Public media outlets scored five honors in this year’s Overseas Press Club Awards, announced today (April 28). — The Lowell Thomas Award for radio news or interpretation of international affairs goes to David Baron, Patrick Cox and Sheri Fink of PRI’s The World for “Rationing Health: Who Lives? Who Decides?” — The Carl Spielvogel Award for international reporting in the broadcast media showing a concern for the human condition goes to Landon van Soest and Jeremy Levine of Transient Pictures for American Documentary / P.O.V. on PBS, “Good Fortune,” on how efforts to eliminate poverty in Africa may be undermining communities.

Three-dimensional sound! That’s what’s coming this weekend on Studio 360 from PRI and WNYC. The show says in a statement that this will be “the exclusive radio debut of 3D sound.” “Until now, only a handful of audiophiles and industry insiders have had access to this emerging technology that makes surround sound seem ancient,” it notes. Host Kurt Anderson will be joined by Edgar Choueiri, a professor of applied physics at Princeton University, whose decades-long passion for recording technology led him to develop a digital filter that produces what he calls “pure stereo.” The filter will work on any stereo recording played through an ordinary pair of speakers.

It was Public Radio Day at the Minnesota State Capitol Wednesday (April 27), as supporters gathered to ask legislators to continue funding Minnesota Public Radio. Standing in the rotunda, MPR founder and president Bill Kling told volunteers to wave their signs, bend the ears of legislators and “give them hell,” according to the Star Tribune. The network is requesting $3.3 million over the next two years.

What do young, up-and-coming public broadcasters dream about? The retirement of older public broadcasters. That’s one of the many topics that Jesse Thorn, host of The Sound of Young America, discussed during an interview today (April 27) on the Nieman Journalism Lab site. As Thorn says: “I have these conversations with public radio people, and they say, ‘Well, you know, Terry Gross is going to retire, and Diane Rehm is going to retire, and Garrison Keillor is going to retire, and they’re need a show with a proven track record to fill in.’ And I’m like, Terry Gross is only like 50!

A campus broadcaster group has called for its constituency to observe a national “Minute of Silence” Thursday at noon, Central time, on Thursday (April 27) to raise awareness of college station closings. “College broadcasters need to do a better job of explaining their value and purpose to the schools and communities they serve,” said Candace Walton, board president of College Broadcasters Inc. In many cases, she said, local programming is replaced by shows piped in from out of town. Houston: Thursday is the day that Rice University student station KTRU-FM in Houston is to be transferred to pubradio station KUHF at the University of Houston.

Want to ask questions of the Space Shuttle Endeavour crew? PBS NewsHour, Google and YouTube are teaming up to give viewers that opportunity. The astronauts will respond to questions submitted by the public in a live interview to be moderated by NewsHour science correspondent Miles O’Brien at 2 p.m. Eastern May 2 (subject to change, of course, as weather or technical problems could delay the launch or interview). Participants may submit video or text questions by following a link at the show’s website, clicking “submit a question” on its YouTube Channel, or sending a Tweet using the hashtag #utalk2nasa.

The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) board, meeting in Washington in two weeks, will probably decide to go ahead with plans to develop a new standard for TV broadcasting in the next five to 10 years, reports TVNewsCheck’s Harry Jessell. That will enable stations to broadcast more programming, more reliably to more places. But for viewers, it probably will also mean another messy transition similar to the June 2009 switch from analog to digital. Jim Kutzner, PBS’s chief engeineer and the ATSC’s next-gen planning committee, says it’s time. “If you don’t start now, many years down the road you’ll be in the same place.”

Frontline is concentrating on repositioning the investigative show for a “post-broadcast future,” reporting and packaging information in a multiplatform, digital-centered way. “As we expand to a year-round series and publish on more platforms — print, broadcast, radio, online — it’s become a whole new game,’’ Executive Producer David Fanning told the Boston Globe in a story today (April 26). They’re working to retool the show’s content for devices like the iPad while breaking news 24/7. “Taking weeks or months to polish a story will no longer be the norm,” the paper noted.

CPB’s older sister in the federal grantmaking world, the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program, died a month ago in the midst of the federal budget upheaval and finally posted its own obit yesterday, saying it will continue to monitor past grants to make sure grantees fulfill their obligations. Ellen Rocco, g.m. of North Country Public Radio, says PTFP gave vital assistance to the regional broadcaster, which now covers the northern, rural one-third of New York state with 33 transmitters: “We simply couldn’t have done it without them,” Rocco wrote in her blog today. “Or, it would have taken several decades longer, so perhaps people in Old Forge or Newcomb or Glens Falls would be waiting until 2020 to hear our station.”

KCET has completed the sale of its historic Sunset Boulevard studio lot to the Church of Scientology for an undisclosed sum. Al Jerome, president of the station that left PBS in January, said it will remain on the property for another year.

PBS and NPR were among news outlets that gave the Storify website a test run before its public launch today (April 25), according to the New York Times. Storify is one of several new sites (including Storyful and  Tumblr) that are developing ways to help journalists sift through online content and publish the most relevant information. NPR Twitter guru Andy Carvin, who recently drew raves from the online world for his social networking coverage of revolutions in the Middle East and northern Africa, first used Storify to cover the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in January. “It quickly evolved into looking at how people were discussing the media coverage surrounding it and its potential political impact,” Carvin, senior strategist on NPR’s social media desk, told the Times.

WNET in New York City has submitted a bid to manage the television side of the New Jersey Network, “and is expecting to hear back next week,” the Wall Street Journal is reporting (third item).The network has been in play since last year (Current, July 6, 2010), when Gov. Chris Christie decided the state must end its $11 million subsidy due to budget constraints. The Journal says other pubcasting stations interested in the network include WHYY in Philadelphia, and local groups such as WBGO, the Newark NPR affiliate. Transfer of NJN has been set for July 1.

    April 25, 2011 PTFP to Shutdown Grant Round CancelledOn April 15, 2011, the President signed Public Law 112-10, The Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act of 2011, which provided no funding for the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program (PTFP) in Fiscal Year 2011. As a result, NTIA will not process applications it has received or award any additional grants under the PTFP. NTIA has begun the orderly shutdown of PTFP and will destroy copies of all applications received for the FY 2011 grant round upon the shutdown of the program. NTIA will continue to monitor PTFP grants it has previously awarded to ensure that taxpayer funds are utilized in the most responsible and efficient manner.

Louisville Public Media’s WFPL is replacing its local midday talk program State of Affairs with Here & Now, the nationally syndicated show from WBUR in Boston. With the switch, WFPL plans to put more emphasis on in-depth news reporting and interviews that can be aired within Here & Now and other national programs. The local news inserts “will be sort of like State of Affairs interviews except they will be a little shorter,” Todd Mundt, chief content officer, tells the Louisville Courier-Journal. “This allows us to delve into topics that maybe wouldn’t get an hour but they’re still important.”

NPR News is reporting new details about detainees from the U.S. military’s Guantanamo Bay prison. A series of investigative reports, mined from secret documents leaked last year to WikiLeaks, were published last night on NPR.org; NPR correspondents Tom Gjelten, Dina Temple-Raston and Margot Williams will report more findings on NPR News programs throughout the day. The New York Times, which received the cache of classified military documents from an anonymous source, shared them with NPR. Huffington Post reports behind-the-scenes details of the race among major news outlets to publish their findings from the WikiLeaks Gitmo documents. Both the New York Times and NPR benefited from the expertise of Margot Williams, a former Times reporter now working in NPR’s investigations unit.