The merger of PBS member station WTVI in Charlotte, N.C., with Central Piedmont Community College was approved Tuesday (March 20) by Mecklenburg County commissioners in a 6-3 vote, reports the Charlotte Observer. “This is not about saving a legal entity, it is about saving local programming that is valuable to our community,” Chairman Harold Cogdell said. “It’s about access to education through programming, as well as those (students) learning to put together that programming at the community college.” The county will provide financial support for the merger of $357,000 to finalize the deal and some $800,000 over the next four years for equipment upgrades.

NPR is applying for a Knight News Challenge grant of $340,000 to develop an app, GeoGraph, based on its successful experiment last year that drove visitors to Seattle’s KPLU.org via geotargeted posts on the NPR Facebook page. “The project could have an impact on how other media companies — and possibly brands — distribute content through Facebook,” noted the Inside Facebook website. In its News Challenge application, NPR said, “We will enable publishing through specific pages on Facebook, starting with NPR’s 2.3 million ‘likers’ in partnership with our 268 member stations. We will build our GeoGraph tool using Facebook’s Graph API.

The State of the News Media 2012, the annual report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, was released Monday (March 19). Among the data of interest to pubmedia stakeholders: A look at how community news is faring (“The future for local and regional sites probably will see increased use of news networks and partnerships — with public radio, local television, even local daily newspapers that may have resisted such alliances just a few years ago”); a section on Native American media (“Mark Trahant, a former president of the Native American Journalists Association, described the state of Native media as ‘a narrative of expansion'”), and an in-depth look at the PBS NewsHour’s ratings, staffing, financial support and content (“The PBS NewsHour differs in its agenda from other television news programs.

NPR Labs has launched an interactive online mapping system, reports Radio World, to give pubradio and pubTV stations a better idea of analog and digital coverage of their signal in cars, on mobile handheld devices and indoor receivers. NPR Labs Senior Technology John Kean told the site that the system allows overlays to compare analog and HD radio at original and higher FM power levels. The DTV coverage, especially for  mobile devices, will predict how well viewers can receive full service and translator systems. The ATSC-M/H coverage was developed with assistance from the Open Mobile Video Coalition. “The demographic data is ideal for gauging and comparing coverage for actual populations, which planners and underwriters may use,” Kean said.

The FCC took another step yesterday toward licensing more low-power FM stations, which advocates for community radio have been awaiting for years. The commission will begin to work through a backlog of thousands of applications for FM translators under a new system that it adopted yesterday, a modified version of a proposal that it floated last summer (Current, July 25, 2011). The translator applications must be processed first because some could conflict with potential LPFM stations. The FCC will toss out FM translator applications in larger markets to make way for LPFMs in those areas while continuing to process applications for translators that would serve less-populous areas.

The Writers Guild of America, East, is urging its 4,000 members to sign Kartemquin Film’s online open letter to PBS protesting the network’s move of indie showcases Independent Lens and P.O.V. from their longtime Tuesday timeslots to Thursday nights (Current, March 12). In an email to its members, WGAE President Michael Winship, senior writer on Moyers & Company, said, “It is imperative that we all support high quality public affairs programming and give it the opportunity to reach the widest audience possible.” “PBS’s decision to move these two programs from their long-held primetime slots is a disservice to viewers and undercuts a critical part of public television’s mission by diminishing the independent voices essential to diversity and democracy,” he wrote.

The website for CPB’s American Graduate initiative relaunched today (March 19) with a new research center, video from pubstations around the country, and connections to more than 600 local partners. The research center includes indices for all 50 states and information on how dropout data is being used to inform and drive action. There are also full-length pubmedia programs and specials focused on the crisis, along with local content such as student stories and teacher town hall meetings and highlights from upcoming broadcast premieres.

Current’s March 12 story on the ratings and carriage drop for Independent Lens, and larger issues associated with programming diverse content, is getting wider attention. The New York Times followed up in an article posted Sunday (March 18). It noted that as of that afternoon, 65 indie producers, including Bill Moyers, Stanley Nelson (screenwriter, director of Freedom Riders) and Alex Gibney (producer, director and a writer of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), had signed Kartemquin Films’ online letter to PBS protesting the scheduling change. (By Monday, that had grown to more than 100.) Also, the International Documentary Association is encouraging producers to sign Kartemquin’s letter.

Want to go to INPUT, the International Public Television Screening Conference, May 7-12 in Sydney? CPB is providing a limited number of travel grants via South Carolina ETV, the U.S. secretariat for the conference. It’s the worldwide forum for professionals involved in television in the public interest. More than 1,000 participants from some 50 countries will meet to discuss the challenges of producing public television, and get a chance to see 80 hours of content from around the world including five programs from the United States. Deadline to request a grant to help with airfare, registration and lodging is April 2; application details here.

Current’s Feb. 27 story on This American Life’s recent breakthroughs with enterprise reporting describes the inspiration behind “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,” the story on Apple factories in China that was later retracted. Glass tells Current that after seeing Daisey’s monologue last October, he was already “editing the radio version in my head” as he left the theater. “I thought [Daisey] was doing something remarkable,” said Glass, “which is taking a fact that we all already know — that these devices we love are made in China in conditions that are probably not so wonderful, and he makes us feel something about it.”

Several public-media reporters are winners of the annual Scripps Howard Awards, recognizing excellence across multiple platforms. Journalists from California Watch and the Center for Investigative Reporting won the Roy W. Howard Award for public service reporting, and $10,000, for “On Shaky Ground,” a 19-month investigation exposing flaws in seismic safety compliance and oversight at public schools; Paul Kiel and Olga Pierce of ProPublica won the William Brewster Styles Award for business and economics reporting, along with $10,000, for exposing the failure of industry and government responses to the foreclosure crisis; and Dan Grech and Kenny Malone of WLRN and The Miami Herald won the Jack R.

The cancellation of the GOP presidential debate set for Monday at Oregon Public Broadcasting may have disappointed a lot of people, but the writers at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart saw it as an opportunity for a wacky segment playing up Portland’s offbeat reputation. Earlier this week, OPB President Steve Bass heard from the show, which originally wanted to cover the debate. But after the event was canceled on Thursday, they still wanted to come — to use the studio set for a segment. What they were planning “actually sounded pretty funny,” Bass said. The concept: Portland was so disappointed that the event wasn’t happening that a Make-a-Wish Foundation-style organization comes in to grant the city’s wish for a debate.

The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that the sale of WMFE-TV in Orlando, in the works for more than a year, has been canceled. “Due to the protracted approval process at the FCC and changes within the broadcast market, WMFE has voluntarily opted out of its current proposed deal to sell WMFE-TV to Community Educators of Orlando, Inc.,” WMFE President Jose Fajardo said in an email to the paper. “WMFE is currently pursuing new options that will prove to be more beneficial to WMFE and to the Central Florida community.” The pending sale, to a local group representing religious broadcaster Daystar, created a scramble for a new primary in the Orlando market last spring (Current, April 18, 2011).

Kartemquin Films, a nonprofit Chicago production company that’s home to such films as The Interrupters and Hoop Dreams, is asking independent filmmakers and pubmedia fans to sign an open letter to PBS protesting the network’s decision to move indie showcases Independent Lens and P.O.V. from their longtime Tuesday night spot to Thursdays, often used by stations for local programming (Current, March 12, 2012). The letter says that independent films “serve a critical function in the public broadcasting ecology. They serve the democratic mission of public broadcasting.” “Public television is not just a popularity contest, or a ratings game,” it says.