Virginia’s General Assembly adjourned yesterday after approving a two-year budget that slashes millions from various services in the commonwealth, including pubcasting, reports the Washington Post. Community Idea Stations, in Richmond and Charlottesville, get a 15 percent drop in funds over the next two years. States nationwide are targeting pubcasting as budgets dwindle (Current, Jan. 25).

Broadcast technicians will mount a protest outside NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., at noon today. The National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-Communications Workers of America is negotiating on behalf of 65 employees whose union contract expires this month. Members of the unit agreed to deep wage and benefit cuts to help alleviate NPR’s budget crisis last year. The union is objecting to NPR’s demands for the next contract, which include a wage freeze, benefit reductions and proposals to remove bargaining rights over benefits and eliminate more than half of the bargaining unit’s jobs, according to the NABET website.

Broadcasters who decline to turn over spectrum for an upcoming auction may face fees for their decision, according to Broadcasting & Cable. Citing an unnamed source who has seen the National Broadband Plan that will be presented to Congress this week, the fees would be another tactic used by the feds to encourage give back of spectrum for auction. The FCC is looking to shift 500 MHz from traditional broadcast to wireless use (Current, Feb. 8, 2010).

In a speech that he described as “confession or admission,” former FCC Chair Reed Hundt yesterday told a Columbia University audience that his decision to favor broadband over broadcast goes back to 1994, and that the March 17 National Broadband Plan “will reflect … the end of the era of trying to maintain over-the-air broadcast as the common medium and the beginning of a very detailed, quite substantive, commitment to having broadband, the son of narrowband, be the common medium,”according to TV News Check. He also said the plan “will have in it a specific pathway to shrinking the amount of spectrum that broadcast will be able to use.

Sesame Workshop has received a grade of C and PBS a C+ from the Center for Science in the Public Interest on their marketing of food to children. While that sounds “average,” of 128 firms surveyed more than 95 received a failing grade. The nonprofit group’s Report Card on Food Marketing Policies (PDF) examines whether companies that market food to children have adopted a policy on marketing, and the adequacy of that policy. During research last year the center evaluated several elements of each company’s approach to children, including the strength of its nutrition standards, the scope of media covered by its policies, and definitions for “child-directed” media.

Here’s an interesting video interview from the collegiate News Net Nebraska with longtime pubcaster Ron Hull, a passionate advocate for cultural and historical programming who helped start American Experience. In the interview, Hull recalls his first foray into television. It was in the Army, just after the Korean War armistice was signed in 1953. While stationed in Oklahoma, Hull was approached by a general looking for someone to produce a half-hour show. “He said, ‘What do you know about TV?'” Hull recalled. “I didn’t even have a set.” Hull went to the local library and researched scriptwriting, then called the local TV station.

More than 60 national leaders in education, research, technology, policy and children’s media will meet March 22 and 23 at the Fred Rogers Center in LaTrobe, Pa., to explore using new technologies and media in education. Representing pubcasting at the Fred Forward Conference on Creative Curiosity, New Media and Learning (PDF) will be CPB, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, PBS and Family Communications Inc., Rogers’ production company that carries on the educational legacy of Mister Rogers.

The Senate yesterday passed the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act. The Association of Public Television Stations had backed passage of the bill, which was known as the Satellite Home Viewer Update and Reauthorization Act when it passed the House on Dec. 3. The bills allow satellite operators to carry out-of-market network TV station signals for viewers who don’t receive an adequate signal from their nearby stations. In a statement, APTS President Larry Sidman praised Congressional leadership. “Working together on a bipartisan basis with each other and with their counterparts in the House, they have crafted legislation that serves consumers interests.”

WQUB in Quincy, Ill., plans to dismiss its professional on-air staff as of June 1 and turn most of its operations over to WGEM, a commercial radio/TV outlet affilated with NBC. Quincy University, WQUB’s licensee, is reducing its $250k subsidy for the NPR News and music station but doesn’t want to sell it, says Bob Weirather, g.m. “That is not in their mind at all. What we’re trying to do is get more community support for the station.” The station doesn’t qualify for state funding because Quincy is a private university. Last year, it fell out of CPB funding criteria and lost half of its $90,000 Community Service Grant, according to Weirather.

A Google group for pubmedia collaboration has sprung from the ongoing Pubmedia Chat Tweetfests on Monday evenings. Chris Beer, a web developer with WGBH Interactive, created the group to provide room for communication without a 140 character limit, he tells MediaShift. “I’m not particularly attached to the idea of a Google Group or a listserv, I just see a need for more collaboration outside of Monday at 8,” Beer said. “Twitter is a fine medium for getting people talking, but I find it difficult to have a conversation, and I hope something like this can supplement the #pubmedia chat. I haven’t found a place within public media to ask very practical questions around public media projects.

Pasadena’s KPCC hired Madeleine Brand to host a new daily news magazine launching later this spring. The yet-to-be named show will bring a “distinctive Southern California perspective” to local and regional news and launch with a significant online component, according to a KPCC release. Brand, co-host of NPR’s Day to Day until its cancellation last year, “has tremendous intellectual bandwidth, but doesn’t take herself too seriously,” said Bill Davis, KPCC president. The one-hour show will air at 9 a.m. PT, replacing BBC NewsHour. “Even though I’m part British and love the BBC, I think we need a little more California in that 9 am hour, and I’m excited to bring it,” Brand said.

The FCC and National Telecommunications and Information Administration would have four years instead of two to complete a spectrum inventory under a bill okayed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee today, reports Broadcasting & Cable. Rep. Rick Boucher, House Communications and Internet Subcommittee chairman and bill co-sponsor, has said he expects the FCC to wait until after the inventory to request or reclaim spectrum from broadcasters to meet growing demands for mobile device bandwidth. Any spectrum auction would leave pubcasters with a tough decision: Money soon, or frequency opportunities later (Current, Feb. 8).

A “war room” with white boards, dollar amounts and donor name targets helped Detroit Public Television/WTVS close out its 2009 $22 million capital campaign, station v.p. of development Kelley Hamilton revealed at a local nonprofit seminar this week. “In addition to the larger foundations, we had to go to the indigenous population of family foundations, largely unknown,” Board Chair Richard Rassel told Crain’s Detroit Business. To encourage smaller donations, the station provided naming opportunities for everything from a light switch to the COO’s white board, cameras and editorial suites.

The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee of the Idaho legislature yesterday voted 19-0 to cut only 16 percent of Idaho Public Television’s state funding, according to Associated Press. Gov. Butch Otter had previously sought a four-year total phaseout of funding. More good news: A House proposal would increase tax credits to IPTV and other agencies. “This would give more opportunity for donations, especially at the higher giving level, to see some positive tax credit,” IPTV G.M. Peter Morrill told the Idaho Reporter. The current limit for a tax credit is $100, that would increase to $500. The average gift to IPTV is $90.

CPB has given the PBS NewsHour a $300,000 grant for a Student Reporting Lab project in six schools nationwide, reports Television Broadcast. From last month through January 2011, NewsHour journalists are providing footage, sources and mentors to the students, who will report on three topics. Their work will run on the NewsHour website and YouTube. A statement from NewsHour said the project will “examine how broadband connectivity, open-source platforms, and public media can help to produce an informed and engaged public.”