Sesame Workshop, parent company of Sesame Street, has laid off around 12 people, the entertainment news website Deadline Hollywood is reporting. “So far the big cuts have been in the Digital Media department,” the site said. The Workshop declined to answer specific questions on the layoffs from Current, but emailed this statement: “As a result of our FY13 strategic planning process, we have shifted some resources to better align with our strategic priorities and new opportunities. Unfortunately, this has resulted in the elimination of approximately a dozen positions.” Gary Knell, Workshop c.e.o. for almost 12 years, announced last fall that he would take the helm at NPR in January (Current, Oct.

Three high-profile organizations have announced a campaign to urge PBS and WGBH to drop the sponsor Chick-fil-A from the children’s show Martha Speaks. In a joint statement Wednesday (May 23), the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Public Citizen and Corporate Accountability International said that in 2011, 56 million Chick-fil-A Kids’ Meals were distributed in Martha Speaks co-branded bags, and those meals “can contain as much as 670 calories, 29 grams of fat, and 25 grams of sugar.” The groups also said the Chick-fil-A sponsorship “marks the first time advertising before and after a PBS children’s show has run simultaneously with an in-restaurant promotion.”

Julie Philipp, news director at WXXI in Rochester, N.Y., got out from behind her desk last week — to dangle off the side of a downtown building for an “Audio Postcard.” The adventure was part of the local Boy Scout Council’s 21 Stories for Scouts fundraising event. Participants collecting more than $1,000 get to rappel down 309 feet, or 21 stories, from the roof of the First Federal Building. The council invites members of the media to participate the day before. “I thought it would be a unique way for WXXI News to highlight the commitment we’ve made to covering issues related to at-risk youth in our community,” Philipp told Current.”I

Broadcasts of Saint Paul Sunday, a weekly classical pubradio offering from American Public Media, are ending after 32 years. The last new episode was produced in 2007. APM notified client stations that the last show would air June 24. In its memo, APM said the program was launched in 1980 “on a very simple premise: we wanted to give listeners intimate access to how music was created at the very highest level.” Host Bill McGlaughlin introduced listeners to “the classical world’s absolute top talent,” APM said, including Renée Fleming, the Emerson String Quartet, Chanticleer and Anne-Sophie Mutter. The program earned a George Foster Peabody Award in 1995.

In an interview with Time magazine, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney once again targets PBS for funding elimination. His comments echo previous statements last December. “I’ve laid out a whole series of areas that I will reduce spending,” the former Massachusetts governor tells Time reporter Mark Halperin. “And I’m going to eliminate some programs that I think are duplicative and unnecessary. I’ve talked about Amtrak subsidies, subsidies to PBS, subsidies to the endowment for the arts, to the endowment for the humanities.” “I like PBS,” Romney says. “I’d like my grandkids to be able to watch PBS. But I’m not willing to borrow money from China, and make my kids have to pay the interest on that, and my grandkids, over generations, as opposed to saying to PBS, look, you’re going to have to raise more money from charitable contributions or from advertising.”

KVCR President Larry Ciecalone, who had been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation in March, has resigned, reports the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif. Ciecalone has led the dual licensee serving San Bernardino and Riverside counties since 2003. His resignation is effective May 31. In late March, Ciecalone had been placed on leave pending investigation of an undisclosed matter. “No reason was given for Ciecalone’s paid leave last March, nor his reasons for resigning,” the newspaper noted.

WASHINGTON — A competition that gives middle- and high-school students a taste of what it takes to develop educational video games awarded more than $80,000 in prizes to top contestants in the second annual STEM Video Game Challenge. In a crowded auditorium full of proud parents and jubilant children, a series of distinguished speakers congratulated winners during the May 21 awards ceremony and spoke about their personal connections to video games and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education. Youth winners await their turn on stage. “Everybody should be proud of these young people,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who serves on the “E-Tech Caucus” in Congress, which advocates for educational software.

