Nominations for the 2011 Daytime Emmy Awards were announced today (May 11) and sitting atop the pack is PBS with 57 nods. Kids shows did well: Sesame Street had the third-highest total of nominations for a program, at 16; Electric Company, seven; Between the Lions, four; three each for Biz Kid$, FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman and SciGirls; and two each for The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!, Dinosaur Train and Word Girl. America’s Test Kitchen also got two nods. Awards will be presented on June 19 from Las Vegas. A full list from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences is here.

KPBS Radio in San Diego will go all-news, dropping classical music from its evening and overnight schedule as of May 23. The format change, announced late yesterday, includes an overhaul of its local midday talk show These Days, which will reduce its footprint to a one-hour broadcast and be re-titled Midday Edition. A Friday news round-up will scale back from a stand-alone show to a segment within Midday Edition. The changes position KPBS’s local talk show in the noon timeslot when more listeners tune in, and allow producers to focus the on news of the day, rather than news of yesterday, according to the Voice of San Diego.

When Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell used his line-item veto to slash another $424,000 in state subsidies for public broadcasting, it played well to his Republican conservative base, but his decision to target public radio and television stations was fueled more by political ambitions than fiscal responsibility, according to newspaper columnists who weighed in on the last minute, irrevocable cut. McDonnell’s supporters were “thrilled by the veto,” writes Peter Schapiro of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, but they probably don’t recognize the inconsistencies in McDonnell’s stances on various culture war issues. He pointed to McDonnell’s endorsement of a $4.6 million package of tax breaks for a Stephen Spielberg movie about Abraham Lincoln that will be filmed in Virginia.

Avec Eric on the Create channel is a 2011 James Beard Award winner for on-location television programs. Host Eric Ripert congratulated his team via Twitter from Le Bernardin in New York.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski and former FCC Chair Newt Minow met to discuss the state of the media on Monday (May 9) in Washington, D.C., to mark the 50th anniversary of Minow’s famous “Vast Wasteland” speech. Broadcasting & Cable reports that Minow said that the two words he wished had been remembered from that speech were “public interest.” Genachowski said the speech is still relevant today because it is “a speech for all time,” primarily about the power of technology and communications to connect and empower people. The event, at the National Press Club, was sponsored by George Washington University’s Global Media Institute.

Youth Radio won a Peabody last month for its series on child sex trafficking, and its investigative team would like to show up to claim the honor. The judges called it “a wide-ranging expose of America’s child-sex trade made especially powerful by first-person accounts by teen victims.” But the young journos need $20,000 to travel to the awards presentation in New York. They’re so close — just $5,000 more. And the May 23 ceremony is quickly approaching. Want to help? Click here. And here’s a May 1999 story from Current’s archives on Youth Radio’s early days as a Berkeley, Calif.-based

PBS announced today (May 9) its primetime lineup for this fall, which includes its long-awaited arts initiative and a refocus for WNET’s Need to Know. The network’s first Arts Fall Festival, on the drawing board at least since 2009, will begin Oct. 14 and air Fridays through December with broadcasts of classic and contemporary performances including Women Who Rock, inspired by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum exhibit; Give Me the Banjo, narrated by Steve Martin; and “The Little Mermaid” from the San Francisco Ballet on Great Performances. There’ll also be artist and performer profiles, behind-the-scenes documentaries and mini-films about the art scenes in Miami, San Francisco, Cleveland, Chicago, the Blue Ridge Mountains and other areas of the country.

Public Media Exchange, a consortium of 10 Gulf Coast pubTV and radio stations led by Louisiana Public Broadcasting, has expanded its website content to cover Mississippi River flooding and the aftermath of recent tornadoes that ripped through the South. The GulfWatch section of the website was originally set up last year with a grant from CPB to examine the environmental, economic, legal and social implications of the massive BP oil spill. LPB is now providing live coverage of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s news conferences from the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness center. There are also updates on the potential record flooding along the Mississippi, and disaster resources on flooding and tornadoes.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism today (May 9) released an in-depth study of Web news behavior, using detailed Nielsen audience statistics. The study examines the top 25 news websites in the United States, drilling down into four areas of audience actions: how users get to the top news sites, how long they stay, how deep they go into a site and where they go when they leave. Among the findings: — Even top news sites depend greatly on “casual users,” those persons who visit a few times per month and spend only a few minutes on the site.

A group of young journalists finishing their studies at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism today (May 9) launch FastForwardNews.org, a collection of videos exploring the hurdles and possibilities for reporters in the digital age. In the videos, the 18 aspiring newsmakers examine subjects including the use of “crowdfunding” stories, computer-assisted reporting, content farms, the New York Times’ new paywall, and the response to Al Jazeera English by American cable companies.

The Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) and DEI (Development Exchange Inc.) have received a $923,310, two-year CPB grant to expand their Grant Center (password protected). For the past 18 months the center has focused on identifying new sources of federal and foundation funding for pubcasters; now it will concentrate on assisting CPB-qualified pubTV and radio stations in applying for the support. Meegan White directs the Grant Center, coordinating with Amie Klempnauer Miller. White has been working with APTS since 2000 on federal grant strategy, grant writing and project management. Miller, DEI Foundation development adviser, has more than 20 years of experience in fundraising and has written successful grant proposals raising more than $20 million for public media.

The Organic Consumers Association, an advocacy group that campaigns on food safety and agricultural sustainability issues, launched an online campaign objecting to a May 4 Marketplace story on how to feed the world’s growing population. “The Non-Organic Future,” reported by Adrienne Hill, concluded that organic food movement caters to a niche market, and that the future of farming involves wider acceptance of genetically modified foods and other commercial agricultural practices. The association described the report as a “biased and inaccurate story that sounds as if it was written by its major underwriter: Monsanto Inc,” and urged its members to demand that local pubradio stations drop the program.

The Independent Television Service (ITVS), CPB and PBS announced today (May 9) the Women and Girls Lead initiative, a multi-year engagement campaign to focus independent documentaries on the leadership development of women and girls. CPB alone is investing $2.7 million in the project, in film financing and outreach work, according to the New York Times. More than 50 related docs are scheduled to air on PBS over the next three years. ITVS also will soon announce a deal to bring Half The Sky, the bestseller by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Pulitzer Prize winner Sheryl WuDunn, to PBS in fall 2012 as a four-hour prime-time special on Independent Lens.

Army Lt. Col. Howard Gutin, Ret., a former board chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Texas public broadcaster, died April 27 in Indialantic, Fla. He was 80. Gutin became interested in broadcasting during his 32-year military career, serving as director of the Brooke Army Medical Center TV facility in San Antonio. After his 1979 retirement from the Army he spent seven years producing KLRU’s popular Austin City Limits. He went on to head up the Southwest Texas Public Broadcasting Council. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan appointed him to the CPB Board. Gutin was voted vice chairman in 1986 and was chairman from 1987 to ’89.

Michael Rinzel is the new director of digital content at Classical 105.9 FM WQXR in New York City. Rinzel will oversee the relaunch of WQXR.org, scheduled for this fall, and oversee web content generated through live productions from the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, WQXR’s multiplatform live event venue. Rinzel previously directed digital programming and production VH1’s TV programming at MTV Networks. Prior to VH1, Rinzel directed the digital team at Fuse, a music TV cable channel.