The New Jersey Network is beginning its transition to an independent nonprofit. Republican Gov. Chris Christie called for the pubcasters to sever from the state by Jan. 1, 2011, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. The move ends a four-decade relationship. The governor’s office cited budgetary concerns. “In these tough economic times, there are things that can be done by the private sector [that] should be done by the private sector,” Sean Conner, a Christie spokesperson, told the paper. Howard Blumenthal, interim NJN executive director, told the state Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee yesterday that stations would continue to provide not only broadcast programming but also multiplatform content, adding, “we’ll do more, we’ll just do it with less.”

After trying for five years to sell its public TV/radio combo in Palm Beach, Fla., Barry University has unloaded the FM station separately. Classical South Florida, an offshoot of Minnesota-based American Public Media, will buy WXEL-FM for $3.85 million, offer jobs to its present staff and program the classical/news station separately from its all-classical Miami station, WKCP, the Palm Beach Post reports. “CSF plans to strengthen its classical music programming while continuing to provide NPR news and public affairs content to the region,” according to a joint CSF/Barry news release. The university north of Miami, which rescued the shaky WXEL in 1997, was talking with at least three prospective buyers last fall, but the Palm Beach school district decided to spend its loose change on schooling instead, and Barry hasn’t reached an agreement with either Miami’s WPBT or a Palm Beach nonprofit formed to acquire WXEL.

Pubcasters were well represented at the fourth annual Reva and David Logan Investigative Reporting Symposium this past weekend, sponsored by Berkeley University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Here’s a followup by reporter Chris O’Brien of the San Jose Mercury News, on MediaShift. Participating in panels were: David Fanning and Raney Aronson-Rath of Frontline; Susanne Reber of NPR; Linda Winslow of PBS Newshour; and reporter Amy Isackson of KPBS, San Diego. O’Brien calls the meeting “inspiring,” and takes note of the attendance of reps from nonprofit news orgs that didn’t exist until the last year or two. “Whatever one thinks of the wisdom of these models, I take it as a positive sign that people are moving past the talking phase and into the doing phase,” he notes.

A donor has stepped forward with $400,000 to help struggling KCSM-TV/FM in San Mateo, Calif., reports the San Matean. The station is also finalizing a $120,000 spectrum lease agreement to share about one-third of its Mbps bandwidth with Sezmi, which meshes wireless broadcasting with broadband Internet for an alternative source of TV programming. The station is negotiating two more spectrum lease agreements worth about $100,000 each, including with KQED in San Francisco. All that sufficiently reassured KCSM’s Board of Directors at the San Mateo County Community College District, and it voted to provide a one-year funding extension. In January the station raised only $30,000 of a $1 million fundraising goal, and it dropped PBS last year due to funding problems.

Music journalist Jim DeRogatis is leaving the Chicago Sun-Times to take a full-time teaching position at Columbia College Chicago and take up blogging for Chicago Public Radio’s Vocalo.org. Chicago media critic Robert Feder, a former Sun-Times colleague who began blogging for Vocalo last fall, broke the news. “We have always wanted a blogger to cover music for blogs.vocalo.org,” Justin Kaufmann, senior content developer for Chicago Public Radio tells Feder. “Jim is arguably the best music writer in Chicago, if not the nation. We couldn’t be happier. He is going to take our blogs to a whole new level.” DeRogatis’s blog, PopNStuff, launches June 1.

The promo for WNET’s new Need to Know is up, check it out here. The weekly news show premieres May 7. That kickoff will be the culmination of the Friday night schedule upheaval, which included Bill Moyers’ Journal, Now and Worldfocus all ending (Current, March 22, 2010).

It’s not the best way to collect big annual gifts from station members, pubcasting fundraisers agree. But This American Life’s producers confirmed that giving-by-texting among their many devoted listeners holds considerable potential. Beginning last November, appeals for $5 donations included in four of the show’s weekly podcasts brought in $142,880 from 28,576 listeners, as of April 15, according to Seth Lind, production manager. To donate, a podcast listener simply texts “LIFE” to 25383 and TAL receives a $5 donation, minus fees, paid through the giver’s wireless phone bill. The vast majority of the text gifts to TAL were sent during the campaign’s first month, but fans continue to respond.