A portion of a lawsuit brought by WNET, PBS and several other broadcasters against online television startup Aereo has been dismissed, reports Reuters. U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan turned down a claim of unfair competition but left intact a copyright infringement argument. Aereo, backed by billionaire media magnate Barry Diller, launched in New York City in March, charging subscribers $12 a month to stream over-the-air content to cellphones, tablet computers and other devices. Broadcasters filed the lawsuit that month.

A Knight Foundation-backed magazine, in print and digital versions, is part of the Voice of San Diego’s new membership program. Seem backwards? After all, Voice of San Diego is a web-based nonprofit news organization. However, said Scott Lewis, c.e.o., said on the Knight website, “We put several stories out every day. Some longer and more in-depth than others. When we gather them all up over the course of a month, we have reason to be proud. At the same time, not everyone can keep up with the daily chaos of news, let alone read some of our longer pieces.” Lewis heard about MagCloud, a self-service publishing platform, and pitched the idea to Knight.

Today, Frontline and nonprofit investigative newsroom ProPublica released their long-awaited collaboration on the issue of poor accountability and safety among cellphone carriers and the subcontractors they hire to maintain and build the nation’s over 280,000 cell tower sites. The investigation found that 50 cell tower climbers have died between 2003 and 2011. The ProPublica article details how lackluster safety regulations, the overbearing push for cell tower expansion, and a culture of recklessness have caused this boom in accidental fatalities. In addition, the investigation found that many cell phone carriers deliberately hide behind layers of subcontractors, thereby recusing themselves from most liability and preventing easy linkage between cell carriers and the deaths.

June 27 is the endowment’s deadline for receiving proposals for the project, Bridging Cultures through Film: International Topics. The endowment expects to award five grants, including development grants of up to $75,000 each and production grants of up to $800,000 each. Resulting nonfiction programs, ranging from a broadcast hour to feature-length, will take an international look at ethical, religious, historical and other issues, biographies and histories. Nonprofits, governments and private or public institutions of higher education are eligible. Info: tinyurl.com/NEH-bridging. Contact: NEH Division of Public Programs, 202-606-8269 or publicpgms@neh.gov.

Public Radio International has received a two-year, $1.6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support reporting on health and development on its program PRI’s The World. The funds will help PRI “further extend the reach and impact of coverage around critical issues affecting the world’s poorest nations, such as maternal health and infant mortality; water, sanitation and hygiene; vaccines and immunization; infectious and chronic diseases; and food security and nutrition,” the producer said in a press release. The release also alludes to PRI’s development of “an ambitious strategic framework” to step up engagement on digital platforms around The World’s reporting.

The Public Radio Program Directors Association is asking public radio programmers for help in developing a “Programmers Manifesto,” a collaborative project that will build on and update the organization’s work on defining public radio’s “Core Values” for today’s media environment. In a blog post, PRPD says the project is inspired by The Cluetrain Manifesto, a landmark 1999 work about the Web’s disruptive effect on traditional business models and practices. PRPD members are asked to “document and share their beliefs and aspirations for serving significant audiences on line, on the air, during fundraising, and in their communities.” The process, which will unfold over the next few months, will result in “a modern vision of public service,” says Arthur Cohen, president of PRPD.

Tomorrow the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., will host “From Broadcast to Broadband: New Theories of the Public Interest in Wireless.” In two panel discussions, running from 9:30 a.m to noon Eastern time, communications wonks will discuss the role of the public interest in broadband and wireless technologies. Panelists will include Joaquin Alvarado, formerly the senior v.p. for digital innovation at American Public Media, and Andy Schwartzman, senior v.p. and policy director for the Media Access Project. New America will provide a live web stream on the event’s web page and an archived video after the panel concludes.

The Ford Foundation, a longtime supporter of public broadcasting, has given a grant of $1 million to the Los Angeles Times, which will expand its coverage of beats including immigration and ethnic communities in Southern California, the southwest U.S. border and Brazil. A Ford Foundation spokesman told the newspaper that as media organizations face challenges funding reporting through traditional means, “we and many other funders are experimenting with new approaches to preserve and advance high-quality journalism.” In a column on the announcement, Adam Clayton Powell, senior fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy notes that Ford used to give NPR “six and seven-figure grants each year for international news coverage and reporting of certain topics.”