WQED in Pittsburgh is launching what looks to be the first pubTV multicast channel in the nation dedicated to all pledge programming, all the time. WQED Showcase “will include local pledge programming that has previously aired on the main channel, as well as national pledge programming that we were not able to schedule on the main channel due to space limitations,” George Hazimanolis, spokesperson for the Pittsburgh station, told Current. And, yes, “viewers will be asked to make a contribution to WQED just like on any other pledge program,” Hazimanolis said. The new channel “will be another way for WQED to maximize revenue so that we can continue to fulfill our core educational mission to this community,” said Deborah Acklin, station president, in a statement.

Que Pasa!, a talk show in English and Spanish on WGVE, a pubradio station owned and operated by the Gary (Indiana) Community School Corporation, has been pulled from the air, reports WBEZ in Chicago. The host is crying censorship; management says it’s a dispute over scheduling. Lisette Guillen-Gardnerhas co-hosts the show with her mother, Maria Guillen. It runs from 8 to 9 a.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, serving northwest Indiana’s Latino population. “Last Thursday (Sept. 15) was our last show. We were surprised to learn that would be our last show,” Guillen-Gardner told WBEZ. Guillen-Gardner said Gary schools Superintendent Myrtle Campbell and schools spokesperson Sarita Stevens, who is also WGVE’s station manager, spoke to her before a show in late August featuring Tony Bennett, Indiana’s superintendent of schools.

In celebration of World Cafe’s 20th anniversary on pubradio, Philadelphia Brewing Co. has created Broadcaster Brown Ale. ” Just like World Cafe,” it says, “Broadcaster Brown Ale is both satisfying, and contemplative; with a silky malt sweetness, the complex flavors of kilned German malts, and the dry finish of our American hops.” The brewer worked with the WXPN show’s creator David Dye to get the “medium-bodied, deep red-brown hued ale” just right. It’ll be available on tap around Philly in October. Dye “will be out and about at various bars to share a pint with you,” the station says, and is putting together special music mixes to play in those venues.

Jamie Widdoes, a director of CBS’ hit sitcom Two and a Half Men, is returning to his hometown of Pittsburgh to produce an as-yet untitled WQED talk show about female empowerment and girls’ self-esteem beginning in December 2011, the station announced Thursday (Sept. 22). It’s the first program of the new Pittsburgh Innovative Media Incubator, a co-venture between WQED and the Steeltown Entertainment Project, a local nonprofit advocating to make the region an entertainment production center. The incubator is funded by a grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation. The show will also be offered in syndication to broadcasters such as the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Patricia Cahill, who was just elected vice-chairman of the CPB Board, is announcing her retirement from KCUR-FM in Kansas City. She’ll step down next summer. Cahill has run the station since 1987.

The latest Knight Community Information Challenge Grant winners include a pubcasting station and public access channel. North Country Public Radio, based in Canton, N.Y., gets $302,000 to expand its broadcast and digital operations and encourage residents to contribute content. And the Long Beach (Calif.) Community Foundation receives $327,000 to bring public access TV back to the community, and create hyper-local, multilingual programming on multiple platforms. The Challenge is part of the foundation’s Media Innovation Initiative, a $100 million-plus effort to help meet America’s increasing information needs. Knight Foundation begins accepting applications for the next round of the Challenge on Jan.

  The political turmoil that beset public radio within the past year doesn’t appear to have shaken the esteem that core listeners and contributors hold for NPR or public radio as a whole, according to research results presented Sept. 20 during the Public Radio Program Directors conference in Baltimore. In an online survey of more than 27,000 pubradio members and listeners conducted this summer, 80 percent of respondents disagreed with a survey statement that public radio has been treated fairly by Congress during this year’s budget debates. More than 70 percent also disagreed with one of the criticisms that political foes lobbed at NPR and its stations — that public radio is for “elites.”

