Here’s an interesting roundup on Mashable.com of how various social media sites may have figured into the midterm election results. For instance: Facebook, the world’s largest social network with some 500 million user accounts, reported that in 98 tight races for House seats, 74 percent of candidates with the most Facebook fans won. Looking at 19 Senate races, 81 percent of those with more fans won. The widely read Mashable follows news in social and digital media, technology and web culture.

After trying for years, WQED Multimedia is succeeding in selling its second TV channel, WQEX, the Post-Gazette reported today. Ion Media Networks will buy it for $3 million, the newspaper said. The buyer, which will now have stations in 60 markets, was selected by the WQED Board from “an extensive list of interested parties,” WQED said. Since 2004, the unreserved UHF channel had been leased to Home Shopping Network and then ShopNBC as an outlet for shopping channels; WQED retained three hours a week for the FCC-required children’s programming. But WQED’s attempts to sell the channel were thwarted repeatedly by economic conditions, an unwilling FCC and other factors.

Even in far-flung Fairbanks, Alaska, Red Green pulls in the fans. Nearly 200 lined up Sunday (Nov. 7) at Big Ray’s outfitters store for the chance to greet the popular pubcasting character, reports the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Green, portrayed by actor and writer Steve Smith, continues nationwide on what may be his farewell tour, “Wit and Wisdom 2010.” The Fairbanks newspaper noted that Smith “arrived at Big Ray’s in a septic truck, dubbed the Red Green Limousine, which was provided by Glacier Point Pumping and Thawing.” If you haven’t had a chance to greet Green in person, you can always join the nearly 340,000 fans of his Facebook page.

Today’s top story in the Daily Caller, the news website founded by former conservative TV pundit and PBS host Tucker Carlson, is headlined “Feeling the Heat.” It reports on NPR President Vivian Schiller’s remarks yesterday at a forum on the future of journalism, convened at St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House. Acknowledging that the new Republican House majority may make good its campaign season threats to “defund NPR,” Schiller explained that NPR receives very little of the federal aid distributed by CPB. “For small stations, and even for large stations, that’s a big chunk of their revenue,” she said, according to the Daily Caller‘s account.

The Board of Trustees for the Association of Public Television Stations on Sunday (Nov. 7) approved its search committee’s selection of board member Patrick Butler, chairman of the Maryland Public Television Foundation, as APTS president and chief executive officer. Butler formerly was a speechwriter for President Gerald R. Ford, and a special assistant to Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker (R, Tenn.). He served on the National Council on the the Humanities during the Reagan administration. He chaired the public programs committee of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and recommended funding for projects including Ken Burns’s The Civil War.

This morning’s post regarding recently retired PBS Senior Vice President Pat Hunter’s appointment as the new APTS president was incorrect. Current is removing the post, and regrets the error.

Newspaper columnist Charles McDowell Jr., an 18-year panelist on Washington Week in Review and contributor to several documentaries by Ken Burns, died early this morning (Nov. 5) in Virginia Beach, Va. He was 84. For Burns, McDowell appeared in an interview in The Congress, spoke a character’s voice in The Civil War and did voice and consulting work on Baseball. He was a Washington Week in Review panelist from 1978 to 1996. McDowell also narrated or hosted other PBS programs including Summer of Judgment: The Watergate Hearings, Richmond Memories and For the Record. A memorial service is set for Nov.

A comprehensive post-election analysis from the powerhouse Washington, D.C., law firm Patton Boggs is cautiously optimistic that public broadcasting funding will not be zeroed out, despite recent calls by conservatives to end that support. While the furor over the firing of NPR commentator Juan Williams has generated a flurry of demands to end federal financial backing of the pubcasting system, the Patton Boggs analysts expect the controversy won’t significantly endanger that support. Also, the Republican takeover of the House and increased presence in the Senate don’t necessarily signal a cash catastrophe. ” … [W]e do not expect federal funding for NPR or public broadcasting will be eliminated,” especially because the White House strongly opposes those cuts.

