Public radio marketing consultant John Sutton is troubled by the “something for everybody” approach outlined in “Public Radio in the New Network Age,” the final report from the CPB-backed Grow the Audience project. “‘Do everything’ is not a strategy,” Sutton writes on his blog. Even if decision-makers follow the report’s recommendation to focus resources on stations in the top 50 markets, “the reality is that there aren’t enough resources to serve the objectives listed….Further prioritization is necessary to make smart, effective investments in audience growth.” The report, written by the Station Resource Group after an 18-month research and consultation project, is “silent” on how these priorities will be set, Sutton notes.

In an interview with BayNewser, Andy Carvin explains how NPR News is using social media to track developments and find sources in Haiti. The network’s social media guru also offers some insights about how to cultivate contacts and reliable news sources over time.

PBS was expecting online streaming of PBS Kids shows for the 2-5 set to be popular when it started late last year; the usage of shows for older kids, 6-plus, which went online earlier, had fluctuated around 2 million video streams a month. They were not prepared for the tots’ appetite: 87.5 million streams in December. PBS kept mum about the number until the press tour and the NETA Conference this week. Station folk broke into applause Wednesday as PBS education chief Rob Lippincott announced the figure. Streaming of the little kids’ programs rises in the evening as the grownups’ NewsHour grabs the TV sets, he said.

Today pubcasting stations received their share of $25 million in fiscal stabilization grants (Current, Dec. 14, 2009) from the Consolidated Appropriations Act from CPB. According to the act, the funds are provided “to maintain local programming and services and preserve jobs threatened by declines in non-Federal revenues due to the downturn in the economy” at both public TV and radio stations. President Barack Obama signed the bill Dec. 16, with funds to be distributed within 45 days. Station grants were calculated on a multiplier of each station’s three-year average community service grant, a CPB statement said.

Nature e.p. Fred Kaufman remained surprisingly calm yesterday considering he was sitting next to a man with a 13-foot Burmese python named Pugsley around his torso at TV critics press tour in Pasadena (PBS photo). Kaufman and herpetologist Shawn Heflick answered questions from reporters about the upcoming episode, “Invasion of the Giant Pythons.” Questions included: How does one go about helping a person being crushed by a python? (Pour alcohol on it, snakes despise that.) Kaufman also discussed the impetus for the show: Pythons, some dumped by owners, are quickly reproducing in the Florida Everglades; the episode takes a close look at how the species is having a serious impact on the environment.

Barry Garron, reporting on the TV Critics Association winter press tour in Pasadena for the Hollywood Reporter, tells Current the PBS executive session was generally heartening. “Except for the struggle for donations during these recessionary times, these are good years for PBS,” Garron notes. “No one is accusing them of controversial programs, following a hidden agenda or pushing their liberal ideas on children. Even better, with the Democrats in control, there are no credible threats to funding. [PBS President Paula] Kerger even said they’re getting an 8 percent increase in federal aid.” Regarding Kerger’s critical comments on commercial children’s programming, “In some respects, her attack .

The Federal Communications Commission has given permission to noncom stations to raise money for Haiti earthquake relief (PDF). Rules usually limit NCE (noncommercial educational) stations to fundraise on the air only for their own benefit. The FCC has waived the rules for past disasters including Hurricane Katrina (Current, Sept. 19, 2005), the Southeast Asia tsunami, and the Sept. 11 terror attacks (Current, Sept. 24, 2001). UPDATE: Twin Cities Public Television has set up a page to refer visitors to Minnesota’s statewide Haiti relief effort. Is your station raising money for victims of the massive earthquake?

Four of the 2010 duPont-Columbia Awards announced this morning went to public broadcasting news programs, including investigative reports by American RadioWorks and Frontline/World. NPR News received a silver baton for “The York Project,” a series of conversations with voters about the role of race in the 2008 election. P.O.V., a PBS series showcasing independent film, won for The Judge and the General, a documentary about the prosecution of human rights violations in Chile. The first-ever duPont Award for a Web-based production was presented to MediaStorm and photojournalist Jonathan Torgovnik for a multimedia presentation about Rwandan children born of rape.