Connecticut Public Television and WNPR have signed an agreement with the Hartford, Conn., school system to establish an educational center at the network’s headquarters to provide a “hands-on” immersion lab for the city’s Journalism and Media Academy, reports the Hartford Courant. Starting with the 2013-14 school year, the academy’s 100 seniors will take all of their classes in the new Learning Lab in the CPBN building. In addition to core subjects, students will learn how to produce TV, radio and online media. Hartford faculty will teach the classes, said Superintendent Christina Kishimoto, although the network’s broadcasting and media professionals will “co-teach” for media instruction.

WUCF-TV, the new PBS primary station in the Orlando market, doesn’t have a monetary goal for its first fundraising drive, which began Sept. 15 and ends Sept. 25. “We’re asking 10,000 viewers to contact us via email or letter,” spokesman Grant Heston told the Orlando Sentinel. “If part of that is a donation, that’s great. Being brand new, we want to get to know how this works.” WUCF, a collaboration between the University of Central Florida in Orlando and Brevard Community College in Cocoa, went on the air July 1 after former primary WMFE-TV announced it would be sold to religious broadcaster Daystar (Current, April 18).

Kevin Klose, a former NPR president, is stepping down from his position as dean at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, a spot he has held since February 2009. In a memo to colleagues also posted on Jim Romenesko’s Poynter Institute blog, Klose said he’s returning to the classroom as of July 1, 2012, “where the work of educating the next generation of journalists challenges us all.” Klose served as president of NPR from 1998 to 2008. He’s also a past president of the NPR Foundation and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, as well as an ex-Washington Post reporter.

Ellen Weiss, the NPR News chief who took the network’s blame for the Juan Williams affair, will join the Center for Public Integrity as its executive editor as of Oct. 3, the watchdog newsroom announced today. The center is headed by one of her predecessors at NPR, Bill Buzenberg. “Ellen Weiss is one of the best and most creative news executives in the business,” he said in a news release. CPI hired three other top editors including Christine Montgomery, the center’s new chief digital officer, who was managing editor of PBS.org for two years while it expanded and then sharply reduced its online news plans.

Though CPB and many other relatively small federal outlays could get whacked or seriously trimmed in the forthcoming scrum of Supercommittee deficit maneuvering, a Democrat-controlled Senate Appropriations subcommittee yesterday approved an increase in the advance appropriation for 2014. If CPB survives ’til then, it would receive $445 million, the same as appropriated for fiscal years 2012 and 2013 but $6 million below President Obama’s request, according to CPB. (This year’s sum is $430 million.) The action was taken in subcommittee markup of the Labor/HHS/Education appropriations bill for next year. In addition, CPB would receive $6 million for digital projects, and the Department of Education would receive $27.2 million for Ready to Learn.

A one-day Vermont Public Radio fundraiser for Hurricane Irene relief Sept. 13 raised more than $628,000 for the Vermont Disaster Relief Fund. More than 4,600 listeners called to pledge support or donated online during the 16-hour campaign. “We know that our listeners are community-minded, but this outpouring of support went beyond anything we imagined,” said VPR President Robin Turnau. The hurricane rampaged through Vermont Aug. 28. VPR received a special one-day waiver from the FCC to allow it to raise funds for an organization other than itself. The network’s news staff is still posting followup stories on its special hurricane blog.

Bruce Ramer was re-elected chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Board of Directors at its meeting today (Sept. 20) at headquarters in Washington, D.C. The new vice-chair is Patricia Cahill, general manager of KCUR-FM in Kansas City, who joined the board in August 2009.

“Sentinels of the Seas,” an episode of WPBT2’s Changing Seas, has won a 2011 Communications Award in the Film/Radio/TV category, from the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine. The episode explained what Florida’s bottlenose dolphins reveal about the health of coastal waters and human exposure to chemical contaminants. The awards recognize excellence in reporting and communicating science, engineering and medicine. Other public media finalists included Richard Harris and Alison Richards for “Gulf Spill May Far Exceed Official Estimates” on NPR; Richards, Christopher Joyce, Jon Hamilton and Joe Palca for “The Human Edge: Finding Our Inner Fish” also on NPR; and Gary Hochman, Steve Reich and Paula Apsell for “Secrets Beneath the Ice” on Nova.