Chicago public broadcasting outlets are taking a hit from local media columnist Robert Feder. In his blog post today (Feb. 3) on how the media performed during this week’s massive blizzard that crippled the city, both WTTW-Channel 11 and Chicago Public Radio WBEZ were declared losers. In fact, he writes, WTTW was the “biggest loser,” because it “declared Wednesday a snow day and shut down its entire news operation.” “Viewers who tuned in to Chicago Tonight expecting an analysis of the city’s response to the crisis or an examination of the blizzard’s political and economic impact were stunned to see a rerun of the public television station’s forum with mayoral candidates from Jan.

The Los Angeles music community will lose an important ally if  Republicans on the Hill have their way and cut back or zero out pubcasting support, reports LA Weekly. NPR affiliate KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., is a longtime source to launch new bands. “What’s at stake locally is no less than KCRW’s ability to provide its current musical programming — credited by sources across the industry for breaking L.A. bands and taking indie acts to national prominence.” KCRW librarian Eric J. Lawrence estimates that 20 percent of its programming is devoted to local bands. But rights for all of that music are covered by a license negotiated and paid for by CPB.

PBS’s annual study of media technology used by teachers reveals an “insufficient capacity of computing devices and technology infrastructure to handle teachers’ Internet-dependent instructional activity,” it announced today (Feb. 2). The national research by Grunwald Associates LLC also shows that kindergarten through 12th grade teachers spend 60 percent of their time using educational resources in the classroom that are either free or paid for by teachers themselves, due to school budget cuts. The nationwide, online survey reflects views of a representative sample of 1,401 full-time classroom teachers (1,204 K-12 public school teachers and 197 pre-K teachers in public and private schools) in August 2010.

WTTW’s Grannies on Safari hosts and the tour group they’re leading just landed (3 p.m. Eastern Feb. 2) at the airport in Athens, Greece, on a U.S. State Department charter flight from Luxor, Egypt. Their spokesperson Maria Dugandzic-Pasic said Regina Fraser and Pat Johnson told her that the entire Luxor airport was full of  tourists frantic to leave. Because the travelers have no access to television or the Internet – and opted to stay on their tour boar on the Nile – they were not aware of the seriously deteriorating situation in the country as mobs demanding the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak begin to clash with pro-Mubarak crowds.

There’s a whole slew of case studies just posted on the PBCore site. What’s that? The Public Broadcasting Metadata Dictionary Project.

MHz Networks has extended Al Jazeera English’s live coverage of the upheaval in Egypt, the Virginia-based pubTV distributor said Tuesday (Feb. 1). Al Jazeera English newscasts on MHz Worldview reach more than 35 million households nationwide. And viewers are finding other ways to watch Al Jazeera English, the New York Times reports. Meanwhile, KSMQ in southern Minnesota received donations Tuesday from viewers specifically pleased with the additional Al Jazeera English coverage on Worldview.

The Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media gathered a group of experts Tuesday (Feb. 1) at the Erikson Institute in Chicago to begin building a framework for judging excellence in children’s digital media, reports the Early Education Initiative blog of the New America Foundation. “Today children are gaining access to media that encourages – no, requires – some interaction on their part,” writes Lisa Guernsey, director of the initiative and conference participant. “Couldn’t that interaction bring with it the potential for harnessing that media to enrich children’s learning in many promising ways, in and out of school?” The group is developing broad outlines for creators and parents trying to determine “how to define quality amid the burgeoning number of products, websites, shows, social media outlets, immersive games and apps that are designed to both engage and excite children’s learning,” Guernsey said.

NPR has hired the search firm of Spencer Stuart to identify candidates to replace Senior Vice President of News Ellen Weiss, NPR chief exec Vivian Schiller told staff in a memo Monday (Jan. 31). A search advisory committee also will consult with Schiller before her hiring decision, later this spring. Committee members include Steve Inskeep, senior host of Morning Edition; Joel Sucherman, program director for ARGO/Digital; and Sharahn Thomas, deputy director of news. Weiss resigned in January, (Current, Jan. 10) in the wake of her controversial firing of NPR correspondent Juan Williams and its subsequent political firestorm.

