It was almost a landmark case: NPR vs. The World’s Most Downloaded Woman. The woman is Danni Ashe, a web-porn entrepreneur whom public TV viewers might remember from Frontline‘s “American Porn” documentary. Her image has been downloaded from her subscription website over 1 billion times, earning her a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Her expertise on matters pornographic recently landed her in a Slate article, which let drop that callers to her Los Angeles office who get put on hold hear KCRW, a local NPR affiliate. Apparently Ashe and her pinup models are bigtime fans of the station.

“Although the new Forsyte Saga cannot recreate the story’s historic role in television, its revitalized characters offer a delightful escape,” writes Caryn James in a New York Times review of the updated British drama. On Sunday, Oct. 6, Masterpiece Theatre debuts its new production of the mini-series that captured the American imagination in 1969.

The FCC has released the findings of 12 studies it commissioned to examine the effects of existing media ownership rules. The agency is currently rethinking those regulations with an eye toward relaxing them next year. The FCC has posted each study to its website.

BBC re-tooled its nightly world news program more closely to American interests, and last week began producing the show live from studios in Washington, the Los Angeles Times reports. Not all public TV stations that carry the series are pleased with the changes.

Sixty couples have met at NPR and married, thus landing on Susan Stamberg’s list tracking the phenomenon, reports USA Today.

The Public Telecommunications Facilities Program awarded $36 million in digital conversion grants to 97 public TV stations Sept. 30. An additional $6 million in grants went to public radio, distance learning and TV replacement equipment. See the full list of awards.

The board of education in Columbus, Ohio, is likely to keep control of public radio station WCBE, reports This Week. An advisory committee has recommended more educational programming for the station, reports the Columbus Dispatch.

Viewers ignored the rebroadcast of Ken Burns’ Civil War in favor of the Emmys and network shows such as CSI: Miami and The West Wing, according to the San Jose Mercury News. It’s part of the failed PBS programming strategy of throwing its best work into the teeth of more popular network fare, writes the paper’s TV critic.

Pacifica plans to launch a daily hourlong digest covering the push for war against Iraq, and will also offer live coverage of House deliberations over the President’s authority to declare war.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, debuting tonight on PBS, “does not shout, nor does it exult. It pays homage to sacrifice and achievement, and it leaves the door open to hope,” writes Ron Wertheimer in today’s New York Times. The website for the four-part series includes a section on how Jim Crow laws were sanctioned and supported by the national government.

Pacifica voted to return to its old home of Berkeley after its executive director said the move would save money, reports the Berkeley Daily Planet. Just last month the board voted to delay the move, reversing an earlier vote to return to Berkeley–which itself reversed an earlier vote not to return to Berkeley! Got that?

The increasingly busy Nic Harcourt, host of KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic, tells the L.A. Times he’s “totally overworked.” He just supervised the music for the new film Igby Goes Down. [Hear Morning Becomes Eclectic online.]

PBS launched a major new website for parents. It features an activity search tool that correlates games, booklists, stories and fun projects with kids’ skills and interests.

“Luckily I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink; if I’d had a cup of coffee I might have actually been sweating steam and the little recording booth might have exploded,” says Ftrain’s Paul Ford of a recent taping for NPR’s Rewind. (The bit about Rewind is after the bit about Paul falling off a truck, which relates not a whit to public broadcasting but amuses nonetheless.)

Talks with NPR’s Ben Roe and the BBC’s John Evans from the PRPD are now online at the website of the Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio.