Public radio stations will have their first chance in five years to file for translators on non-reserved FM frequencies. The FCC window is March 10-14 (release in PDF, text and Word formats). Communications attorney John Crigler believes this means the FCC will soon decide–possibly before the window opens–how to handle situations in which commercial and noncommercial broadcasters vie for the same frequency.

There’s no escape from rant media: a Washington Post feature on “nasty name calling, vindictive invective and unrelenting venting” doesn’t mention cross-channel exchanges between PBS’s Bill Moyers and Bill O’Reilly of Fox News.

Willing to give up your modern, interconnected lifestyle and experience life as it was in the American colonies? Producers of Colonial House, a PBS series that goes into production this June, are accepting online applications.

The reds of Nazi banners and congealed blood, “oranges of flame-throwers and of the explosions caused by kamikaze pilots” bring emotional immediacy to The Perilous Fight, a World War II documentary debuting on PBS stations tonight, writes a New York Times reviewer. “[I]t provides views of World War II that few besides those who actually fought have ever seen,” recommends a Los Angeles Times critic.

Forum, a talk show on San Francisco’s KQED-FM, celebrates its tenth anniversary this week. Host Michael Krasny, who also teaches English lit, says his goal is “to bring discourse up, bottom line.”

Jonathan Mitchell, producer of public radio’s Shades of Gray, chats tonight (Tues., Feb. 11) on the website of the Association of Independents in Radio. Not last night. Sorry.

Pacifica’s revenues are rising, but it will have to cut wages and may be in debt for another two years, reports Executive Director Dan Coughlin.

A lengthy Boston Globe story about the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America includes an account of the group’s ongoing campaign against NPR and Boston member station WBUR. (Via Romenesko.)

As if a Dan Schorr Cupid weren’t enough, NPR’s special e-Valentines also include some annoying music.

Documentaries airing on HBO and PBS tonight are “among the most inventive, expressive programs produced this year in observation of Black History Month,” writes a New York Times reviewer.

  Now they’re sister stations   WNET WLIW Cume households* 3.1 mil. 2.1 mil. Annual spending $180 mil. $14 mil. Employees (approx.) 450 80** Members 350,000 < 50,000 *Nielsen cume audiences are for one week in November. **WLIW employees include 24 technicians hired on a daily basis. They will maintain separate on-air identities and production efforts, but two of the New York City area’s public TV stations completed their long-expected marriage Jan. 31. WNET, a major production house for public TV with a budget of $180 million acquired the assets of WLIW, its feisty Long Island-based rival with a budget of $14 million.

Frontline producer Barak Goodman discusses “Failure to Protect: The Caseworker Files” on washingtonpost.com.

Michael Lazar, president of Capital Public Radio in Sacramento, tells the Sacramento Bee that new competitor KQED is “not going to be offering the listeners a true alternative.” (More coverage in the Sacramento Business Journal.)

San Francisco’s KQED will move into Sacramento next year with its $3 million purchase of a religious FM station.

Another ethics watchdog takes issue with NPR’s Cokie Roberts serving on a presidential panel. “Few news organizations would allow their journalists to become involved in an activity comparable to the one Cokie Roberts has chosen and ABC News has approved,” writes Bob Steele, director of the ethics program at the Poynter Institute.