CPB, PBS and the Association of Public Television Stations are jointly opposing a proposal by the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) to use a new software program to analyze television coverage and interference data. The proposal was floated by the commission in February and intended to update the analytical tools the commission will use in preparing for the 2014 broadcast spectrum auctions. In a letter filed with the FCC early this month, the three pubcasting organizations said the proposal would adversely affect many public TV stations by reducing the size of their service areas. Pubcasters were responding to a request for comments on “OET-69,” an FCC bulletin that described the methodology used by TVStudy, the software that the commission proposes to use to analyze coverage and interference among full-service digital and Class A television stations.

Veteran pubcasting journalist Bill Moyers today hit 200,000 likes on his Facebook page, home to his public affairs show Moyers & Co. Program spokesman Joel Schwartzberg told Current that figure is more than PBS NewsHour, Nova and American Experience, “and catching up quickly on Frontline,“with its 230,000. Moyers “has been so involved in our digital strategy and is so thrilled” that he created a special video to say thank you to his fans, Schwartzberg said. “With numbers like that,” Moyers says on the video, “we could easily storm several castles, or the Bastille; we could tilt at an army of windmills or sell out the Super Bowl a couple of times over.

The National Endowment of the Arts announced $4.68 million in funding to 76 media-arts projects April 23, including new grantees such as the Online Video Engagement Experience (OVEE) developed with CPB funding, a new initiative from the Association of Independents in Radio called Spectrum America and Sonic Trace, a multimedia production at KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., that was created through AIR’s recently concluded Localore project. For a second year, the NEA will continue to support projects that use digital technologies to go beyond traditional broadcasting platforms. In its announcement, the endowment highlighted a $100,000 grant to OVEE, a digital platform that allows web users to interact while watching PBS and local station content.

President Barack Obama on Thursday nominated Brent Nelsen, a political science professor at Furman University in Greenville, S.C., to a term on the CPB board expiring in January 2016. Nelsen would replace former Vice Chair Gay Hart Gaines, an interior designer and civic activist whose term expired in 2010. He is chair of the Educational Television Commission, which oversees SCETV in South Carolina. This is the president’s third recent CPB nomination. In February, he selected Los Angeles attorney Bruce Ramer to serve another term, and chose educator Jannette Lake Dates to replace former Board Chair Ernest Wilson, whose term expired in 2010.

In the past week, members of Congress have sent two bipartisan letters in support of public broadcasting initiatives to subcommittee chairs in advance of the next round of budget proposals.

The CPB Board on April 22 unanimously approved changes to its Radio Community Service Grants program for fiscal 2014, including phased-in hikes in nonfederal financial support (NFFS) requirements for most stations, pubradio’s first transparency requirements, qualification changes for minority-status stations and $9 million in financial incentives over five years for mergers and collaborations. Current CSG policies, which govern distribution of some $90.6 million in radio grants for fiscal 2013, were last updated in 2005. Since then, “shifts in technology, audience behavior, demographics, competition, and the economy have dramatically changed the landscape for public media,” said Oregon Public Broadcasting President Steve Bass, a CSG panel member who spoke at the CPB meeting.

On Being, a weekly pubradio program about religion and faith, is creating a production house for the show that will exist offsite from its distributor, American Public Media. The transition is happening with the assistance of APM, which will continue to distribute the show at its regular times.

Bret Marcus, the KCET exec who led production of the station’s acclaimed local news series SoCal Connected, is among the 22 employees riffed in the layoffs announced last week by KCETLink, the new public media outlet formed in a merger of the Los Angeles pubTV station with noncommercial satellite channel Link TV. Marcus, a former commercial TV news executive, served as KCET’s chief content officer and executive producer of the award-winning SoCal Connected, the local public TV news show that had a storied history producing investigative series and other news reports that made a difference in communities in the region.

Aereo, the upstart TV programming service that is being sued by the major television networks, plans to expand its over-the-air streaming service into  Boston on May 15. Aereo currently sells daily, monthly or annual subscriptions to television viewers in New York, using dime-sized antennas that capture broadcast signals and convert them into streaming video distributed over the Internet. Subscribers “rent” the antennas and have the option to watch television programming live or on demand via a device similar to a digital video recorder. PBS and New York’s WNET are among the broadcast television outlets that filed lawsuits against Aereo in federal court in New York.

CPB has initiated a six-month research project on the upcoming broadcast spectrum auctions that will culminate with publication of a white paper. Mark Erstling, s.v.p. system development, told board members at headquarters April 22 that the paper will have “the same scale and importance” as CPB’s 2012 report to Congress on alternative funding for the system, which it delivered last June. The study will examine multiple complex issues surrounding the auctions, such as preservation of universal service of public broadcasting to all Americans; the role of Community Service Grant policy in spectrum discussions; how much noncommercial spectrum may be necessary in large and overlap markets; the financial implications for individual stations as well as the system as a whole; and station responsibilities to their communities.

Community criticism of the leadership of  WJFF-FM, a public radio station branded as “Radio Catskill,” prompted all but one member of the station’s board of trustees to resign April 19, one week after the ouster of former General Manager Winston Clark, according to local news accounts of the controversy. During a contentious April 19 public meeting of the trustees, station volunteers criticized the board for “alleged complicity” in Clark’s uncompromising management style and board members responded to questions about station finances and compliance with FCC and CPB open-meetings rules, according to the River Reporter newspaper of Narrowsburg, N.Y., Eight of nine board members later announced their resignation.

The CPB Board today honored retiring CPB Inspector General Kenneth Konz with a resolution of appreciation for his service in the post since 1998. Konz told the board he arrived 15 years ago thinking he’d stay for two years. “This has been a collegial, wonderful group of people to work with,” Konz said. “I am sure with the people I leave here and the new inspector general, the office will continue in good hands and continue to have a good relationship with CPB.” The independent office audits CPB grants, investigates complaints from citizens, promotes efficiency and works to deter fraud, waste and mismanagement in CPB programs and operations.

A new kind of public media signal expansion will rock Kansas City, Mo., under a license transfer agreement announced April 19 by KCPT. The Missouri-based community licensee is purchasing KTBG-FM, a split-format NPR News and Triple A music station licensed to the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg. KCPT will pay $1.1 million in cash to the university and provide $550,000 worth of in-kind services, according to Kliff Kuehl, KCPT c.e.o. “I’m a big fan of the station and love what they’ve been doing,” Kuehl said. “We want to make it a place to go for live, local music, the arts and culture of the nonprofit community in the Kansas City area.”