Contributor Development Partnership launches as a data-driven effort to identify and share best practices in public media fundraising.

Leslie and Leigh Keno, the twin antique furniture appraisers on WGBH’s Antiques Roadshow, will debut their own line of furniture, Keno Bros., the week of Feb. 14 at the Today’s Home interior design store in Pennsylvania. A Pittsburgh Press writer calls the pieces “a stunningly beautiful collection of sleek, polished, modern profiles.” The Kenos also host Collect This! With The Keno Brothers on MSN. Leigh owns Keno Auctions in New York City, and Leslie is director of American furniture and decorative arts at the Sotheby’s auction house.

The host of the nationally syndicated WBGU show Marcia Adams Kitchen died Satuday (Feb. 5) in Fort Wayne, Ind., following a heart attack. She was 75. Adams also produced two documentaries about her 2001 heart transplant, “Heart to Heart” and “Change of Heart.” She was considered an expert in Amish cooking. Her five cookbooks included “Cooking from Quilt Country: Hearty Recipes from Amish and Mennonite Kitchens,” “Marcia Adams’ Heirloom Recipes: Yesterday’s Favorites, Tomorrow’s Treasures,” and “Recipes Remembered.” She also wrote two books about her heart trandplant and recovery, “Heart to Heart” and “Heart Anew.” Most recently she had been working on a novel, “Don’t Envy Me,” about a battered wife.

Enough of the adventure, suspense and danger. “I’m glad to be home,” Pat Johnson tells the Chicago NBC affiliate in an interview as the Grannies on Safari travelers finally arrived in Chicago on Friday (Feb. 4). The two hosts of the WTTW nationally syndicated show, Johnson and Regina Fraser, were leading a tour group of 14 in Cairo when anti-government protests erupted into violence. A vacationing photojournalist traveling with the group to shoot video for an upcoming webisode ended up capturing dramatic shots of the crowds. In an interview with the local ABC affiliate the next day, Fraser recalled seeing “row upon row, upon row, upon row, upon row, for blocks and blocks, of tanks.”

As of 11 p.m. Eastern Saturday (Feb. 5), KQED had pulled in 392 new members in a half-price deal on Groupon (that link only visible until end of the deal Sunday). Yup, for $20, it’s a basic membership (a $40 value) and for $75, a leadership circle membership ($150 value). What’s Groupon? FAQ’s here. Is this cool or what? UPDATE: 11:30, 393.

The CPB-funded Independent Television Service has posted an Egypt & Democracy page with content and resources to help visitors better understand the historical context behind the ongoing violent anti-government protests. “ITVS has a history of working with international filmmakers as well as community organizers, educators, and activists to trace the evolution of democracy movements worldwide,” spokesperson Voleine Amilcar told Current.

Today’s feel-good pubcasting story is brought to you by the Westchester.com local news site, with its story datelined Ossining, N.Y., about WDFH – a station with far too complex and quirky a history to detail here. It begins back when Marc Sophos spent about 20 years to get an FCC license, starting in 1973 when he was a student at Dobbs Ferry High School, and it includes the phrase, “This is the first time in the station’s entire history that it has had a viable signal and a studio at the same time.”

More than 10,000 e-mails have poured in to cable and satellite providers from Americans requesting that their cable and satellite providers carry the international news channel Al Jazeera English, the news org reported today (Feb. 5). The channel’s wall-to-wall coverage of the Egyptian revolution – which includes correspondents in the crowds that remain unnamed on the air to ensure their safety – has been getting a attention and praise from mainstream media outlets. Programming from AJE is offered to public stations via MHz Networks on its WorldView channel. Viewer response to last week’s extended news coverage on public stations has been positive, MHz spokesperson Stephanie Misar tells Current.

As might be expected, PBS SoCal, which picked up primary station status and the PBS National Program Service in the L.A. market on Jan. 1, is experiencing a ratings spike, the Los Angeles Times reports. Last year at this time, the former KOCE-TV in Orange County was pulling in a 0.2 household rating for its programming day; now that’s at 0.5 for January. Coincidentally, the Times points out, 0.5 is the same rating that KCET had during the same period last year. The station pulled out of PBS membership after a protracted fight over dues and overlap-market issues (Current, Oct.

There’s a new interactive story portal launching today (Feb. 4), supported by CPB and building on the Public Media Maps project from the National Center for Media Engagement. The two said in a statement that the portal showcases public broadcasting’s commitment to community engagement, as well as lets pubTV and radio stations identify opportunities for collaboration. It aggregates more than 300 stories to illustrate pubmedia’s local impact. Using Google Earth software, users click on green tags to pull up details on projects such as the High Risk High initiative from Prairie Public Broadcasting/KFME, which used a website, radio series and local town hall meetings to explore North Dakota’s problem of underage and binge drinking.

Thomas Hjelm, a former digital strategy executive at NBC’s Local Integrated Media websites and AOL, has joined New York Public Radio as v.p. and chief digital officer, the station announced today (Feb. 5). Hjelm’s portfolio will include digital business development, product development and design, web/mobile analytics and research and technology. He served as senior director of content strategy and business operations for NBC’s local media initiative, overseeing operations, content and product strategy for 10 major-market local news-and-lifestyle websites; he also co-managed the reorganization of the division’s digital operations and relaunch of its online services in 2008. At AOL he was director of broadband premium services.

Ira Glass of This American Life criticizes the 170 million Americans advocacy campaign to defend public broadcasting’s federal funding in today’s Boston Globe. The campaign, developed by American Public Media and the Association of Public Television Stations to recruit public radio and TV supporters as advocates, fails to address conservatives’ criticism that pubcasting programs have a liberal bias, he says. “Weirdly, my betters in the public broadcasting community have decided they’re not even going to argue about that,’’ Glass tells the Globe. “Instead they have this kind of vanilla ad campaign based on the idea that 170 million Americans watch public TV or listen to public radio, and these Americans are from all walks of life and are conservatives and liberals.

The 170 Million Americans campaign to support public broadcasting funding has posted on YouTube a short video titled, “Keep Public Radio On.” The initiative aims to draw attention  to what it says is the average number of Americans that interact with public broadcasting each month via programming, websites and outreach (Current, Dec. 13, 2010).

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has renewed its support of the  P.O.V. documentary series with a grant of $1.5 million for three years, it announced today (Feb. 3). The money will go to the PBS program as well as its related online and educational activities.

Public media thoughtleader Rob Bole is at it again, posing intellectually challenging questions to pubcasters everywhere. “Where is our online boldness?,” he writes in a blog post Wednesday (Feb. 2). “Where are the great challenges we are addressing in the lives of our audiences that have show us so much trust, loyalty and enthusiasm? Are we going to be incrementalists? How can we capture the art and vision that we put into our documentaries and journalism and turn that to the digital spaces that our country is rapidly inhabiting?” Intrigued? More here.