For its foray into e-book publishing, Public Radio International chose “Teacher Redesign,” in which a New York design firm created a branding campaign on behalf of the nation’s educators, and adapted it for Apple’s iPad. The iBook features 32 pages of content adapted from the Studio 360 episode, produced as part of its ongoing series on graphic design and cultural symbolism. With its strong visual elements, the program was naturally suited for the iPad, according to Peter Edstrom, a project manager for PRI. “Our core content is audio, but we’re continuing to experiment with different ways to get PRI content out to people.”

PBS is seeking a 2 percent increase in membership fees in its draft budget for fiscal 2013. Although still subject to review by station execs and formal approval by the PBS Board, the proposed dues hike would be the first since fiscal 2009. “A key focus of this budget is the performance of critical maintenance on PBS’s technology infrastructure that is necessary to maintain reliable distribution of content to stations,” PBS spokesperson Jan McNamara told Current in a statement. “The majority of station dues [are] dedicated to content. This will continue to be the case in the coming fiscal year. In order to retain the system’s investment in content, key infrastructure issues must be addressed in FY13.”

A Flagstaff, Ariz., man who told members of the Navajo Nation that he could help them launch a public radio station has been indicted by federal authorities on 18 criminal charges (PDF) including theft, wire fraud and money laundering, reports the Arizona Republic. John Pegram Bittner allegedly used more than $100,000 meant for radio equipment on trips, legal and medical expenses, and child-support payments. In 2007, when Alfreda Beartrack, a health-care administrator for the Navajo in Shiprock, N.M., heard that the FCC was opening a window for noncommercial educational FM licenses (Current, June 25, 2007), she looked for someone with technical expertise to help launch a station.

Do motivational speaker Wayne Dyer’s pledge programs violate PBS’s Editorial Standards and Policies to provide “nonsectarian” content? “My sense is that they do,” writes PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler. “PBS feels strongly that they do not.” In a PBS online promo for Dyer’s latest, Wishes Fulfilled, he is identified as a “beloved spiritual teacher.” Getler writes that in 2009, in connection with a dispute involving five local stations (Current, April 13, 2009), the PBS Board defined sectarian content as “programming that advocates a particular religion or religious point of view.” There is no definition of “nonsectarian” in PBS editorial standards adopted in June 2011, Gelter notes.

NPR is one of 10 news organizations that filed an objection Thursday (April 5) to plans by the Pentagon to close a hearing next week on alleged mistreatment of a detainee by the CIA. The Miami Herald, one of the signatories to the 15-page letter, posted the document online. The objection focuses on the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, allegedly involved in the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors. In a hearing set for April 11 at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, al-Nashiri’s attorneys plan to argue that he shouldn’t be shackled while interviewed because it would remind him of trauma he experienced while in CIA custody.

Members of the Maine Legislature’s Appropriations Committee late last night (April 5) unanimously rejected a proposal from Gov. Paul LePage to eliminate all $1.7 million in fiscal 2013 state funding for the Maine Public Broadcasting Network by July 1, the network reports. Republican Sen. Roger Katz of Augusta proposed an amendment, unanimously adopted, that directs the state to work with MPBN to determine costs for its emergency alert system, and requests reports from MPBN on its future plans and on how MPBN may use its bandwidth to provide other fee-based services to the state. “A plan whereby over the next five years,” Katz said, “the appropriation which is provided by the state to MPBN would gradually be reduced and replaced by fee-for-service contracts to be agreed to by the parties for the kinds of services I was just talking about.”

This week, host Jim Nayder is marking the 20th anniversary his show, Magnificent Obsession: True Stories of Recovery, on Chicago pubstation WBEZ-FM. Each 30-minute weekly episode presents an individual’s personal battle with addiction, in his or her own words, writes Time Out Chicago media critic Bob Feder. The program grew out of interviews Nayder conducted years ago during marketing work he did to supplement his radio income, for a suburban hospital’s new chemical dependency unit. “I thought writing notes might be distracting, and, being in radio, decided I would simply record the conversations on a little cassette,” he said.