The Poynter Institute’s “Finding the Future of Journalism: Social Media Day” is live streaming until 5 p.m. Eastern today (Nov. 5); watch it here (live blog is directly beneath the schedule, takes a few seconds to load). Matt Thompson, editorial product manager for NPR’s Project Argo, speaks from 1:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. on “From Stories to Streams: The Evolution of the Beat.” In other Poynter news, the institute announced today that is will collaborate with the Online News Association for training, events and digital content next year. ONA members will receive discounts on training, and Poynter will work with the association and the Newseum to promote and archive the Online Journalism Awards.

More than 100 people joined a picket outside Pacifica’s KPFA-FM in Berkeley yesterday (Nov. 4), protesting staff cuts proposed by Pacifica Foundation Executive Director Arlene Englehardt to help close a reported $1.1 million budget shortfall. “We’re here because we understand there is a plan afoot to cut ¼ of the staff at the station,” Sasha Lilley, protest organizer and KPFA co-host, tells the local news website Berkeleyside. “These are difficult times economically but there are alternatives to cutting staff.” The station has lost more than $500,000 in listener support and other funding over three years, KPFA and Pacifica Foundation board member Tracy Rosenberg told the San Jose Mercury News.

State support for Ready to Learn at KEET-TV in Eureka, Calif., was discontinued last month, ending the program that had been a staple of the station’s outreach for 14 years, reports the local Times-Standard. KEET Executive Director Ron Schoenherr told the paper that the cut, which wiped out the vast majority of the program’s budget, came as a shock to him. Station staff are scurrying to replace the $30,000 annual state cash with local donations and grants. California Department of Education Child Development Division Director Camille Maben said the cut was part of a line-item veto by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the $50 million Child Development Block Grant from the federal level.

After a hiatus and reorganization, Integrated Media Association will hold its 2011 conference on March 10 and 11 at the start of the insanely popular South by Southwest Interactive Festival in the preposterously cool Texas capital, IMA said today. The festival begins Friday, March 11 and runs through Tuesday, March 15. Saturday has been designated Public Media Day. IMA, now based at Public Broadcasting Atlanta and headed by Jeanne Ericson, former head of PBA’s Lens on Atlanta portal, which is rebuilding its membership and looking for pubTV webheads to join, is selling IMA/SXSW tickets at a $300 discount to its members through January.

Frontline has re-cut a broadcast interview with an administration official in which one of his responses was used to answer a different question. Every reporter and editor knows that shouldn’t be done, writes PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler. “That’s just fundamental journalistic ethics,” he notes. Both the broadcast and transcript versions of Frontline’s interview with Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, David J. Hayes are online in the latest Ombudsman Column. After the show on the BP oil disaster, The Spill, ran on Oct. 26, Matt Lee-Ashley, communications director at Interior, complained to Frontline. An excerpt: “The version of the Frontline piece that appeared last night does not accurately reflect the transcript of the interview.

Arizona Public Media’s The Desert Speaks, winner of 24 regional and national Emmys and distributed nationwide by American Public Television, is ending production. Tom Kleespie has produced the show since it began in 1989. “We’ve had a great run with the series, which has lasted longer than most national television series that started around the same time with the exception of The Simpsons,” Kleespie told the Arizona Daily Star. The final episode airs in May; reruns will continue for at least four years.

KCET is developing a community-based content and blogging operation, and has created a new position to oversee the work, it announced today. Zach Behrens is the new editor-in-chief and will report directly to Mary Mazur, KCET’s chief content officer. For the past three years, Behrens has been editor-in-chief of LAist/Gothamist, where he oversaw operations (here’s his farewell column) and was the lead writer for LAist.com. Behrens also has served as a communications and marketing consultant to MTV, Nike and the City of Santa Clarita. He begins work on Nov. 10. KCET departs the PBS network of affiliates on Jan.