The budget stalemate continues to percolate over the Continuing Resolution to keep the government running through September, which contains a provision wiping out all of CPB’s funding. Since the bill’s passage at 4:30 a.m. Feb. 19, the Republicans put together a bill that would push the March 4 deadline two weeks – with $4 billion in cuts, roughly proportional to the $61 billion over the remaining seven months of the fiscal year. Senate Democrats rejected that idea, the Washington Post reports. Those lawmakers, meanwhile, want another 30 days to work all this out with funding remaining at current levels; House Republicans rejected that idea.

Congressional Democrats have to make some tough choices about which programs to defend against the Republican drive to slash government spending, especially when it comes to a “fat GOP target” like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, according to op-ed page editors of the Boston Globe. CPB’s $531 million appropriation is a comparatively small item in the federal budget, but it offers a big political pay-off for Republicans. As the Globe sees it, public radio doesn’t need federal assistance: NPR receives only a sliver of this federal aid through direct grants, and the financial squeeze of lost CPB grants on public radio stations could be eased through dues relief.

Aloyce Beth DuVal Deare, a pioneering producer of African-American programming and documentaries at WGBH, was killed Feb. 20 in a four-alarm house fire at her home in Newton, Mass. She was 63. She had also been battling brain cancer, which had spread from throat cancer last year. Deare won 13 Emmys and a Peabody Award during her tenure at the station in the 1980s. One was for a critically acclaimed “In the Matter of Levi Heart,” a documentary about a Boston Police shooting. Her credits also include “Beacon to Freedom: Black Life in the Bay Colony,” which she finished in 2008 while undergoing treatment for throat cancer, and American Experience’s “Midnight Ramble,” a 1994 film tracing the history of black filmmaking.

Are you in pubmedia? Here are five Twitter feeds you should be following, as suggested by Bryce Kirchoff at the National Center for Media Engagement.

America is the only major democracy in the West to rely almost entirely on commercial media to comprehensively inform its citizens. So says Rodney Benson, associate professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, in the online magazine Miller-McCune.com. The two surveyed 14 countries; in every Western European democracy they examined, public broadcasting channels attract at least a third of the national TV audience. “Who is the average BBC watcher?” Benson says. “Everybody in Britain.” And foreign public media stations can schedule news programming during primetime.“Whereas there’s a big different in what people know here, when you compare high and low income, high and low education, in some of these countries there’s almost no difference,” Benson says.

America’s first student news network, Hiki No – it means “can do” – premieres Feb. 28 on PBS Hawaii, reports the Star-Advertiser in Honolulu. Students from more than 50 public, charter and private high schools and middle schools in the state will contribute to the first season. Initially there will be one one new half-hour, student-created newscast each week; eventually, the project is shooting for six new Hiki No newscasts weekly. Newscasts also will be available on PBS Hawaii’s website. Funding was provided by CPB and the Clarence T.C. Ching Foundation. Local filmmaker Stuart Yamane also created a half-hour documentary, “Backstory: The Making of Hiki No,” which debuted Feb.

Joyce Campbell, who has worked in public television continuously since 1959, is retiring as KCET’s vice president of education and children’s programming. Her last day is March 18. Campbell has been with the Los Angeles station for 20 years. She’s supervised many of the station’s major initiatives, from bi-lingual pledge programs to California Connected, the science series The Human Quest and A Place of Our Own and Los Niños en Su Casa, for Spanish- and English-speaking child caretakers. Most recently, she  helped develop Sid the Science Kid with the Jim Henson Co. and served as KCET e.p. on the series through the production of its second season, just wrapping.

PBS President Paula Kerger was in Knoxville recently, and chatted with Metro Pulse. One topic: Why PBS remains unique in the world of TV. “There are just so many options, and so many channels have pursued different niches. … Other channels, like the Learning Channel, Bravo, and the History Channel started down the path towards being a commercial version of public broadcasting, but they’ve all moved away from it. … The History Channel’s name franchise is now Ice-Road Truckers, you know? So we’re still providing something no one else is.”

