While MoveOn.org urges its troops to back “permanent funding and independence from partisan meddling” for pubcasting, media reform activist Jeff Chester wants to see a trust fund only if it supports a “truly noncommercial” system. Such a system would reserve 30 percent of its funds for news and public affairs, air kidvid without commercial underwriting and bring in half of its programs from independent producers. He advises: “We shouldn’t help save ‘Big Bird,’ if all the public is going to get is more of the same of what we have today.” Chester discusses his recommendations in Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy, just published by the New Press.

Former PBS interactive chief Cindy Johanson will join the George Lucas Educational Foundation next week as chief operating officer. The new position reports to Milton Chen, executive director and former education topper at San Francisco’s KQED. Lucas, the director of Star Wars, said he wants Johanson’s help in making the foundation’s Edutopia.org website “the best archive of films, articles and tools for creating successful schools.”

House Telecom Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) told pubTV managers yesterday that he’ll support their call for satellite TV operators to carry the digital TV signals of local pubTV stations. APTS wants DirecTV and EchoStar to carry their local signals if it carries those of any stations. APTS achieved a digital carriage agreement with large cable operators in 2005 after seeking federal action. A deal with smaller operators is expected soon, APTS said.

National Association of Broadcasters has asked the XM and Sirius satellite radio companies to stop using tiny FM transmitters to connect their satellite receivers with the audio systems in subscribers’ cars. NPR also has objected to the gizmos.

In March many public TV stations will air Winged Migration, the hit 2003 theatrical release that put the viewer in the sky, flying alongside geese and other twice-yearly migrants. The distributor, American Public Television, is recommending (PDF, page 3) Jacques Perrin’s doc for broadcast on Earth Day, April 22.

The scene: a small conference room of the Senate Committee on Commerce, late on a February afternoon. The players: a senior committee staffer and her longtime acquaintance, a public broadcasting general manager. The author is president of Colorado Public Television (KBDI) in Denver. Illustration: Elene Usdin. ‘Well, the bastards have you right where they want you!” growled the aide, barely looking up from her papers spread across the conference table. “Is that how you greet an old friend?” the station manager grinned, as he settled opposite her, the rays of the late-winter afternoon sun glancing across the table. “Right,” she smiled back at him, “I know I can be brusque, and it’s probably been a busy day for you, visiting all the members of your delegation.

David Giovannoni, an influential audience researcher in the world of public radio, shares credit for an album that won a Grammy last night. Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1891-1922 took the award in the Historical Album category. Giovannoni served as production consultant and contributed album notes, technical assistance and records from his collection. (Via RadioSutton.)

“We must as an industry stop thinking within radio and television silos,” writes Dennis Haarsager on his blog. “It’s a distinction that is important to us, but is totally unimportant to our listeners and viewers in an on-demand world. But NPR isn’t chartered to worry about television, PBS isn’t chartered to worry about radio, and decades of bad blood makes it difficult to build a unified future. We need to get over it and we may need a new institution to do it. Separate systems won’t work.”

A New Republic blogger reviews two BBC radio shows and asks, “Why are there so many excellent program(me)s on BBC Radio 4 with no American counterpart?”

Programming will include educational shows, how-to and lifestyle programs, movies and performance shows, and current-affairs programs.

As in years past, the administration budget released on Feb. 5 [2007] calls for substantial cuts to CPB funding and other system line items. The White House would slice more than $140 million from the system’s current funding levels in fiscal 2008, a reduction of almost 25 percent from ’07...

Bob Edwards will assume presidential duties for the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists next month when current National President John P. Connolly departs. Connolly is leaving AFTRA to become National Executive Director of Actors’ Equity Association. Edwards, now AFTRA’s First National Vice President, will assume presidential duties until April.

The Sacramento Bee profiles public radio’s Fair Game. “A public radio reporter from one of our pilot stations heard the show and told me, ‘Faith can ask all the questions we can’t ask but want to,'” says the show’s e.p. of host Faith Salie.

Michael A. Tondreau, v.p. of engineering at Oregon Public Broadcasting, died Jan. 30 of cancer, according to TVTechnology.com. Tondreau worked for OPB for more than 40 years and served on the PBS Engineering Committee.

NPR’s Michel Martin seeks a name for her show and has asked her community of Web visitors for suggestions.