Variety reports that This American Life host Ira Glass — along with actor Owen Wilson and Veronica Mars showrunner Rob Thomas — is developing and executive-producing an HBO drama series. The project, tentatively titled Thrillsville, will be a fictionalized adaptation of “Midlife Cowboy,” a TAL segment that originally aired March 12, 2010. That segment told the true story of James Spring, a meth smuggler turned advertising copywriter who, right before his 40th birthday, attempted to rescue two young girls kidnapped by Mexican drug traffickers and smuggled to Baja California. Glass will be joined by Alissa Shipp, a producer who handles TV and film rights and development for TAL, as a fellow executive producer on the HBO show.

KBTC, public TV in Tacoma, Wash., is partnering with that state’s public affairs cable channel, TVW, on a weekly book discussion and author interview show, Well Read, that premiered this week. For each 30-minute episode, host Terry Tazioli, a former editor with the Seattle Times, talks to local writers and then chats with Mary Ann Gwinn, book editor at the Times. First up for its premiere April 3 was Kent Hartman of Portland, author of The Wrecking Crew, which tells the story of a group of Los Angeles musicians who weren’t credited for performances on hundreds of Top 40 hits in the 1960s and early ’70s.

The FCC is siding with WHDD-FM — tiny Robin Hood Radio — in Sharon, Conn., in a complaint filed last year by a local assistant schools superintendent. Diane Goncalves wrote to the FCC that on multiple occasions station co-founder Marshall Miles broadcast endorsements of candidates and criticized specific members of the Region 1 Board of Education, actions that Goncalves contended were violations of the Communications Act of 1934. Miles answered that complaint with the FCC on Jan. 13, saying the statements were identified on the air as his personal opinion. Goncalves also filed an answer to that letter. In a decision on March 30, the FCC agreed, saying that Miles “should take care in the future that your personal views over the air continue to be clearly labeled as such.”

In a three-hour public hearing presided over by a former Washington State Supreme Court Chief Justice, the 11-member Washington News Council mainly sided with the anti-abortion Vitae Foundation in its dispute with KUOW-FM over an April 2011 story, CPB Ombudsman Joel Kaplan reports. The reporter from the Seattle pubradio news station had a journalistic responsibility to contact representatives of the Foundation before the story ran, the Council said in a unanimous vote. Also, the Council decided the story contained errors that merited on-air correction. However, the Council sided 10-1 with the station that it did not have a responsibility to provide the Foundation additional on-air coverage after the original story.

Kartemquin Films has announced the initial 15 members of its PBS Needs Indies Steering Committee, which the Chicago doc house is establishing to serve as a liaison between independent filmmakers and PBS. Names include International Documentary Association Board Member Beth Bird, and Michael Winship, senior writer of Moyers & Company with Bill Moyers. The group also posted a second open letter to PBS; its first garnered more than 1,000 signatures after PBS shifted indie showcases Independent Lens and P.O.V. from Tuesdays to Thursdays, resulting in ratings and carriage drops (Current, March 12). “This incident has renewed our community’s awareness of the critical value of PBS to the national media ecology,” the group said in the latest letter.

The Radio Arts Foundation-St. Louis has applied to the FCC for a new classical station, according to the Post-Dispatch. The group had provided “considerable financial support,” the newspaper said, to the former local favorite Classic 99, KFUO-FM, and had attempted to purchase that station from the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in 2009 before its sale to a Christian pop-music station in July 2010. The Foundation hopes to broadcast on analog radio and an HD-2 channel and stream live on the Internet. Plans also include live music performances from a new facility with two broadcast studios and a conference room that will double as a performance space.

Legislation to save the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority “narrowly squeaked out of a Senate panel” on Tuesday (April 4), reports the Tulsa World. With the crucial vote tied 4-4, Sen. Bill Brown changed his nay to a yay. “I did not realize this sunset bill means OETA could not even go out and raise private money,” he said. “This is not an appropriations bill. It just keeps them operating. My stance changes on that because my deal is that I would love to see them go out and raise private money and operate as a private company. But if this bill doesn’t pass, they don’t even make that.

Programming on PBS and NPR won nine honors in this year’s Peabody Awards, announced on a webcast this morning (April 4). Public television winners: American Experience, for what the judges called “three exceptional documentaries . . . under the banner of this grand American history anthology,” Triangle Fire, Freedom Riders and Stonewall Uprising; indie showcases P.O.V. for My Perestroika and Independent Lens for Bhutto; and American Masters for Charles and Ray Eames – The Architect and the Painter. Austin City Limits from KLRU-TV “receives a rare Institutional Peabody Award,” the judges said. “Thirty-seven seasons on air make it the world’s longest running live music television program.”