The Jefferson Public Radio Foundation is headed to mediation with the pubstation’s licensee, Southern Oregon University, according to the Mail Tribune in Medford, Ore. A recent university audit cited a potential conflict of interest in Ron Kramer’s role overseeing both the station and its fundraising group. It also said the foundation’s debt ratio was “twice as high recommended,” the newspaper reported, and that the foundation’s $7 million project to restore several buildings in downtown Medford could strain its resources. The foundation board met in a two-hour executive session Friday night (March 23) before voting to enter into mediation with the university, which SOU President Mary Cullinan had requested.

In an essay on their Public Affairs Television website, veteran pubTV newsmen Bill Moyers and Michael Winship discuss the importance of the diverse voices on Independent Lens and P.O.V. to the PBS programming schedule. Since the network shifted the shows from Tuesdays to Thursdays, Independent Lens has suffered ratings and carriages losses. Moyers and Winship are encouraged that PBS has signaled it is willing to consider other timeslots for the programs, and that the network told the New York Times it is “fully committed to independent films and the diversity of content they provide.” “That can quickly be demonstrated,” the two write, “by reversing a bad decision and returning to a national core time slot the independent documentaries created — often at real financial sacrifice — by the producers and filmmakers whose own passion is to reveal life honestly and to make plain, for all to see, the realities of inequality and injustice in America.”

New York philanthropist Henry van Ameringen is donating $1 million to In The Life Media to honor of the 20th anniversary of pubTV’s longtime gay newsmagazine In The Life, he writes in a column today (March 23) on Huffington Post. He writes of first seeing the program in 1992: “At the time, the show was more focused on entertainment; it wasn’t until a few years later that it became a newsmagazine. The simple fact that there was a television program, airing on public television stations around the country, that represented LGBT people in such a genuine and accurate manner was stunning, and even more so that it had been produced by a tiny staff on a threadbare budget.”

Peters D. Willson, longtime friend of Current founder Jim Fellows and the executor of his estate, has penned a tribute to the paper’s outgoing Managing Editor Steve Behrens, and notes: “Now more than ever public broadcasting needs Current’s independent news perspective and the public forum it offers for sharing and debating opinion and commentary about the future of public media.” In 1977, Fellows persuaded Behrens to join him at the National Association of Educational Broadcasters to design and launch Current.

Apparently This American Life host Ira Glass is no fan of the PBS hit Downton Abbey. In an interview with Duke University’s Chronicle, Glass says he watched three episodes of the Edwardian costume drama on Masterpiece, “and wanted to punch someone in the face for the complete and utter bulls**t that it is. It’s the most romantic, y’know, romantic piece of tripe, it just made me want to kick somebody.”

An Oregon University System audit of Jefferson Public Radio and its fundraising organization is citing a potential conflict of interest in having Ron Kramer as executive director of both JPR and the JPR Foundation, according to the Mail Tribune in Medford, Ore. Jim Beaver, SOU spokesman, said university administrators agree with the recommendation to have two separate executive director positions and hope to have a plan in place to do so by the end of June. Kramer denies there is a conflict, and told the paper that his oversight of the foundation was a condition of his employment with SOU. Kramer also questioned the timing of the audit and its conclusions.

The BBC has selected American Public Media as the exclusive distributor of its World Service to pubradio in the United States, ending its distribution relationship of more than 20 years with Public Radio International. The BBC told Current today (March 23) that the new five-year contract begins July 1. “I appreciate the support that Public Radio International have given to BBC World Service in the U.S. over the years,” said the BBC’s Richard Porter, controller, English, in a statement, “and we will continue to work with them on our co-productions, including The World.”

