Looking for a way to boost participation in your station’s Facebook fan page? Arizona Public Media’s page, which had stalled at 555, picked up 100 new fans in just six days in March, as well as pulled them into PlayPBS, its local version of the COVE player — all with an online scavenger hunt offering free tickets to a David Sedaris performance. Station spokesperson Steve Delgado told Current the idea bubbled up during publicity brainstorming between the underwriting and promotions folks and Sedaris’s team. At the same time, the station was planning a PlayPBS soft roll-out and wanted a few hundred visitors to try it out.

The application that NPR created for the launch of Apple’s iPad has received the highest user ratings among the apps offered by major American news organizations, according to this analysis by Newsosaur Alan Mutter. NPR’s app ranks sixth among the top ten news applications in terms of downloads, but iPad users give the content and experience an average rating of 3.5 stars, higher than apps created by USA Today (3.0), the New York Times (2.5) and the Wall Street Journal (2.5). The BBC and France 24, the international news channel funded by the French government, received user ratings of 3.5 and 4.0, respectively, and Mutter believes that the rich-media iPad experience offered by broadcasters has an advantage over newsprint publishers.

The prototype for the American Archive is complete, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting (background: Current, May 14, 2007 and April 13, 2009). CPB commissioned the project in January 2009 to determine how best to preserve and archive the historic video and audio stored throughout the pubcasting system. The first phase (25 stations took part) was an inventory, the second (22 stations) concentrated on restoring, digitizing and cataloging more than 5,700 sound and video items totaling more than 2,300 hours of broadcast material. The prototype will be unveiled at the PBS Annual Meeting this month in Austin, Texas.

Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and two of her producers filed a federal lawsuit over their arrests during the 2008 Republican National Convention. The journalists were among some 40 reporters arrested as they covered street protests outside the convention hall in St. Paul, Minn., and they allege that authorities violated their First Amendment rights to gather news independently. They also seek compensatory and punitive monetary damages for medical expenses and lost equipment, according to the Associated Press. Defendants in Goodman vs. St. Paul include the cities and police departments of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the Ramsey County Sheriff and unidentified Secret Service personnel.

In an email to employees, WNET today announced a $15 million gift for its new Lincoln Center Studio, which will be named for donors James S. and Merryl H. Tisch. James Tisch, president and CEO of Loews, is the chairman of WNET.org’s Board of Trustees. This is the largest individual contribution in WNET’s nearly 50-year history. “When we decided to invest in the new studio, one of our main goals was to bring in a major philanthropic partner to help us leverage these studios to our best advantage as leaders in public television programming,” WNET President Neal Shapiro told staffers.

The APTS Grant Center website (password protected) is now up and running, provides funding opportunities and resources to help public broadcasting stations find and apply for grants, according to a statement from the Association for Public Television Stations. There are monthly APTS Grant Center conference calls and webcasts, and lists of personnel in funding agencies. The CPB-funded center is partnering with the Development Exchange Incorporated (DEI) on the foundation and radio components, providing profiles on national, local and regional foundations identified as potential station funders.

Democratic Rep. David Obey, a longtime pubcasting champion and chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, is leaving Congress after this term. The Capital Times in his home state of Wisconsin called him Congress’s “most powerful populist.” In 2005, Obey co-sponsored an amendment to restore the $400 million CPB appropriation for the next year that that the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee wanted cut (Current, June 27, 2005). The previous month, he had joined fellow Democratic Rep. John Dingell of Michigan to complain about CPB Board Chair Kenneth Tomlinson’s probe of alleged liberal bias in pubcasting (Current, May 16, 2005), saying, “the law says the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is supposed to keep its cotton-picking nose out of programming and out of politics.”

Penn State’s WPSU is one of dozens of TV stations worldwide participating in the new TED Open TV Project, bringing speeches and appearances from the world of technology, entertainment and design to viewers (a bit of TED history here). Those are called TEDTalks, and have received some 200 million Web views since postings began in 2006 with such speakers as Bill Gates, Frank Gehry, Jane Goodall, Al Gore, Billy Graham, Peter Gabriel, Quincy Jones and Bono. TEDTalks are the brainchild of the nonprofit Sapling Foundation, dedicated to “fostering the spread of great ideas.” Now those speeches are coming from the Web to television.

Big news in the indie production world, P.O.V.‘s 2011 call for entries is now open. The pubcasting program is TV’s longest-running showcase for independent nonfiction films, and many projects it has supported or aired have gone on to fame — one good example is the recent Oscar nominee “Food, Inc.” For filmmakers new to the application process, P.O.V. offers this handy video. For those who have applied before, good news: The form is much shorter this year, according to P.O.V.’s series producer Yance Ford. Log in here to apply.

An NPR decision to change staffing arrangements for its western bureau chief has drawn objections from public radio station news directors and journalists. Two chiefs now share the job from two different cities–Kate Concannon in Seattle and Alisa Joyce-Barba from San Diego. NPR plans to hire a full-time bureau chief to work from its NPR West studios in Culver City, Calif. Public radio news consultant Michael Marcotte, a longtime advocate of expanding the bureau chief system, says the change will undercut the local/national news reporting relationships that NPR President Vivian Schiller says she wants to strengthen. “The bureau chiefs are the unsung heroes, the key linkages in the network-station editorial relationship, a relationship that must be tended and nourished,” he writes.

NPR and APT both won James Beard Foundation Awards on Monday, known as “the Oscars of the food industry.” The Kojo Nnamdi Show won for broadcast media; host is Nnamdi, producers are Tara Boyle, Michael Martinez, Ingalisa Schrobsdorff, Brendan Sweeney and Diane Vogel. For television show, on location, the winner is Chefs A’Field, “King of Alaska” (click on Episodes, then Episode 2) from presenting station KCTS in Seattle. Now in its fourth season, host is Rick Moonen, producers are Heidi Hanson and Chris Warner. WGBH is presenting station for Food Trip with Todd English, which won for television special; producers are English, Matt Cohen, Joel Coblenz and Gina Gargano.

The FCC on Monday released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) asking for comment on rules governing construction, marking and lighting of antenna structures. The FCC hopes the revisions will improve compliance and allow the agency to better enforce the regs. The proposed rules would also remove outdated and complicated requirements without compromising the FCC’s responsibility to prevent antenna structures from being hazards to air navigation. A petition filed by the PCIA — The Wireless Infrastructure Association back on Sept. 12, 2006, led to the proposal; it’s being eyed now as part of an FCC biennial review of rules.

No, “Mornings with NPR” is not a new show, it’s the name of an aspiring cartoonist’s tribute blog to her fave pubradio show. Alex Olanow says two of her more enthusiastic fans are Morning Edition hosts Steve Inskeep and Renee Montagne, who once sent her a goody bag full of show swag: mugs, hats and, of course, that proverbial tote bag.

The Tyee, a British Columbian news and culture website, is reporting that a leaked survey of CBC journos tells “a mind-boggling tale of institutional incompetence. It’s a surprisingly amusing story, with great literary potential …” The main hubbub seems to be over the Hub, a layer of middle management that picks stories for cross-platform use. It’s part of an effort to integrate national radio and local TV so one reporter can serve both. Nearly half of the journalists insist it’s stopping them from getting a good story on the air, and, furthermore, they insist the Hub is a bunch of people “not qualified to be called junior reporters.”

Good news from Wyoming Public Radio: It reached its spring pledge goal of $250,000 in just 56 hours of on-air fundraising, according to a statement from licensee University of Wyoming. Jon Schwartz, g.m., said the station’s membership drives are consistently among the shortest in the country.