Latino Public Broadcasting today announced the 16 projects chosen for funding in its 11th annual Open Call. A statement by the group notes that more than half of these programs have never been funded by Latino Public Broadcasting before, “a direct result of an extensive outreach program for independent filmmakers throughout the nation.” Check out all the winning projects here.

Projects listed in Current’s annual Pipeline survey are down from 162 last year to 128, which may be consistent with the Great Recession, though the survey isn’t complete or formal enough to serve as a leading (or following) economic indicator. The list below incorporates four titles listed in an addendum published in our Dec. 14, 2009, issue. Heading for the screen are vessels potentially full of uplift such as Helen Whitney’s four-hour Forgiveness and TeamWorks Media’s The Street Stops Here, which profiles high-school hoops coach Bob Hurley Sr. You can also expect docs recollecting dark moments in history — Barak Goodman’s My Lai, Stephen Ives’ Road to Memphis about the killing of Martin Luther King Jr.,

Caroll Spinney, who has played Big Bird since Sesame Street’s inception, is captured in a rare photograph in the New Yorker, wearing just the legs of his famous yellow costume. Back in 1970, after Look magazine carried a photo of Spinney sticking his face out between the body and head, Muppets creator Jim Henson told him, “Don’t let that ever happen again. You’re either bird or you, but no in between.” As for his future as Big Bird: “I’ve done 40 years and, unless I have a bad surprise, my ultimate goal would be to play this 6-year-old bird for 50 years.

A haze of assumptions hung over the film. “Nobody would go near the show,” Schwarz says. “This was the height of the drug war,” Pollan recalls.

Around 5,000 fans of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood lined up out the door and down the street from WQED in Pittsburgh to take one last look at pieces of its famous set, which are bound for storage, according to the Pittsburgh Nonpartisan Examiner. Mr. McFeely, still played by Dave Newell (now spokesperson for Rogers’ production company Family Communications Inc.), spent 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday posing for photos with visitors and sharing their memories in the station’s Studio A, which was officially renamed Fred Rogers Studio. Fans got an up-close look at King Friday XIII’s castle, X the Owl’s tree and other pieces.

In case you’ve missed it, since Nov. 4 Google has been honoring the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street with appearances by several of the show’s favorite characters on its logo (a.k.a. Google Doodles). Download high-res images here.

A new pubradio station hit the airwaves at 7 a.m. today, according to the Dallas Morning News. KXT will play “an eclectic mix of indie rock, alt country and other styles,” according to parent station KERA in Dallas. It’s at 97.1 FM. KERA’s Arts & Seek blog has a photo of Mary Anne Alhadeff, KERA’s c.e.o., speaking the first words on the new station. The deal for the channel may be the biggest station purchase this year (Current, June 22, 2009), with KERA spending $18 million for a reserved noncommercial channel owned by religious broadcaster Covenant Educational Media.

Sesame Workshop has responded to the recent “tempest in a trash can” over the Sesame Street “Pox News” parody sketch, in today’s PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler’s column. In the bit, when Oscar talks about the Grouchy News Network, another character responds it wasn’t grouchy enough and threatens to switch to Pox News–“now there’s a trashy news show.” Some viewers (and bloggers) were upset over what they perceived to be a slap at Fox News. But an explanation from Miranda Barry, Sesame Workshop creative e.v.p., said the bit was an “equal-opportunity parody–Oscar always tries to offend everybody!” She said the Grouch News Network (GNN) was actually a reference to CNN.

Pubcasting’s anniversary week continues. First PBS and Sesame Street, celebrating 40 years. And on Nov. 7, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act, which created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It was enacted just 10 months after the Carnegie Commisson on Educational Television. Sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, its report, “Public Television: A Program for Action,” introduced the phrase “public television.” (Photo: Johnson signing the act.)

Classical radio in the St. Louis area won’t go away if KRCU-FM gets the power increase and antenna upgrade it wants. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has been in talks since last spring to sell its Classical 99, KFUO-FM in St. Louis, to Gateway Creative Broadcasting, which has two contemporary Christian stations in the state. Music and news KRCU at Southeast State University, 100 miles south in Cape Girardeau, hopes to reach the southern St. Louis market with an improved repeater at KSEF in Farmington. The station applied Sept. 30 to the FCC to go from 9,500 watts to 20,000 watts, the university said in a statement this week.

Lifetime Achievement Awards for Business and Financial Reporting will go to Paul Kangas of Nightly Business Report, and Linda O’Bryon, founder of that broadcast in 1979 and now chief content officer of Northern California Public Broadcasting, according to the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. In nominations announced this week, pubcasters pulled in nods for NewsHour, NOW, Frontline (four), Wide Angle, Nova scienceNOW and the PBS Vote 2008 project. A full list of the Emmy nominees here. Awards will be presented Dec. 7 in New York City.

A panel of media experts gathered at the Harvard Kennedy School this week for a discussion that “acknowledged both the despair and the hope that journalists feel over the present state of the American news business, rocked by economic turmoil and the rise of the Internet,” according to the Harvard Gazette. One participant was Pulitzer Prize winner Alex Jones, former host of Media Matters on PBS and director of Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and author of the new book, Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy. He said that newspapers create most of the “cumulative reporting” that underlies American journalism, and if they disappear it will create “a terrible vacuum” of information that drives the national conversation, according to the paper.

The street running through Kiwanis Park in Charleston, Ill., will be permanently renamed Sesame Street on Sunday, according to the Daily Eastern News of Eastern Illinois University in the central-Illinois city. Mayor John Inyart will read a proclamation to kick off a day of activities hosted by pubstation WEIU and a local commercial radio station. Participants are encouraged to dress as their favorite Sesame Street characters, and have a chance to record their favorite moments from the show.

NPR joined with the proprietor of HD Radio technology, iBiquity Digital Corp., to propose that the FCC quadruple the permitted digital FM power level. In a statement released today they agreed the plan would protect analog FM broadcasts from interference while significantly improving reception of the digital HD Radio signal — especially by receivers indoors, where the digital signal sometimes can’t penetrate. Last fall, after other broadcasters suggested a ten-fold power boost for the digital signal, NPR field tests found the larger increase would interfere with regular FM broadcasts. If the FCC takes NPR’s and iBiquity’s advice, it would authorize a blanket 6 dB increase, from 20 dBc to -14 dBc.

A sculpture Fred Rogers was unveiled today in Pittsburgh as a tribute to the children’s television icon. He’s seated and tying his shoe, facing the city skyline, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. It’s titled, “Tribute to Children.” The bronze piece created by sculptor Robert Berks is nearly 11 feet high and weighs more than 7,000 pounds. Berks may be best known for his bust of President Kennedy in Washington’s Kennedy Center. Also, don’t miss the nice audio tribute on WDUQ’s news blog, from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. (Photo: Family Communications Inc.)