The FCC is questioning the Daystar religious broadcasting network’s qualifications to purchase two public television stations, citing lack of sufficient proof of local control and educational programming. A March 13 FCC letter provides insight into the commission’s nearly yearlong delay in approving the sale of WMFE-TV in Orlando, which the station canceled last week, and could affect the pending purchase of former PBS affiliate KWBU in Waco, Texas. The Daystar Television Network was the buyer in both cases — and also bid on KCSM-TV in San Mateo, Calif. In the letter, Barbara Kreisman, chief of the video division of the FCC’s media bureau, addressed the two local entities involved in those sales: The Community Educators of Orlando, and Community Television Educators of Waco.

In reaction to recent pressure from the indie film community following Current’s story on PBS’s move of Independent Lens and P.O.V. from Tuesdays to Thursdays, the network has agreed to consider shifting the indie showcases to another night, reports the New York Times. An open letter to PBS from Kartemquin Films now has several hundred signatories. And PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler weighed in on the controversy in his column Thursday (March 22). His concerns as a PBS viewer, he writes, “are two-fold. One is that the series not be marginalized if that is what the schedule change winds up doing.

Two former Libertarian candidates for Congress are suing pubcaster WNIN in Evansville, Ind., contending they were wrongly excluded from a debate at the station, according to the Evansville Courier & Press. Other defendants named in the suit are the League of Women Voters of Southwestern Indiana, the president of that organization, and the national League. John W. Cunningham and Edward Gluck are asking for $450,750 in damages. The lawsuit centers on a Oct. 26, 2010, debate at the WNIN-PBS9 studio between one Republican and one Democratic candidates for the 8th District seat.

To Karen Everhart, recently appointed interim managing editor of Current: The announcement that the March 12 issue of Current is the last to be published under the editorship of Steve Behrens brought back so many memories for me from the last 35 years. In 1977, Steve and I were colleagues and he was the editor of the in-house publication of the nonprofit where we both worked when I introduced him to my good friend Jim Fellows. Jim loved smart and talented people, and he soon became a fan of Steve’s many journalistic talents. So, it wasn’t too surprising for me when, a couple of years later, Jim persuaded Steve to join him at the National Association of Educational Broadcasters to design and launch a new newspaper covering exclusively the field of public broadcasting. 

Sunni Khalid, managing news editor at WYPR-FM in Baltimore, is gone from the station after more than nine years, reports The Baltimore Sun. His last day was March 16. According to the newspaper, Khalid “had been on probation in February for comments he posted on the Facebook page of a friend questioning the influence of Israel on American politics.”

Amie Klempnauer Miller, who has written proposals that raised more than $20 million, will mentor a pilot group of AIR producers this spring. Application deadline: April 18. The Development Exchange (DEI) and the Association of Independents in Radio are jointly organizing the four-hour training session for the first time. Miller, who is DEI’s foundation support coordinator, will help producers find their way, identifying and building relationships with possible funders and designing case statements specifically for them. Info online. Contact: Erin Mishkin, erin@airmedia.org, 617-825-4400.

NPR News announced today (March 21) that it has hired CNN v.p.and deputy bureau chief Edith Chapin to lead its foreign desk, starting May 14. It also promoted Didi Schanche to deputy senior foreign editor; she has been an editor with that unit since 2001. Chapin will oversee correspondents based in 17 bureaus worldwide as well as a team of editors and reporters in Washington, D.C. Chapin has spent her career at CNN, beginning in 1987. Based in London in the early 1990s, she covered events in Bosnia, Rwanda, Zaire and Ireland. For seven years she directed editorial coverage from CNN’s New York bureau, including its reporting on 9/11 and its aftermath.

Aereo, an new online TV service supported by media mogul Barry Diller, has filed a countersuit against PBS, WNET and several other broadcasters who are claiming copyright infringement, according to Reuters. The suit, filed Tuesday (March 20) in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, also includes plaintiffs Fox, Univision, and WPIX, a CW station in New York City. It comes about a week after Aereo filed a similar suit in response to a complaint from ABC, CBS, NBCUniversal and NBCUniversal’s Telemundo. The new service, which launched this month in New York City, says it offers “proprietary remote antenna and DVR” technology “that consumers can use to access network television on web-enabled devices.”