Travel site Expedia.com has jumped on the National Parks bandwagon. It has launched a page dedicated to travel in the parks, with a link to the pubcasting series. The Associated Press confirms that the launch coincides with the Ken Burns project.

Oops. More complaints (see item below) about use of the PBS logo during Ken Burns’ National Parks series, this time to the New York Times tech writer/blogger David Pogue. A reader writes that she’d been watching the series, and said it was visually stunning. “But even PBS and my local public TV station (WTTW in Chicago) constantly slapped numerous looping/changing logos in both the lower left and lower right corners of the screen—a horrible distraction from the beautiful scenery of the film. I was so looking forward to enjoying this film, and even my beloved PBS now annoys me!”

The premiere of National Parks: America’s Best Idea on Yom Kippur Sept. 27 disturbed some Jewish viewers, reports PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler. Other complaints generated by the series focused on the use of a PBS bug along with the line “Presents a Film by Ken Burns” on the lower screen. Then the title, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. Then another PBS logo. Every 15 minutes.

For the first time, 35 Austin City Limits episodes will be available on the PBS Video portal starting the day after broadcast. A selected number of older shows may be accessible later. The show’s new season kicks off Saturday with Dave Matthews Band. The Austin City Limits Music Festival is also under way and runs through the weekend, check the website for live coverage.

A blue-ribbon panel, the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, today issued its final report. In it, the 17-member group contends that “public broadcasting needs to move quickly toward a broader vision of public service media, one that is more local, more inclusive, and more interactive” (note item below). Among its specific recommendations: Increase support for public service media aimed at meeting community information needs; set ambitious standards for nationwide broadband availability and adopt public policies encouraging consumer demand for broadband service; and support the activities of information providers to reach local audiences with quality content through all appropriate media, such as mobile phones, radio, public access cable and new platforms.

CPB and the Knight Foundation are funding a multi-million dollar, two-year pilot in-depth journalism project with NPR. With $2 million from CPB and $1 million from Knight, a group of stations will expand original reporting as well as curate, distribute and share “online content about high-interest, specialized subjects,” according to a joint statement. NPR President Vivian Schiller has long backed the idea (Current, Feb. 2, 2009 and March 2, 2009). “The opportunity here is two-fold,” she said in the statement today. “First, to beef up coverage of critical issues at the local level, and, second, to begin to establish an online network that can transform itself into a news powerhouse of unparalleled depth and quality.”

A 24-minute rough cut of Frontline‘s season opener, “Obama’s War,” is now available online. Due to the breaking news surrounding America’s eight-year conflict in Afghanistan, the film will not be completed until close to broadcast on Oct. 13th. In the program’s announcement of the online preview, the project was called “one of the strongest pieces of war reportage Frontline has ever produced.”

WGBH and its Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media have just issued a guidebook on how to translate STEM-related visuals to readers who are blind or sight-impaired, reports The Journal, an education news publication. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the book presents detailed verbal descriptions of materials related to Science, Technology, Education and Math initiatives. Included are bar charts, line graphs, Venn diagrams, tables, pie charts, flow charts and complex diagrams and illustrations.

William F. Baker, president emeritus of WNET, writes in a opinion piece in The Nation (via the CBS News site) that the way forward toward a vital public media is through existing pubcasting entities. Baker, the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor and Journalist-in-Residence at Fordham University, notes that for more than half a century, “the American people have shown, through their generous donations, that they support the idea and the reality of public media. The government should acknowledge those decades of widespread support by funding NPR and PBS both more extensively and more efficiently. By increasing direct allocations to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is responsible for disbursing funding to public TV and radio affiliates across America, the inherent inefficiencies of fundraising via public appeal would be eliminated, and countless hours of airtime would be liberated from pledge drives.

Idaho Public Television has laid off two employees, according to The Idaho Statesman. A videographer/director and on-air operations center supervisor were let go Wednesday; the positions will remain vacant at least until the state legislature decides next year’s funding. “We have been very successful in not laying people off to this point,” G.M. Peter Morrill told the paper. Viewers may notice fewer primetime local shows and slower response to service problems, Morrill added. The layoffs are “stretching an already modest staff,” he noted.

WUSF Public Broadcasting will spend $200,000 on a new television, video and radio facility for performance and production, at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus, reports The Bradenton Herald. A former computer lab will be renovated for the studio space. WUSF currently broadcasts from Tampa.

There’s one week to go before New York’s classical WQXR relaunches under the ownership of WNYC, and programmers are putting the finishing touches on the talent roster and playlist. Current WQXR hosts Jeff Spurgeon, Midge Woolsey and Elliott Forrest have been retained for weekday and weekend airshifts. WNYC also hired Naomi Lewin, a host, producer and arts feature reporter for Cincinnati’s WGUC, to anchor afternoon drive-time on the new WQXR. Terence McKnight and David Garland, hosts of the eclectic and adventurous Evening Music broadcasts on WNYC-FM, will take over WQXR evening slots and program a more narrow range of music than what they’ve presented on WNYC.

One iPhone app will be released for each episode of National Parks: America’s Best Idea, according to developers We-Envision. The 99-cent apps, six in all, generate mini-films using thousands of Web-based photos from some 400 national parks, and provide information about the parks, maps and live webcams. The first ships today.

The kick-off episode for Sesame Street‘s 40th season on Nov. 10 will feature a very special guest: First Lady Michelle Obama. She’ll (attempt to) convince kids of all the good things that vegetables bring to the plate. This will be her second appearance on the show.

With corporate support revenues running 11 percent below last year, New Hampshire Public Radio laid off four employees. Business reporter David Darman, one of five full-time NHPR journalists, was among those riffed, according to the Concord Monitor. “Everybody knows the economy’s bad, and the station’s not immune to that,” Darman told the Monitor. “But it was a shock to me.” NHPR’s member support revenues have been growing, but not enough to cover lost underwriting income, according to Alexandra Urbanowski, v.p. of development and marketing.