“We’re raising good will as well as money,” says Holly Kernan, news director and host at KALW/91.7 FM in San Francisco. Instead of interrupting programming for pledge spots, the station this month conducted a “short-form” campaign of 60- and 90-second spots, many of them humorous, featuring local celebrities, reports the Knight Digital Media Center. So how did it work? The station met its goal of $300,000 and gained 900 new members. Positive comments from listeners too, including: ““Love, love, love the new pledge drive format!”

PBS launched its first PBS Kids line of preschool toys today (May 24), featuring 20 wooden playthings. They’ll be available exclusively on a new retail page, PBSKIDSshop.com, through early fall, and sold through other online and in-store retailers later. The toys include a Sounds of the World Rhythm Set, one of several musical toys; a Puzzle Playset Safari; building and construction toys, such as Exploration Blocks: City (image, PBS); and Three-Layer Puzzles in barn, camping and other themes. In addition to the new toy line, the online shop offers educational books, games, toys, DVDs, customizable apparel and more based on PBS Kids programs.

The StoryCorps listening project is partnering with My Faith My Voice, a platform dedicated to promoting the grassroots voice of Muslims in America, to record stories on July 4 weekend in Chicago. “The partnership will seek to humanize the American Muslim community and reflect the growing diversity of our country’s national landscape,” a statement said. “Storytelling is a powerful way to break down barriers and strengthen connections between people,” Haaris Ahmad, an MFMV Board Member, said in the statement. “It’s time for the Muslim community to add its stories to the rich diversity and tradition of the rest of the American family.”

Current’s coverage of PBS’s announcement that it will begin an experiment this fall to insert local and national promo breaks into two shows has prompted a pro/con survey at Huffington Post. As of 2:10 p.m. Monday (May 23), “I hate it” has 72 percent of the votes, with “Whatever” claiming 28 percent.

While the Masterpiece hit Downton Abbey failed to win BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) TV Awards for any of its three category nominations, its Sherlock grabbed two top trophies at ceremonies Sunday night in London, according to TV Squad. The detective show won best drama series and best supporting actor for Martin Freeman, who plays Watson. Freeman’s co-star Benedict Cumberbatch lost out in the best actor category to Daniel Rigby (Flyboys) for his role as legendary British comedian Eric Morecambe in Eric & Ernie. Rigby also beat out Doctor Who star Matt Smith. Downton Abbey was nominated for three major awards — drama series, supporting actor and audience favorite — but failed to win any.

PBS narrowly averted losing the membership of Chicago affiliate WTTW, the New York Times is reporting today (May 23). Earlier this year the board of WTTW-TV told management to consider withdrawing from the system, as KCET had done in January. “Our board, they are smart business people,” says Dan Schmidt, WTTW president, “and when they look at our business model they scratch their heads and they say this is upside down from a business standpoint.” He says his station pays $4.5 million a year in PBS dues, and yet “viewers can see that content on other stations and increasingly, whenever they want to on PBS.org.”

Plans to restructure NPR’s digital services to pubradio stations, in the works for months, have finally gotten down to specifics: what NPR will offer, what it will cost and who will pay. Based on prices that NPR has proposed — between $1,800 and $100,000 a year — some stations are now experiencing a new virtual variety of sticker shock. In round robin meetings that began in April, NPR execs have been briefing station leaders on their planned offering, a comprehensive package of technology support, training and content, but some station leaders reacted angrily after a May 12 NPR memo said all member stations would be required to pay fees for the services.

Marfa Public Radio continues to win praise for its April coverage of massive wildfires, the latest coming via a Texas Tribune story in today’s (May 22) New York Times. “Had MPR not been around on April 9, when an electrical malfunction in a former storefront less than two miles west of downtown Marfa ignited the largest wildfire in Texas history, it might have meant the difference between life and death for some West Texans,” it notes. “It was like standing at the mouth of hell,” said Anne Adkins, MPR’s office manager. “We didn’t have a news team, so we became the news team.”

New media analyst Mathew Ingram writes on GigaOM that there’s a growing demand not only for careful curation of news, but also “the need to start looking at news as a process and not as a pristine, finished product.” He cites the BBC, which has staffers assigned to pull in reports from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and other outlets for verification, similar to Andy Carvin’s work for NPR. “Twitter is becoming the real-time news wire for the world, and we need people who can make use of it as such … And we need new attitudes about how we look at journalism as well, now that everyone is doing it.”

A ProPublic series on the environmental threats of drilling for natural gas inspired a new kind of news explainer: A song. David Holmes, a journalism student in New York University’s Studio 20 program, which focuses on adapting news to the web in innovative ways, tells Poynter, “We were concerned with building a better entryway into that investigation and we figured a song would be the perfect way to do it — especially since it’s called fracking.” “My Water’s On Fire Tonight: The Fracking Song,” has nearly 83,000 hits on YouTube since it was posted last week — along with lots of fans.

WRTE/90.5 FM in Chicago, the city’s only noncom Latino radio station, is for sale, and Chicago Public Media is interested. WRTE’s licensee, the National Museum of Mexican Art, is parting with the youth-run station, known locally as Radio Arte, and the building housing it due to budget woes. Museum President Carlos Tortolero tells WBEZ: “The funding, especially in radio, is going south. We have a building that’s costing us money. We tried to borrow some money to do some things and [banks] are saying, ‘No, no. You can’t.’ The banks are looking at us and saying, ‘Hey, you have to get rid of some of this stuff.’”

The call for entries for the 2012 season of P.O.V. is now open. Series producer Yance Ford offers some tips for filmmakers here.

“[W]hat could be more dull than two Twitter geeks with their heads buried in their laptops as the interview subject patiently waits for us to type?” writes NPR’s Andy Carvin in this detailed account of his May 19 Twitter interview with Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser and author of the speech that President Obama delivered on U.S. policy on the Middle East. The ground-breaking interview may have been visually dull to those who watched it on video stream, but the tactics that Carvin used to solicit and ask questions, and NPR’s rationale for allowing him to accept the White House’s invitation to host the chat, turned out to be of great interest to Twitter heads and journalists.

WTF with Marc Maron, a twice-weekly podcast that regularly ranks among iTunes’ most popular, has been adapted for public radio broadcast. The 10-episode series features startlingly honest conversations between Maron and top comedians and entertainers, including Judd Apatow, Conan O’Brien and Louis C.K. Maron launched the podcast during a dark time in his life — in fall 2009, when he was in the midst of a divorce and had just lost his job at now-defunct Air America. “I was in a very bad place,” Maron said. “My career was relatively washed up. I was broke. My heart was broken.

WDSC, the PBS affiliate at Daytona State College, is in jeopardy of closing, the local News-Journal is reporting today (May 19), further complicating the already messy pubTV situation in Florida, with WMFE-TV’s sale to a religious broadcaster pending in Orlando (Current, April 18). Administrators say the college has already cut the $250,000 for PBS programming for the next fiscal year and is also struggling to pay $1.5 million overall to run the station.