As a Masterpiece production competing against other miniseries, movies and specials, Great Expectations received Emmys for outstanding achievement in costume design (Annie Symons, Yvonne Duckett), art direction (David Roger, Paul Ghirardani, Jo Kornstein), main title design (Nic Benns, Rodi Kaya, Tom Browich) and cinematography (Florian Hoffmeister). In addition, the Masterpiece production Page Eight won an Emmy for original main title theme music (Paul Englishby). Other PBS winners included the Independent Lens production Have You Heard From Johannesburg, a seven-part series about the global anti-apartheid movement that received a juried award for exceptional merit in documentary filmmaking.

In the first of a two-part interview on the NetNewsCheck website, Planet Money reporters Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg talk to writer Michael Depp about what he calls the “curious, humane, approachable style” of the multimedia team covering the global economy for pubradio. Exactly what the program is continues to evolve, Blumburg said. “We’ve been searching for the one word answer. We’re an economics reporting unit, a project. What is the core thing that we do? That’s the question we’re asking all the time.” “Do we want to do more cohesive projects where there’s a huge digital component and there’s an audio component and they’re all working together.

The Lyda Hill Foundation has donated $1 million to Dallas pubcaster KERA to expand regional news coverage. The donation comes on the heels of the foundation’s 2011 support for KERA’s reporting on health and science issues that included sponsorship of the station’s weekly “Health Checkup” segment. The Lyda Hill Foundation focuses on funding organizations “that make game-changing advances in nature and science research.” “As a KERA viewer, listener and donor, I recognized the importance of funding such a vital community resource,” Hill said in a prepared statement. “This gift is also meant to inspire others to support the kind of local news stories and reporting not found anywhere else in North Texas.”

The Independent Television Service has launched a social-media campaign to steer viewers from Thursdays to Monday nights, as Independent Lens prepares to take its new spot in the PBS lineup, with POV. ITVS is urging fans to fans to download an “I stand with independents” sign, take a photo, tweet the picture to #StandWithMe, add it to a Facebook page and submit it to the ITVS Tumblr. “We need your help in the long haul to drive audiences to Monday nights,” ITVS President Sally Jo Fifer said on the organization’s website.

In an interview Hispanic news site Voxxi, Sandie Viquez Pedlow, executive director of Latino Public Broadcasting, talks about raising the profile of a growing segment of America. “If you look at the Census, you see that Latinos right now are 50 million strong and represent 16 percent of the American population,” Pedlow said. “By 2050, nearly one-third of the total American workforce is going to be Hispanic. We, organizations such as Latino Public Broadcasting and other Latino organizations, really need to look at that and we need to translate those numbers into the many stories that are out there and distribute them across all media platforms, so that these stories can be seen and understood by the American public.”

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney may have said during last week’s debate that he would eliminate funding to public television, but during his time as Massachusetts governor WGBH in Boston received millions from the state’s film tax credit program that Romney signed into law, according to the Boston Globe. Last year alone WGBH received $4.2 million for programs including American Experience, Antiques Roadshow and Nova. Also, Watertown, Mass., animation studio Soup2Nuts received about $300,000 in subsidies last year, mainly for the PBS series WordGirl. “It has been very helpful for us to make our budget,” WGBH spokesperson Jeanne Hopkins told the newspaper.

Margaret Drain, longtime head of national programming for production powerhouse WGBH in Boston, is stepping down in February 2013, the pubTV station announced today. Drain has overseen the production of icon series such as American Experience, Frontline, Masterpiece, NOVA and Antiques Roadshow, as well as numerous specials. During her 10 years in the position, the station has won 44 Emmys, 10 du-Pont-Columbia awards and 14 George Foster Peabody awards. “Through her deep commitment to quality journalism, Margaret Drain has advanced WGBH’s mission to serve our audiences across the country with programming that sets the standard for public television,” said WGBH President Jon Abbott.

St. Louis Public Radio and the nonprofit St. Louis Beacon have signed a letter of intent to explore an alliance, they announced today. The two already work together in a Beacon news bureau in Washington, D.C., and on “Beyond November,” a comprehensive election-coverage project that also includes a partnership with the Nine Network of Public Media. “We see the digital revolution as a historic opportunity to further establish St. Louis as a leader in journalism innovation,” said Tim Eby, St. Louis Public Radio g.m. “As we plan together, the core idea that will guide us is the question ‘Will this help us better serve the community?’”

Public broadcasting became a trending topic during and after Wednesday night’s presidential debate, as GOP nominee Mitt Romney repeated his pledge to defund PBS and the NewsHour’s Jim Lehrer was roundly criticized for his performace as debate moderator.

Two acclaimed filmmakers whose work has been featured on the documentary showcase  POV on PBS were among the 2012 “Genius Grant” recipients, announced Monday by the  John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Natalia Almada and Laura Poitras, along with the 21 other grantees, will each receive $500,000 paid over five years. Almada, based in Brooklyn and Mexico City, produces works that spotlight the conflict and turmoil of individual lives in Mexico, as well as the complex realities of immigration. Three of her films have been featured on POV, including 2005’s Al Otro Lado and 2009’s El General.

Video of the fourth in a series of Public Media Futures forums, held Sept. 20 in San Francisco, is now online at the website of one of the sponsoring organizations, the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. This forum highlighted news content innovation and social media integration within the pubcasting system. Here’s background on the forums in Current (Jan. 30). More than 30 participants at the event included Kinsey Wilson, chief content officer, NPR; Carol Varney, managing director, Bay Area Video Coalition; Olivia Ma, news and politics manager, YouTube; Chris Satullo, news director, WHYY; Brant Houston, chair, Investigative News Network; Linda Fantin, director of network journalism, American Public Media; and Stephen Engleberg, managing editor, ProPublica.

The FCC has released a 205-page Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the upcoming spectrum auctions to clear bandwidth for mobile devices, and is requesting comments. In the notice, the FCC says that it anticipates participation in the auction by noncommercial educational licensees “will promote the overall goals of the broadcast television spectrum incentive auction and serve the public interest by providing NCE licensees with opportunities to strengthen their financial positions and improve their service to the public.” The FCC also notes that channel sharing by commercial stations and NCE stations operating on reserved channels, one option for broadcasters in the auction, “raises special concerns.”