PBS President Paula Kerger said NPR news content will be included on the upcoming pubaffairs website, according to insiders at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in Pasadena, Calif. (Kerger speaking at the conference, right.) She said the site also will compile reporting from PBS news series including Frontline, NewsHour and the new Need to Know weekly series from WNET. That content, along with NPR stories, will provide viewers and web users with a central place to go for news of the day, Kerger told critics. The Washington Post reports that Kerger also explained that PBS’s subscription to more detailed Nielsen ratings is not for making decisions based on those numbers but to help funders determine the number of viewers they’re reaching.

In kids’ programming on commercial networks, “The line between commerce and content are blurred beyond recognition. . . . Advertising is so thoroughly embedded into the content,” PBS President Paula Kerger told reporters at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour, continuing this week in Pasadena, Calif. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Kerger said she welcomes an upcoming FCC review of the 1990 Children’s Television Act, which requires that stations run a minimum of three hours of educational programming weekly.

PBS President Paula Kerger announced details of PBS’s long-planned arts initiative at a Town Hall Los Angeles meeting yesterday, according to the website for Miller McCune, an academic news firm. The effort includes a shift in the primetime schedule to allow for one evening per week devoted entirely to the arts, beginning probably next fall or winter; an online arts portal on PBS.org coming in April; and new materials for the PBS Teachers website to help them better incorporate arts into their classrooms. “To be candid, over the last years, we haven’t done as good a job [with cultural programming] as we could,” Kerger told the audience.

Update, Friday, Jan. 15: WNET will discontinue two other public affairs series, Expose and Wide Angle, while starting up production of Need to Know, the new Friday-night series announced by PBS this week, production chief Stephen Segaller told Current. Bill Moyers’ Journal and Now will remain on the schedule until Need to Know begins in May, PBS President Paula Kerger said at the NETA Conference in Las Vegas yesterday. The New York Times reported earlier that PBS has green-lit a new public affairs series from WNET. Need to Know, a one-hour show that launches in May, will originate from the New York station’s new studios in Lincoln Center.

The Television Critics Association winter press tour is under way in Pasadena, Calif. Tomorrow is the big day for PBS, with 12 previews and an executive session (schedule here, Word document). Highlights: Actress Jamie Lee Curtis will be onstage for Dirt! The Movie; she’s the narrator. Also, John Densmore, drummer for the Doors, will appear as a panelist for When You’re Strange: A Film About the Doors from American Masters. Director Jonathan Demme talks about Tavis Smiley’s upcoming specials. And Daniel Ellsberg will be on hand Saturday for POV’s preview of The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.

For public radio’s field of independent producers, 2009 was a year of both retrenchment and movement, writes Sue Schardt, executive director of the Association of Independents in Radio, in an AIRmuse feature story assessing the state of affairs from the perspective of indies. Network shows that had been platforms for the creativity of AIR members were canceled, but a new CPB-funded initiative to experiment with multi-platform production, Makers Quest 2.0, took flight and garnered support from both stations and networks. “The ability of public radio to retain and cultivate its talent pool remains compromised, and there is no clear resolution in sight,” Schardt writes.

Idaho Gov. C.L. Otter is looking to end funding for the Idaho Public Television statewide network over the next four years starting with fiscal 2011, reports the New West Boise news site. IdahoPTV, affiliated with the state board of education, gets about $1.5 million yearly for the network, about $1 million for salaries for 11 administrative and technical positions and $350,000 to lease of the station’s Boise facility. The governor told the Spokesman-Review newspaper he thought IdahoPTV could survive loss of the funding. “They really do have an opportunity to bring in outside money and to become self-sufficient,” Otter said.