With $2.5 million from the Knight Foundation, Public Radio Exchange will rev up a new Public Media Accelerator next year to assist new public-media journalism projects with seed money, mentoring and help in finding funds and investors. Knight stresses the mentoring. After experience with more than 200 media projects, Knight has found that the most successful have been “nurtured through outside advice and expertise,” said foundation veep Michael Maness. PRX hasn’t set priorities for projects, chief exec Jake Shapiro told Current, but he expects they will tend to develop software tools, especially mobile apps. Shapiro sees benefits for public media organizations that get their hands geeky with the tech side, as PRX did, instead of outsourcing the work, he wrote on PBS MediaShift’s Idea Lab.

When Gary Knell officially started work this month as NPR’s president, he probably found no shortage of ideas about what he should do with an organization that has recently survived bad headlines, turmoil at the top and a near-death experience with federal funding cuts. But he would be well advised to ignore some of those recommendations. Some say NPR should simply forgo federal funding, which accounts for 2 percent of its annual budget. Receiving even that small amount, they say, leaves NPR vulnerable to accusations of political bias in its news coverage. How much easier it would be, they argue, if public radio would give up the federal dollars and ignore the occasional outbreaks of criticism from Capitol Hill.

Viewers on each end of the political spectrum, conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, have favorite PBS shows, according to a yearlong study by the Experian Simmons consumer research firm. It wanted to see what programs indexed highest and lowest among those viewers. Masterpiece was the third-highest indexing show among liberal Democrats, behind only The Daily Show and Colbert Report, says the Washington Post, which noted, “Masterpiece indexes at a whopping 234, which means a Masterpiece viewer is 134 percent more likely to be a liberal Democrat than the average adult viewer.” Three shows on PBS also rank in the conservative Republican index: This Old House, New Yankee Workshop and Antiques Roadshow.

NJTV will use four “content bureaus” located at universities across New Jersey, the pubcasting network announced today (Dec. 9). Brookdale Community College, Rowan University, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey and William Paterson University be equipped with robotic cameras, provide student footage and interviews, and serve as a remote location for NJTV reporters, reports NJBIZ.

A provision to give the Federal Communications Commission authority to compensate broadcasters for giving up spectrum was included in a House Republican end-of-the-year legislation package released today (Dec. 8), reports Broadcasting & Cable. It provides up to $3 billion for relocation expenses to broadcasters for being moved to another channel or sharing channels after spectrum repacking, and gives the FCC until 2021 to reclaim and auction the spectrum, a necessary move as the increase in wireless devices demand more bandwidth. 

Latino Public Broadcasting today (Dec. 9) announced 16 newly funded programs as part of its 2011 Public Media Content Fund for Latino-themed broadcast, new media and community engagement projects. Films include Children of Giant by producer/director Hector Galan, which exposes the events and emotions that transformed small town Marfa, Texas, site of George Steven’s epic film Giant, during and beyond Anglo-Latino segregation; Farewell, Ferris Wheel from producer/director Jamie Sisley, a look at the American carnivals that are endangered by immigration restrictions on workers; and Tales From a Ghetto Klown, producer/director Benjamin DeJesus, which profiles actor and playwright John Leguizamo and his unorthodox rise to fame.

A proposed merger of Alaska pubcasting stations not only fell apart over the summer, but also has now created a larger rift: KUAC-TV in Fairbanks, which participated in the AlaskaOne consortium with Juneau and Bethel stations since 1995, will withdraw from that as of July 1, 2012, according to a press release from KUAC licensee University of Alaska Fairbanks. “Interior Alaska’s public television station is returning to its roots,” the statement said. The Alaska Public Broadcasting Service, corporate entity for AlaskaOne, last month approved a motion to merge its centralized feed with Anchorage-based KAKM, run by Alaska Public Telecommunications Inc.

As expected, the San Mateo (Calif.) Community College announced today (Dec. 7) it is seeking a buyer for public broadcaster KCSM-TV. In June, the board said the sale was due to the station’s projected $800,000 structural deficit. Independent Public Media, a nonprofit consortium headed by WYBE founder John Schwarz and Ken Devine, former WNET executive, has already signaled its interest (Current, Oct. 17). Parties may find information and download bid packets from the college district’s purchasing page online. Bids may be filed through Feb. 14, 2012.