WBEZ 91.5-FM in Chicago is sending letters to members concerning the Congressional fight over CPB funding, but isn’t using its airwaves or website to urge listeners to take action. Torey Malatia, g.m., explains to the Chicago Reader, “It is inappropriate for a public service institution committed to independent, fair journalistic practices to use its public service platforms to urge specific legislative action, even if — especially if — that action results in institutional financial benefit. Journalists either report content to the public in a way that rejects politicking or not. You either stick to principles or you really don’t have any.”

A New York U.S. District Court judge today (Feb. 22) granted a preliminary injunction blocking ivi TV from streaming signals from TV stations without their consent. More than 20 broadcasters, including WNET/Thirteen, PBS and WGBH, had filed suit against the Seattle firm, which charges subscribers for retransmission (Current, Oct. 4, 2010) and insists that is permitted because ivi is a type of cable system. Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald said ivi was “extraordinarily unlikely” to be deemed a cable system under copyright law, and that it was posing that harm to broadcasters’ business. Todd Weaver, ivi’s c.e.o., released a statement that said in part, “This fight is for the people and their right to choice and control over their own entertainment – and it will continue.

The Center for Investigative Reporting is starting an in-house production unit for digital media and video. Sharon Tiller, former series executive director of Frontline/World on PBS and senior producer at Frontline, will lead the unit as the center’s director of digital media. A release says the move is part of a larger business development strategy to create new models for investigative journalism to sustain itself and leverage new technologies to increase and engage audiences. Tiller will supervise a team of seven. The center has had a 20-year relationship with Frontline. The first joint segment will air in spring 2011.

Two public broadcasting collaborations have won prestigious Polk awards for their news projects. Frontline, ProPublica and the Times-Picayune of New Orleans won the Polk for television reporting, and NPR and ProPublica won for radio. In a release, presenter Long Island University called the “Law & Disorder” Frontline collaboration “monumental.” The reporting partners looked at the often brutal actions taken by the New Orleans Police Department in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, investigating charges that officers shot at 10 persons and killed four. The project revealed that law-enforcement commanders issued orders to ignore long-established rules governing use of deadly force. C.

Veteran newspaperman and news industry analyst Alan Mutter weighs in on the debate over CPB funding and concludes that it’s time for public broadcasters to learn to live without their federal aid. Public broadcasting stations are “generally well-funded, well-known and well-established organizations,” Mutter writes on his blog Reflections of a Newsosaur, noting that local stations derive an average of 15 percent of their annual revenues from Uncle Sam. “The fact that the public media operate with only a modest degree of federal funding is not only fortunate for them at a time of aggressive budget cutting but also a sign that government support of the public media has been an unqualified success,” Mutter writes.

Three public broadcasters are headliners on a 10-day PTV at Sea cruise in November. Gwen Ifill of Washington Week, Mark Samels, e.p. of American Experience, and Scott Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition will be presenters and panelists on board Regent’s Seven Seas Mariner as it sails from Venice to Croatia, Malta, Tunisia, Monte Carlo, Florence and Rome. It’s sponsored by Artful Travelers.

Last time, in 2005, the emissary to Congress was Clifford the Big Red Dog. This time, it’s an aardvark named Arthur. Last time, lawmakers showed off boxes of 1 million petitions with signatures; now, the million signatures are digital. Back then, when the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee tried for a 25 percent cut in the CPB appropriation, public support moved the House to save it by a 2-to-1 vote. This year, no such luck. If saviors arrive, they’ll have to come from the Senate, as they have in numerous past years. Very early on the morning of Saturday, Feb. 19 [2011], about 4:30, the House approved the Continuing Resolution on a party-line vote of 235-189 that would cut CPB’s entire $460-million advance appropriation for fiscal 2013, two years from now, plus billions from federal spending this fiscal year.