CPB and PBS are completing an agreement that may lead to the agency’s first annual grants for the PBS National Program Service based on measures of diversity and innovation in programming and related projects. Sources tell Current that this funding method would be one of the strongest attempts to encourage diversity and innovation in pubcasting so far, influencing the allocation of $14 million or more over the two-year contract. [Update: The final amount, CPB announced May 13, will be $20 million over two years. PBS request for proposals.] CPB President Pat Harrison announced to the Board at its January meeting that the two had “reached a signed agreement,” but since then CPB has declined to provide specifics.

TV execs weren’t very reassured after FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s speech to the National Association of Broadcasters last week in Las Vegas, reports Broadcasting & Cable. Most are still concerned about a voluntary giveback of broadcast spectrum for the growing mobile-device market. Although the chairman has stressed that any spectrum reallocation wouldn’t be mandatory, NAB President Gordon Smith read in his keynote address from the FCC’s National Broadband Plan: “The government’s ability to reclaim, clear and re-auction spectrum is the ultimate backstop against market failure and is an appropriate tool when a voluntary process stalls entirely.” According to the plan, a trust fund created by proceeds from public broadcasting spectrum givebacks would be available to pubcasters that participate (Current, Feb.

“Gov. Bob McDonnell is gunning for Big Bird,” says the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch. The GOP governor wants to phase out funding to the Community Idea Stations pubcasters in Richmond and Charlottesville over the next four years, beginning with $592,835 between 2010 and ’12. One bright spot: “I’ll probably oppose that,” said Democratic Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles J. Colgan. “It’s quite a bit of money for those stations. That’s a pretty good hit.” The Legislature takes up work on the budget this week.

CPB President Pat Harrison appeared on the Hill this week to make the agency’s fiscal 2013 advance appropriation request of $604 million. She also made FY11 requests of $59.5 million for digital initiatives, and $32 million for Ready to Learn (background, Current, Sept. 2, 1996). President Obama’s current budget includes an FY13 CPB advance appropriation of $460 million. Harrison spoke before the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies of the Senate Appropriations Committee on April 12.

Blair Levin, President Obama’s National Broadband Plan adviser, is leaving his work at the FCC for the Aspen Institute, Broadcasting & Cable reports. His new title there: Communications & Society Fellow. CPB has long worked with the institute, participating in think-ins including its Roundtables on Public Service Media in March 2009 (PDF). CPB President Pat Harrison credited that work in her announcement last month of CPB’s $10 million local journalism initiative (Current, April 5). Levin’s last day with the FCC will be May 7.

Michael Getler, PBS ombudsman, is warning readers that this week’s column is long. But if you’re interested in the history of America’s aerial bombing campaign against Nazi Germany, check it out. It’s a continuing discussion going back to the American Experience doc “The Bombing of Germany” in February.

Idaho Public Television has survived a proposed phase-out of its state funding (Current, Jan. 25, 2010) and actually ended up with a little boost. Gov. Butch Otto had asked the Legislature to drop the station’s nearly $2 million annual funding gradually over four years. Instead, in its appropriation signed by Otter this week, IdahoPTV loses $141,000 this fiscal year, receives an appropriation of $2.4 million in FY11, and its full-time equivalent positions are limited to 33.

A new website titled Revolution PBS has drawn the attention of pubcaster/blogger John Proffitt. Proffitt notes that whatever person or group writes the anonymous site, which puts forth ideas for a radical reorg of the system, “shows a better understanding of the member station model than most ‘civilians’ I’ve met over the years. Perhaps its someone that’s done their homework, or perhaps it’s an ‘insider’ looking to anonymously get some ideas a little traction.”