The Texas Watchdog combed through the paper trail on the sale of Rice University’s KTRU to Houston’s KUHF, and reported on broker’s fees and efforts to keep the deal secret. The University of Houston, which has a $9.5 million deal to acquire Rice’s student-operated KRTU pending at the FCC, signed a $200,000 contract to retain Public Radio Capital as its broker in June 2009, months after it had gone through a round of painful budget cuts, according to this report by the Watchdog‘s Steve Miller. Efforts to conceal the formative deal from public meeting notices of the University of Houston’s Board of Regents may have violated Texas Open Meetings Act, he reports.

Public Radio Capitol’s roles as broker and buyer in sale transactions that are pending in several markets are coming under increasing scrutiny by localism advocates and public radio insiders, who question whose interests are being served in the sales of Pittsburgh’s WDUQ, Houston’s KTRU, and the New Jersey Network. Keeping the Public in Public Radio, a blog that watchdogs public radio format changes and station sales, has published a round-up of recent posts that criticize PRC. It’s headlined “College Radio and the Grim Reaper” and includes excerpts from blogs by public radio news veteran Michael Marcotte and Ernesto Aguilar, programmer at Pacifica’s KPFT in Houston.

Mykalai Kontilai, who purchased Nightly Business Report in August 2010, is cited in the latest Esquire magazine as a “reengineer.” More than 20 persons were identified as “men and women who have rebuilt, rethought, or happily dismantled their industries, their influences, and themselves.” Kontilai, a former mixed-martial arts agent and educational video distributor, was noted for “snatching up the rights” to NBR and “pledging to reinvent the sleepy half-hour public news into the impossible and improbable – a must-see business report that will be syndicated in two hundred countries.” Others on the list include President Obama, actor Alec Baldwin and NFL quarterback Michael Vick.

Say, “Rick Steves,” and what do you think? Congenial public TV travel host. Think again. According to a blogger at Examiner.com/Chicago, Steves made quite the speech at last weekend’s (Jan. 29 and 30) Chicago Travel and Adventure Show. Referring to himself as a “provocateur,” he held forth on topics including legalization of marijuana, infrastructure reinvestment, housing prices, health care reform, American “torture” of prisoners, the growing gap between rich and poor, gun control, “racist” incarceration policies, legalized prostitution and the “hysterical” American media. Steves also defended his 2009 TV special on Iran, saying, “I think you should know people before you bomb them.”

An intriguing alliance has formed among ivi TV, the brash startup that’s selling Internet access to specially encrypted TV signals, and four public interest organizations that have filed an amicus brief in its defense. The groups, Public Knowledge, the Media Access Project, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Open Technology Initiative of the New America Foundation, identify themselves in the “friends of the court” Jan. 31 filing as “public interest organizations concerned with maintaining an open, competitive, and diverse communications infrastructure.” The Seattle-based ivi is being sued by 25 broadcasters including WGBH, WNET.org and PBS, which seek a restraining order to stop ivi from selling their content (Current, Oct.

What does a free and open Internet mean for the future of journalism? Quite a lot, writes Kat Aaron, a journalist with the Investigative Reporting Workshop and media policy fellow, on MediaShift. Net neutrality, the principle protecting equal treatment of all content on digital networks, provides the foundation for innovative crowd sourcing projects and platforms for minority and low-income communities to amplify their voices via online dialogues and specialized reporting. “Despite journalism’s increasing reliance on a neutral network, most journalists and their trade associations have been silent on this issue,” Aaron writes. “To preserve the tools and technologies most reporters take for granted requires vigilance, organizing, and yes, the a-word: advocacy.”

Regina Fraser, co-host of Grannies on Safari, says the group just heard from the U.S. State Department today (Feb. 1) and is standing by for a flight out of Egypt, as the revolution there continues to intensify. Fraser, co-host Pat Johnson and 10 Americans are stranded in Luxor after arriving on Jan. 26. Maria Dugandzic of MediaPros 24/7 in Chicago has been monitoring the situation and is in close contact with the group. “The State Dept just called them and told them to pack their bags because they may have a flight back to the U.S. in the next hours,” Dugandzic said.