Fred Newman, sound effects man extraordinaire on American Public Media’s Prairie Home Companion, gave a demonstration of his craft Wednesday afternoon in Enid, Okla., reports the Enid News and Eagle. Newman was in town doing sound effects for The Wonderful Life of George Bailey, an adaptation of the film It’s a Wonderful Life as a radio drama at Enid Symphony Hall. Newman’s grandfather sparked his passion for sounds at an early age, he said. His grandfather placed a finger on Newman’s lips and told to listen to the sounds. “If the wind was blowing he would tell me to hear the whisper of the sound,” Newman told the crowd.

For the first time, pubTV stations may broadcast the 60-minute National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony in Washington, D.C. According to partners WETA, the National Park Service and the National Park Foundation, the ceremony, which takes place Dec. 3, will be available starting Dec. 4 to run throughout the holiday season. It’s the 86th annual lighting. (2008 photo: National Park Service)

The crowds are arriving for APT’s Fall Marketplace, today through Saturday in Fort Myers, Fla. Lots of events, including a professional development seminar by Steve McGowan, senior vice president of research for the Discovery Channel, “Traditional Media’s Future When Facing the Rise of New Media.”

California Watch, a division of the Berkeley-based Center for Investigative Reporting, and KQED Radio officially unveiled their editorial collaboration to bring more watchdog coverage of statewide issues to public radio airwaves. Michael Montgomery, a veteran investigative reporter formerly with American RadioWorks, will produce stories exclusively for California Report, a KQED Radio series with a weekly cume of 620,000 listeners statewide. The partners will jointly produce interactive multimedia and pool their editorial resources, including office space in the Sacramento, the state capitol, and California Watch journalists will appear regularly on other KQED programs. “Public radio is a critical distribution outlet and this opportunity to reach large numbers of public radio listeners in California fits right into our strategy of maximizing the impact of our stories by using muliple media platforms,” said Robert Rosenthal, executive director of CIR.

In an online chat with WashingtonPost.com readers, Vivian Schiller gives herself a B+ for her first 10 months as NPR president. “I’ve gotten a lot done, but not as much as I hope to over time!” she writes. Beyond the usual complaints about pledge drives and government subsidies for public broadcasting, chat participants complained about liberal bias on the weekly NPR news quiz Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! “Peter Sagal is the most biased personality you have on staff. He routinely takes cheap shots at the GOP, but refuses to go after Democratic figures,” writes one participant. “Why do you keep Dan Schorr around?”

Steve Waldman, incoming special adviser to FCC Chair Julius Genachowski, said confronting the myriad troubles in the news industry will be a priority in his work. He told TV News Check (registration required) that he will study “the very worrisome and deep contraction of journalism,” adding, “You have this real threat, especially to fulltime professional local journalism. … The chairman is interested in making sure we’re thinking creatively and in a coordinated way.” AOL’s Daily Finance Blog dubbed him “The point man for fixing the news business.” There he laid what he’ll be looking at: “My first assignment is really to figure out what the problem is, and to try to be as precise and kind of data-driven as possible.

Sesame Street creator Joan Ganz Cooney was on hand at Sesame Workshop yesterday as the New York City mayor’s office proclaimed Nov. 10, 2009, as Sesame Street Day, and placed a temporary street sign at 64th and Broadway across from the workshop to honor the 40-year-old show. The cast and crew were there, as well as President and CEO Gary E. Knell. The Workshop staff jammed elevators to attend, wearing bright T-shirts and party hats for the occasion, top. (Photos: Sesame Workshop). Many more photos online at Pacific Coast News. Today, above, there’s cake!

The Radio-Television News Directors Association is updating its name, according to TV News Check. Now it’s the Radio Television Digital News Association. That makes the third name since the groups founding in 1946 as the National Association of Radio News Directors. “We spent quite a bit of time in board meetings over the last few years and we ran names up and down the flagpole,” said President Stacey Woelfel. “Ultimately, we ended up with this letter swap in the middle of the name, which I thought was brilliant when I heard it, because it still allowed us to keep that RTNDA brand.

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.