Tavis Smiley said “it’s unthinkable, it’s untenable, it’s unacceptable,” that KCET execs didn’t let him know that they were breaking from PBS as of Jan. 1 (Current, Oct. 18). He told the Los Angeles Times in a story today (Nov. 23) that being out of the loop when his show is produced on the lot at the L.A. station is “unconscionable.” “I literally got a phone call as KCET was making the statement publicly, as this story was breaking,” he said. “I was traveling, so I wasn’t even in the city. I didn’t even find out about this until hours after it had been announced.”

Three PBS documentaries are on the short list for Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced. “Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould” premieres Dec. 27 on American Masters, “Waste Land” will air on Independent Lens in April 2011, and  “William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe” ran on P.O.V. this June. The Academy Awards nominations will be announced at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on Jan. 25, 2011, live from Los Angeles. CORRECTION: Make that four PBS docs in the running for the coveted Oscar. Cynthia Lopez notes that P.O.V.’s “Enemies of the People” is also short-listed; that’ll air next year.

What’s really at stake in the battle over federal funding to NPR, and how can the field’s advocates make the best case for continued support? Public broadcasters began speaking out last week in friendly venues, testing their message points and strategizing about whether and how to mount a more aggressive campaign to enlist broad public support. At yesterday’s Public Media Camp in Washington, D.C., attendees discussed the political attack with Jay Rosen, press critic and j-school professor at New York University, who participated via Skype in a session on the response to the “culture war.” Rosen, who described himself as sympathetic to the fight to preserve federal funding, called for a blogger — one who works independently and outside of NPR and PBS — to report on the debate, critique press coverage of it, and call out the “most outrageous statements” from the field’s partisan critics.

Public media needs coding collaborators. That’s what pubcaster Barrett Golding of Hearing Voices writes in today’s (Nov. 22) Hacks/Hackers blog. Large pubradio stations have ambitious Internet projects going, but they also have the staff and cash to do so. Mid-to-small stations and independents need simpler, smaller apps. Golding has two examples of pubmedia-specific API how-tos that could cheaply and immediately help hundreds of sites.

In a followup to a Current investigation (Aug. 23 and Sept. 7), the New York Times reports today (Nov. 22) that Mykalai Kontilai, the new owner of Nightly Business Report, agreed to leave the instructional programming business in 2000 and paid $250,000 as part of the settlement of a fraud suit. Kontilai confirms making the payment but denies agreeing to step out of the field. Ronald Reed, former president of AGC/United Learning, an educational content provider that has since become part of Discovery, told the newspaper: “We felt, from our point of view, that it would be best not to have him in the industry,” after discovering “what we considered to be inappropriate business practices.”

The Week, a digest newsmag, has a good gathering of links to last week’s coverage of the ongoing attacks on NPR and its government funding. One comment on the post: “Even us conservative southern rednecks love NPR. It should be a sacred cow!” Another, a roundup of opinion columns, is on the Atlantic’s site.

A group of 40 New Jersey officials and pubcasting leaders met for more than eight hours Friday (Nov. 19) to hear advice from journalists and academics on saving the New Jersey Network after state funding ends soon (Current, July 6, 2010).  Included were State Treasure Andrew Eristoff, an aide to Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Nia Gill (D-Essex) and execs from WHYY in Philadelphia, jazz station WBGO in Newark, and WNYC and WNET/Thirteen in New York City. Steve Adubato Jr., president of Caucus Educational Corporation, a producer of public affairs, cultural and educational programs for more than 20 years, told the Star-Ledger that the conversation made it clear that the current television-centered pubcasting model is not sufficient.

WBUR General Manager Paul La Camera is departing his post at the end of the year, he told the staff at a station meeting today (Nov. 19). “I’m going to be 68 next month and I think that’s an appropriate expiration date for someone to be running a dynamic contemporary media entity that increasingly has to surge into the digital world,” La Camera said after making the announcement. “To be frank, I’m more of a traditionalist, and that’s not necessarily my strength.” La Camera was appointed g.m. in October 2005.

Leave it to Roger Ebert to pen a love letter to NPR. The movie critic (and prolific blogger) today (Nov. 19) came to the defense of the beleaguered network. “NPR surely is the voice of America — the voice I hope the world is listening to via the internet,” Ebert writes. “It is the voice of our better nature. We are not all snarling dogs of Left and Right, feasting on shreds torn from the Body Politic. Some of us (maybe most of us, when the mood is right) are kind, curious, sane. We are interested in other peoples, other lifestyles, other choices.

South Carolina Educational Television has hired Linda O’Bryon, former chief of content at Northern California Public Broadcasting, as its new president and c.e.o., the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting. She takes the helm Dec. 1. O’Bryon had supervised producers, editors, reporters and tech personnel at pubTV stations in San Francisco, San Jose and Monterey, and two pubradio stations in Sacramento.

The Media Rating Council, which ensures standards of audience measurement, has removed accreditation for Nielsen’s measurement of its 154 diary-only markets, retroactive to 2009, according to Broadcasting & Cable. The magazine quotes “insiders” who say that with more folks dropping their land lines for cellphones, Nielsen is using address-based recruiting of ratings homes in its diary markets, instead of selecting by phone number. The new method resulted in sample sizes coming up short in two of the four quarters in 2009. Nielsen said in a letter to station clients that the issue has been resolved, it has requested a new MRC audit, and it expects to be accredited again soon.

Producers made “a big mistake, one that was virtually certain to come back and bit them and PBS,” by editing out Tina Fey’s remarks about conservative women during during her acceptance speech for the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize on Nov. 9, PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler writes in today’s (Nov. 18) column. The broadcast on PBS Sunday (Nov. 14) ran 22 minutes long, one of the producer, Peter Kaminsky, told Getler. Producers had only 24 hours to trim the show. “We had no problem with anything she [Fey] said,” Kaminsky said. “It was a humor judgment call forced by time.”

Texas Republican Reps. Joe Barton and Michael Burgess have called for a Government Accountability Office investigation of NPR’s funding. In a letter to the GAO, first reported Nov. 18 by Broadcasting & Cable, the lawmakers asked government investigators to follow the trail of federal funding in public radio — including CPB grants awarded to NPR and federal aid to local stations that may be re-directed to NPR. They pose five questions, including whether any federal funds pay for program production or the salaries of NPR personalities or editors, and whether NPR used federal aid to manage its contractual relationship with former news analyst Juan Williams or to pay for the internal review of his dismissal.

The House of Representatives today (Nov. 18) voted down a move to defund NPR, in the first Republican-ordered floor vote since the GOP-dominated Midterms on Nov. 2. The vote was 239-171. It was actually a procedural maneuver related to a debate rule on H.R. 1722, the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010. The House vote was to close debate and thus avoid voting on the NPR proposal, which had been put forward by Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) Following the vote, the Association of Public Television Stations issued a statement. “APTS stands in solidarity with public radio stations across the country who provide an invaluable service to their local communities,” said APTS Interim President and CEO Lonna Thompson.

Las Vegas PBS/Channel 10 is handling pledge in a very different way this season. “We are the only station in the U.S. trying this,” General Manager Tom Axtell, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. From Nov. 26 through Dec. 12, no more 10-minute begging breaks; now they’re three-minute segments. Fundraising is “mostly host-free and lower-key,” the newspaper noted, with “Do Your Part” graphics popping up during shows, flashing the per-viewer contribution required to keep it on the air if every viewer contributes. Those figures are the station’s costs for acquiring and broadcasting the program, divided by number of viewers based on Nielsen stats.