The licensee for KCSM-TV is preparing to sell the California public broadcasting station. The board of the San Mateo County Community College District on Wednesday (June 8) “directed staff to prepare putting KCSM on the market,” according to the San Jose Mercury News. The board cited the station’s projected $800,000 structural deficit. “I’m disappointed,” KCSM General Manager Marilyn Lawrence said. “The station has been a legacy to the college. It’ll be a great loss to the community.” The television station already has drawn interest from four possible buyers and could sell for around $5 million, Lawrence said. 

Tom and Ray Magliozzi of Car Talk got out of the garage and headed for the Charles River for WBUR’s annual Spring Festival at the Community Rowing Inc. boathouse in Boston on June 5. The two, known on the air as Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers, turned up as boat captains; above, Capt. (Ray) Clack signs autographs. Some 1,000 fans turned out to meet the Car Talk guys and other WBUR celebs such as On Point’s Tom Ashbrook. The boathouse set a record for the day, teaching more than 500 persons how to row. (Image: WBUR)

Orlando’s WMFE-TV this week said in comments to the Federal Communications Commission that a delay in its sale to religious broadcaster Daystar “would be devastating,” and that its “cash reserves are limited and most have already been consumed” to keep the pubTV station running over the past few months, reports the Orlando Sentinel. The FCC has received 525 objections to the impending sale. Read WMFE-TV’s “Opposition to Informal Objections” here (PDF).

Maine Public Broadcasting Network got very good news late Thursday (June 9) when the state legislature’s Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee voted unanimously to provide the pubcasters with $1.95 million for fiscal 2012, which Gov. Paul LePage (R) proposed eliminating. The committee also recommended a slightly reduced total, $1.75 million, for FY13. “It has been truly gratifying to see the support from so many of you who believe in MPBN’s contribution to the very fabric of all of Maine,” said Jim Dowe, network president, in a letter to supporters on MPBN’s website. “Your many and diverse voices were heard loud and clear in Augusta!

As in Houston, a student station in Nashville will move from broadcast to the Web, and the local pubradio station has doubled its over-the-air capacity, moving to separate news and classical channels. Vanderbilt University’s campus media group, majority-controlled by students, opted to receive $3.35 million, selling its 91.1 MHz channel to Nashville Public Radio, the Tennessean reported. The buyer will be able to go all-news with WPLN and play music on the acquired frequency, resolving a conflict that has pained the mixed-format station, General Manager Rob Gordon told the Tennesseean: “We’d have people call in and say, ‘It’s Saturday afternoon, I was wondering if Mubarak had resigned, and I turn on WPLN and you’re playing opera.’”

Applications are now being accepted for the 2011 Producers Workshop at WGBH, part of the CPB/PBS Producers Academy. It’s open to producers who want to create content for pubcasting, either through a  station or independently. Application deadline is July 8 for the October workshop in Boston. Want to know more? Check out what alums are doing on the Producers Workshop Online.

WHYY overcame a deficit of $3.9 million to end the last fiscal year with a $1.7 million surplus, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. WHYY’s new audited financial statement shows that the station received $8.9 million in program contracts and other project revenue in fiscal year 2010, $4.9 million more than the previous year. Meanwhile, personnel and fund-raising costs dropped — including station President William Marrazzo’s base compensation, which fell from $506,157 in FY09 to $448,161 in FY10.

In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, longtime PBS newsman Bill Moyers sounds a warning. “Public broadcasting, which remains a place that treats you as a citizen and not a consumer, is … threatened,” he said. “We must defend it. We must call it back to its heights. We must continue to support it, because without it, we’re at the mercy, totally, of corporate power.”

“Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age,” a report on the future of media in America from the Federal Communications Commission, was released today (June 9). Here (PDF) is the section on public broadcasting. It notes that while PBS “airs some of the best journalistic documentaries on TV,” public television “has placed a much smaller emphasis on local news.” An FCC analysis of Tribune Media Services Data shows that 94 percent of noncom stations air less than 30 minutes of local news daily. It also said there are “significant financial obstacles standing in the way of more local public TV news and information programming.”

WLRN in Miami is dropping use of the Florida Public Radio Network in protest of Gov. Rick Scott’s decision to end all funding to public broadcasters in the state — except to WFSU, which will still receive $1.8 million for the legislative-focused Florida Channel. John LaBonia, g.m. of WLRN, says the station will instead report on the state government by joining the combined bureau in Tallahassee created by the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald. “The governor zeroed out public broadcasting because he’s calling it a special interest,” LaBonia told the Times. “When you single out one station and give to it but nobody else, that’s the definition of a special interest.”

The Senate Commerce Committee voted 21 to 4 today (June 8) to authorize incentive auctions to compensate broadcasters that give up spectrum for wireless broadband. It’s part of a larger effort to fund an emergency communications network. If it becomes law, the legislation will also compensate broadcasters who retain their spectrum but are “repacked” to make larger, contiguous swaths of vacated spectrum available for wireless (Current, “Spectrum talk at NETA: One ominous session,” Jan. 24, 2011; also Feb. 8, 2010). The bill must now pass the full Senate and move to the Republican-controlled House. The Association of Public Television Stations told Current in a statement: “We have been carefully watching progress on the Hill regarding FCC authority to conduct incentive auctions.

According to research out this week from Knowledge Networks, the number of Americans exclusively using over-the-air (OTA) television broadcasting in their home increased from 42 million to 46 million over the last year. The demographics of broadcast-only households skew towards younger adults, minorities and lower-income families, the report finds. The “2011 Ownership Survey and Trend Report” shows that 15 percent of all U.S. households with TVs use just over-the-air signals; that compares with 14 percent of homes reported as broadcast-only for the previous three years. Knowledge Networks estimates that more than 17 million households, or about 45.6 million consumers, receive television exclusively through broadcast signals.

U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), a longtime pubcasting champion on Capitol Hill, underwent a successful laparoscopic appendectomy at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., on Tuesday (June 7), according to a statement from her office. There were no complications and she is making a full recovery. “Rep. Eshoo will be working from home for the rest of the week,” the statement said.

PBS NewsHour and WTTW just received a $250,000, one-year grant from the Joyce Foundation to collaborate on coverage of Great Lakes region news. The partners will produce segments for the national PBS NewsHour audience; expand local reporting on Chicago Tonight and its digital platforms; and create national arts reports for NewsHour and related arts and culture content for the Online NewsHour. “Public affairs programs such as Chicago Tonight are important, credible platforms for informing the public on policy issues that most local television news programs would not cover,” said Joyce Foundation President Ellen Alberding in a statement. “And by partnering with PBS NewsHour, we know these regional issues will receive national attention.”

A group of community leaders and jazz fans working to preserve music programming on Pittsburgh’s WDUQ, the NPR News and jazz station that has been in ownership limbo for more than a year, asked the FCC to delay the proposed license transfer to Essential Public Media (EPM), according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The expectant owner recently announced plans to convert 90.5 FM into an all-news station and move all but six hours of jazz programming to an HD Radio channel. Evan Pattak, chair of Jazz Lives in Pittsburgh, recently described the format change as “draconian” in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.