Mississippi’s highest journalism honor. He serves as a member of the American Society of News Editors’ board of directors and chairs its diversity committee. Agnew has worked at Gannett newspapers in Hattiesburg and Cincinnati as well as Jackson for most of the past 20 years.

Puerto Rico’s government-controlled WIPR dropped its PBS membership on July 1 — the fourth member station to quit this year. Puerto Rico TV, which produces and broadcasts mostly in Spanish, carried only the English versions of PBS Kids programs. A separate station — Sistema TV (WMTJ), licensed to the private Ana G. Méndez University System — carries a selection of general audience PBS programs. PBS lost WIPR fees amounting to $713,000 a year. The network earlier lost KCET in Los Angeles on Jan. 1 and two Florida stations as of July 1:  Orlando’s WMFE-TV, and Daytona’s WDSC-TV, which shared their service area with a third station, which continues as a PBS outlet.

Former NPR news analyst Juan Williams’ book hits stores next week. Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate chronicles the months after he said on Fox News that he felt uneasy with airline passengers wearing traditional Muslim garb. NPR fired him, which riled conservatives and triggered a firestorm on Cap Hill during important pubcasting funding hearings. The Atlantic notes that David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Obama, is quoted in a blurb on the book’s cover: “For any American who fears the coarsening of our political debate has become an impediment to our progress as a people — and, more importantly, is wondering how to fix it — Juan Williams has written a book well worth reading.”

PBS SoCal, the primary network affiliate in Los Angeles since the departure of KCET in January, broke ground July 7 on a digital media production studio headquarters in Costa Mesa, Calif. Station President Mel Rogers did the ceremonial honors, with the help of city officials, board representatives, major donors and PBS star Clifford the Big Red Dog. Rogers also unveiled a $14 million Education and Community through Media initiative that he said will “build a solid platform for PBS SoCal’s future.” The initiative calls on the private sector to help the station establish education, production, communications and sponsorship sales branch offices in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Palm Springs; create a PBS SoCal “One Community” mobile studio and classroom; form a national digital content creation division to produce programming for local and national audiences; expand PBS SoCal Education’s Ready to Learn and K-12 services; and bolster the content and visibility for PBS SoCal’s OC Channel.

The latest iPhone app release for public media is tailor-made for attendees of this week’s Public Media Development and Marketing conference in Pittsburgh. The app is built to run on the iOS4 iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, and includes details of the full conference schedule, maps of the conference hotel, and links to PMDMC Facebook and Twitter feeds. The Publink icon offers discounts to Pittsburgh restaurants and cultural venues. The app, offered by DEI and co-sponsors JacAPPS and Publink, is a free download from the iTunes store.

The seven Local Journalism Centers that launched with major support from CPB have suddenly found themselves on a short timeline to find ways to earn more of their keep. So far, CPB has committed only the two-year sums announced at the initiative’s launch last year and has told some grantees to expect smaller amounts for 2012. Uncertainties over future CPB aid — as well as problems with the diffuse management structures that cloud decision-making and fiscal accountability for at least one LJC — have complicated plans to keep the regional news collaborations going, according to news directors who participated in a June 24 panel at the Public Radio News Directors conference in Arlington, Va.

Independent journalists in public media are having an increasingly tough time earning a living as producers for public TV and radio, according to a survey commissioned by the Association of Independents in Radio and the Independent Television Service. Over the past three years, 66 percent of radio indies who responded to the survey reported worsening financial problems. The survey by Market Trends Research, backed by CPB, drew responses from 206 indies who have created content for public TV, radio or affiliated websites in the past two years. The income outlook among radio indies, who made up 75 percent of survey respondents, is somewhat brighter than for those working in television, film and web production.

Native Public Media and the National Congress of American Indians are warning the FCC that many tribal licensees may be unable to meet deadlines for station construction permits granted since 2007. For one week that October, the FCC accepted applications for new full-power noncommercial educational stations — the first time the agency had done so in seven years. Native American groups spread the word about the rare opportunity to claim a share of FM spectrum. Tribal organizations filed 58 applications and won 38 construction permits (CPs). If built, the stations will more than double the 33 currently broadcasting to tribal lands nationwide (Current, Nov.

South Carolina ETV avoided steep funding cuts last month as the state’s Republican-controlled legislature thwarted Gov. Nikki Haley’s attempt to eliminate two-thirds of state support for the pubcasting network. Haley had proposed cutting about $5.9 million of the $9 million that the state provides for SCETV, which makes up about half of the network’s budget. But lawmakers in both the House and Senate overrode Haley’s request in nearly unanimous votes June 29. In the end, only about 6 percent of the network’s budget was cut, according to SCETV spokesperson Rob Schaller. House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham angrily criticized Haley in a speech on the floor.

Two foundation grants will back capacity-building for Koahnic Broadcasting Corporation, the public media nonprofit that operates KNBA in Anchorage, Alaska, and produces the nationally distributed broadcasts Native America Calling and National Native News. The grants, totaling $375,000, support a three-year effort to strengthen KBC’s Native radio programming and distribution services. Ford Foundation committed $300,000 to the initiative and the Nathan Cummings Foundation provided the balance. KBC distributes news, public affairs and cultural programs through Native Voice One, a service that has gained 11 new affiliates this past year and anticipates serving new tribal stations in Louisiana, Idaho and New York State, according to a news release announcing the grants.

Having witnessed the damaging one-round knockout of NPR fundraiser Ron Schiller in March, public radio’s development pros are working to adapt the lessons they’ve learned about ethics and prudence into a set of best-practices guidelines for use throughout the field. But they’re already tiptoeing around a clear discrepancy between the major ethical code of professional fundraisers and a common practice in public broadcasting — paid commissions on underwriting sales. DEI, the national agency for pubradio fundraising that convenes its annual Public Media Development and Marketing Conference in Pittsburgh later this week, has assembled a group to draft ethical standards for fundraising in nonprofit public media.

Public broadcasting “has proved helpful to a growing list of advertisers across multiple categories,” according to a story today (July 11) on NPR and PBS corporate sponsorship in Advertising Age magazine. Fox Searchlight gave NPR the entire broadcast marketing budget for the highly anticipated May release of director Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life.” Dan Pittman, senior v.p.-media at Fox Searchlight, told the magazine, “NPR’s audience dovetails well with the campaigns for many of our films, which tend to appeal to educated, sophisticated audiences.” PBS is also desirable, because being on it “means being associated with someone committed to the arts, quality TV and preserving PBS’s desire to infiltrate knowledge and education, not just pure entertainment,” said Darcy Bowe of Starcom USA, which assists corporate and brand-level clients on PBS buys.