Next year’s Public Media Development and Marketing Conference, the annual event organized by pubradio’s Development Exchange, will include a new track for pubTV professionals, produced by PBS, on pledge practices, fundraising and community engagement around children’s programming, and television-specific research. DEI and PBS announced the collaboration in a statement today (Dec. 6). “For the first time, the whole public media family will have the opportunity to focus together on the very best fundraising ideas and practices,” said DEI President Doug Eichten. The partnership “demonstrates the spirit of institutional collaboration that is critical at the national and station levels,” said PBS President Paula Kerger.

CPB announced today that it has awarded Southern California Public Radio in Los Angeles $1.8 million to support the One Nation Media Project, which will focus on reporting and programming for and about Latinos and other people of color in the Los Angeles area. As one element of the project, SCPR will expand The Madeleine Brand Show, its locally produced morning newsmagazine, into a national two-hour show “with a focus on the Latino and other ethnic communities/interests/issues,” according to an SCPR job listing. In addition, SCPR will launch “three distinct online channels,” says the CPB release, each hosted by a dedicated journalist.

Pubcasting stations WHYY and KPCC are two new noncom partners with NBC, effective immediately. The network is making good on its promise to join forces with nonprofit news organizations, made as part of NBC Universal’s merger with Comcast approved by the Federal Communications Commission in January. The New York Times is reporting that NBC stations in Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles will partner with noncom outlets in those cities, and all 10 NBC stations will collaborate with ProPublica, the investigative journalism organization. NBC in Chicago will work with The Chicago Reporter blog and magazine. In Philadelphia, NBC is partnering with with NPR station WHYY and its community site NewsWorks.

NET (Nebraska Educational Telecommunications) is exploring a partnership with KVNO/Classical 90.7 at University of Nebraska at Omaha, reports the Lincoln Journal-Star. “This is not a wholesale swap or merger here,” NET General Manager Rod Bates told the paper. “That would be too dramatic. We’re trying to build a relationship.” First up is a programming collaboration. Afternoon Concerts and Classics by Request, both hosted by NET Radio personality Lora Black, will be simulcast on NET Radio and KVNO beginning early next year. KVNO will then provide NET Radio with its overnight classical music production; NET Radio currently subscribes to a service for overnight shows.

Acorn Media, a leading U.S. distributor of British programming on DVD, now is offering a streaming video Web site of classic British shows — a genre once considered just PBS’s territory. For $24.99 a year, subscribers to Acorn TV get full seasons of 10 shows at a time, rotating every week, reports the Washington Post. “Acorn TV is similar to Netflix streaming,” the paper notes, “but with more-plentiful pleasing accents and less rage from customers about confusing practices.” The service launched in July and expanded in September. Acorn Media Group started in 1984 as Atlas Video in the suburban Washington, D.C.,

Well, American Public Media’s former president Bill Kling was right — Garrison Keillor wasn’t serious about retiring in spring 2013, as Keillor had announced earlier this year. Keillor told the Sioux City Journal on Dec. 1 that he “thought about” leaving his hosting duties at A Prairie Home Companion, “and then it panicked me . . . which got me to rethinking the whole brilliant idea. The show is going well. I love doing it. Why quit?” Keillor has become notorious for startling fans of the popular show by talking about leaving, then changing his mind. In March, Kling had dismissed Keillor’s statement as a publicity stunt, intended to tease supporters and bring new contributors into the Prairie Home Companion talent mix.

Mike Newell, a longtime producer at Iowa Public Television, died Thursday night (Dec. 1) at Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines, after suffering a heart attack the previous week and undergoing surgery on Nov. 29, reports the Des Moines Register. He was 66. “Iowa Public Television’s public affairs series Iowa Press lost its leader this week when longtime coordinating producer Mike Newell passed away,” the station said on its website. “For the past 20 years, Mike’s hands were at the helm of this program, steering a steady course through the sometimes murky waters of public policy and politics. While you never heard his voice on Iowa Press, he was undoubtedly the heart and soul of the program.”