“News this good isn’t free.” I find myself delivering some variation on that remark during every single public radio pledge break on WNPR this spring. We’ve been saying this in Connecticut for years: “Despite the fact that you don’t have to pay for public radio news, you can’t expect to just keep getting stories about the Mexican drug war from John Burnett … or Anne Garrels reporting from an unstable Pakistan for nothing.” Right? We tell our listeners all the time that their contributions make our high-quality journalism possible, and without their help, it could all go away. So it’s understandable that newspaper people might have been a little piqued by the memo leaked to Jim Romenesko’s Poynter.org

NPR programming on public radio stations topped its previous audience record by reaching 27.5 million listeners a week during Arbitron’s fall 2008 survey period. The weekly cume audience for all NPR programs and newscasts, Sept. 10 to Dec. 10, beat the previous high of 26.4 million set last spring. It is one of several ratings gains announced March 23 by NPR Research: Measuring audiences for non-NPR as well as NPR programs on those member stations, the weekly cume hit another all-time high, 32.7 million, 6 percent larger than fall 2007. Broadcasts of NPR’s flagship newsmagazines — Morning Edition, All Things Considered and their weekend siblings — reached 20.9 million listeners, a 9 percent gain.

Groundbreaking collaborations are beginning to surface as public broadcasting stations partner with laid-off print journalists to bolster multiplatform local and regional reporting.

The first big British TV import and a model for PBS’s Masterpiece, the BBC’s 15-part An Age of Kings, is available now for the first time in 40 years, J. Hoberman writes in the Sunday New York Times. (The set on DVD sells for $32.99 at Tower.com.) Compiled from Shakespeare’s history plays — from Richard II, through the Henrys to Richard III — the series was broadcast live in Britain in 1959, with Judy Dench when she was younger but lovely nevertheless, and imported on kinescopes. Two non-network commercial stations aired it first and then National Educational Television.

Rick Boucher (D-Va.), new head of the House Communications, Technology & Internet Subcommittee, recently laid out his priorities for Broadcasting & Cable magazine. They include reauthorization of the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act, which allows distant viewers, mainly rural, to receive network signals even if they cannot get a local affiliate delivered over the air. Boucher also wants to tackle Universal Service reform, industry funding of telecommunications service to hard-to-reach areas.

Odessa (Texas) College trustees are mulling radio partnerships as an attempt to keep its public broadcasting station on the air, according to The Odessa American. The college can’t afford to keep paying around $100,000 a year to cover the station’s budget shortfall. Texas Public Radio in San Antonio is interested in either helping manage the station or taking it over, but trustees would like to see a local coalition running the station.

On the Media has apologized for what it called a “lapse in journalistic judgment” concerning a November 2008 story on the public radio show The Infinite Mind. Dr. Fred Goodwin, the show’s host, had stirred controversy when The New York Times reported that he had accepted more than a million dollars in speaking fees from drug companies and talked about their brand-name drugs on the show. Infinite Mind producer Bill Lichtenstein had previously denied, in statements on his production company’s website, knowledge of the psychiatrist’s links to pharmaceutical firms. But OTM ‘s report about the flap relied on an account from an anonymous Infinite Mind producer who claimed the show was in fact aware of Goodwin’s activities.

Peter Morrill, g.m. of Idaho Public Television, told a House subcommittee today that public broadcasting fund cuts threatened the completion of the digital transition at his station, according to Broadcast & Cable magazine. In Idaho, he said, some coverage will be lost due to “those darn mountains.” However, due to “the short time frame and desperate economic conditions, it is extremely difficult to finance and deploy the transmitters.” He asked the committee to give stations two years to build out the systems, and to make money available without requiring matching funds.

Will PBS be featuring ever-more British content? Senior v.p. for programming John Wilson tells Broadcast Now, a British magazine, that the economy is forcing the network to use major investments for programs “really vital to the schedule. We cannot afford nice-to-have programming; it has to be must-have programming.” Wilson also says the poor economy may mean PBS will be turning more to UK suppliers for lower-cost acquisitions “when we feel it’s the right kind of content.” The mag calls PBS “a major buyer and co-producer of British factual and entertainment programming.”

George Miles Jr., president of WQED in Pittsburgh, has already taken a hefty salary cut and is asking his board to slice off perhaps 10 percent more. Revenues at the station are expected to fall almost 17 percent this fiscal year. His first salary cut took his compensation from $306,259 to $235,000. He hasn’t ruled out layoffs at the station, which has already frozen salaries, reduced pension contributions, cut health-care spending and eliminated travel and meetings.

Oregon Public Broadcasting will develop the pilot project for the American Archive program, CPB announced today. The archive will preserve content from past years of pubcasting for future access by educators, students, historians and the public. As initiative manager, OPB will oversee the pilot to save content related to the civil rights movement and World War II, as well as administer grants to stations to assist in acquiring and digitizing the content. Here’s background from Current on the project.

New Hampshire Public Television announced five layoffs today. President Peter Frid said the cuts are part of a restructuring. Several other vacant spots will not be filled. “We have seen a significant drop in fundraising revenue in individual giving, corporate underwriting and foundation grants. Reducing staff was our last resort,” Frid said in a statement.

CPB announced details of its Public Service Media Economic Response Initiative, a package of grants investing in programming and station-based projects that deal with the economic crisis. Grants to be awarded could total as much as $7.8 million, according to a CPB news release. Programs and projects comprising the initiative include a $2.5 million digital collaboration among major national producers to produce comprehensive news coverage and distribute it on multiple platforms with links among the offerings and customization tools for stations. In addition, CPB will provide $2.3 million to NPR, Marketplace, The World, Capitol News Connection, Frontline and WNET’s Worldfocus to enhance their economic coverage.

Oregon Public Broadcasting may take over operations of KMHD, a jazz and NPR News station in Gresham, Ore., under a partnership agreement negotiated with Mt. Hood Community College, KMHD licensee. The college, which proposes to transfer operations to OPB on July 1, anticipates state funding cuts of at least $4 million in 2009-10, according to MHCC President John J. Sygielski. Transferring the station’s operations to OPB “is one of the areas where we can reduce costs without compromising a music institution that is important to the College and the community,” Sygielski said. OPB intends to continue operating KMHD as a jazz station.

The PBS series Masterpiece has won a Television with a Conscience award last week for its God on Trial program. The honor is from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the group that presents the Emmys. This is the first such award for a PBS show, according to the network. Seven other programs on commercial networks and premium channels also received awards. God on Trial is a fictional account of a group of Auschwitz prisoners debating the goodness of God, a co-production of Hat Trick Productions Ltd. and WGBH.