KANSAS CITY, Mo. — First-time NETA Award winner KRSC/RSU-Television in Claremore, Okla., was also a double winner for its Will Rogers & American Politics, claiming both the biography and history honors in the content production category. The National Educational Telecommunications Association also pays tribute to the best of promotion, community engagement and instructional media with the annual awards, presented today (Oct. 20) at its national conference here. Another double winner was Mountain Lake PBS in Plattsburgh, N.Y., also in content production, for Cirque du Soleil: Flowers in the Desert (performance) and The Boobie Sisters (news and public affairs). The NETA Education Center presented its Enterprise and Innovation Award to WKYU in Bowling Green, Ky.

Public radio is once again struggling to define the line between on-air talent who report as ethically bound journalists and those personalities who are permitted to express opinions. Freelance radio broadcaster Lisa Simeone, a veteran host of public radio documentary and music programs, was fired late Oct. 19 from Soundprint, the independently produced long-form doc series, for violating NPR’s ethics code. Her role as spokesperson for “October 2011,” an anti-war group aligned with the Occupy Wall Street movement that has staged protests in Washington, D.C., put her longtime affiliation with public radio in jeopardy. The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call first questioned whether Simeone’s activism violated journalistic ethics in an Oct.

PBS today announced two online initiatives, one a new website, another an expanded content agreement with Amazon.com. It’s launch day for PBS Food, a gateway to some 150 pubTV food and cooking programs and more than 1,700 searchable recipes from local station and national archives. The site features classic episodes of shows such as Baking With Julia, and Victory Garden, and an appearance from a very young Emeril Lagasse. And PBS Distribution has broadened its licensing agreement with Amazon.com, which will allow Amazon Prime members to instantly stream current and archived PBS programming. “Expanding the reach of our content by making it accessible through digital platforms is a key priority for PBS,” Jason Seiken, s.v.p.,

WTTW is picking up Al Jazeera English programming beginning Oct. 31, the first time the news provider will be seen on the air in Chicago. AJE will run from 6:30 to 7 a.m. and 11 to 11:30 p.m. weekdays on the WTTW Prime multicast channel, and 5:30 to 6:30 a.m. Saturdays on its main Channel 11. Additional time slots for AJE on WTTW11 will be available beginning in early 2012, WTTW said. “Our station has a long history of providing quality public affairs programming,” said Dan Schmidt, WTTW president, “and by adding broadcasts from Al Jazeera English, we are providing a broader perspective on critical global issues.”

Pittsburgh’s WESA is making its first fundraising appeal to listeners since the station changed format and call letters under new owner Essential Public Media. Its $250,000 fundraising goal is less than half of the amount raised in a record-breaking February 2010 drive for WDUQ, as the station was known during its years as a split-format news and jazz station, the Pittsburgh Tribune reports. But back then, listeners who pledged a total of $525,000 were responding to Duquesne University’s decision to sell its public radio station, a transaction that finally closed this summer. After the switch to its all-news format in July, the audience for 90.5 dipped to a 1.4 share of Pittsburgh radio listeners, according to Arbitron data cited by the Tribune.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Public TV broadcasters got some tantalizing details on the long-awaited spinoff of the hit Antiques Roadshow. John Wilson, PBS program chief, said the program, with the working title of Market Wars, will debut in spring 2012 from Roadshow e.p. Marsha Bemko. Wilson said PBS has ordered 20 episodes initially, “at a very effective production cost per hour.” In the show, two rotating expert appraisers will drop into a community for a friendly competition: Each begins with a set amount of money, hits flea markets and auctions to find interesting objects, and the one with the best net wins.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Patrick Butler, president of the Association of Public Television Stations, told attendees at the National Educational Telecommunications Association conference this morning (Oct. 19) that he doesn’t want the public to get the impression that “public broadcasters are eager for the day when federal funding will go away.” He was reacting to a question from the breakfast crowd about Louisville Public Media’s “Campaign for Independence” radio pledge drive, going on now, that aims, according to its website, to help the station “become independent from unreliable funding streams.” “This attitude is not really helpful to us,” Butler said.

There’s been another setback for KCPW in Salt Lake City, the NPR News station that’s struggling to pay off a $250,000 private loan from National Cooperative Bank by Oct. 31. The Salt Lake City Council authorized the city’s redevelopment agency last week to provide a six-month loan to help the station meet the payment, but the loan offer has been withdrawn, according to the City Weekly. “Lawyers for the RDA say they did not have the authority to make the loan as they originally had thought, and the city is now pursuing other avenues to help the station,” reports Bryan Schott, former KCPW news director.

KPCC’s Susan Valot and KCRW’s Kim Masters were recognized among best journalists in Los Angeles. Valot, a reporter who covers Orange County for Pasadena’s KPCC, was lauded by Press Club judges for producing “well-rounded reports with an authoritative, informed tone” and making great use of sound. Masters, a former NPR correspondent who now covers Hollywood for KCRW in Santa Monica, was named top entertainment journalist. Judges cited her voicing and thorough, substantive reporting on L.A.’s entertainment business. KPCC’s newsroom won top recognition in four categories of the radio division: for feature reporting by Madeleine Brand and Kristen Muller; entertainment reporting/criticism by Larry Mantle; use of sound by Kevin Ferguson; and the talk/public affairs program Airtalk with Larry Mantle.

NPR social media specialist Andy Carvin received a Knight-Batten Award for innovation in journalism. Carvin, whose job as the network’s senior social media strategist this year evolved into round-the-clock tweeting of Arab Spring protests, received a Knight Batten Award of Special Distinction honoring his pioneering use of Twitter in newsgathering. The Knight-Batten awards panel chose Storify as this year’s Grand Prize winner and honored three other innovators with Special Distinction Awards. The panel selects winners for innovative uses of new technologies in newsgathering and civic engagement. Carvin and his “Twitter community” were both cited for the award. “By using his Twitter account as a newsgathering operation, he has demonstrated how reporting can be done remotely, and created a highly engaged community of more than 50,000 Twitter followers,” said J-Lab in its award announcement.

New Hampshire Public Radio was cited for outstanding performance in fundraising. NHPR, based in Concord, ranks among the most efficient public radio outlets in converting listeners into givers, and it raises more net underwriting revenue per listener-hour than peer stations, according to DEI’s Benchmarks analysis, which evaluates fundraising performance across the public radio system. The New Hampshire network’s achievements in major-gift fundraising are especially impressive, according to Joan Kobayashi, g.m. of KMFA in Austin, Texas, who announced the award this summer during DEI’s Public Media Development and Marketing Conference in Pittsburgh. NHPR’s program for soliciting donations of $1,000 and higher has increased its revenues 60 percent over the past five years.

KJZZ, WBEZ, WBGO and KLCC led the annual contest among local pubradio newsrooms. Each took three or more first-place PRNDI awards in a competition among peer-group stations. PRNDI groups stations into tiers based on the number of full-time news staffers they employ. In division A, comprising stations with the largest newsrooms, KJZZ in Phoenix and Chicago’s WBEZ each received three top prizes. All three PRNDI awards to WBEZ recognized Inside and Out, a special series on juvenile justice that aired across a six-month period in 2010. WGBO, a news and jazz station in Newark, N.J., won six first-place awards in division B, including stations with three or four full-time journalists.