NPR’s Ina Jaffe wins national Gracie as outstanding correspondent

Among national award winners, NPR’s Ina Jaffe was named outstanding reporter/correspondent. The Gracies honor programming created for, by or about women. The national Gracies will be awarded May 21 in Beverly Hills, Calif., and the winners in local, online, public and student markets will be honored June 26 in New York.

And the pubradio brackets winner is . . .

Despite some impressive social-media cheerleading by several worthy competitors, the winner of KPCC’s Public Radio Brackets is This American Life. More than participants 50,000 chose their fave programs and as one commenter noted, “This was the toughest decision I ever had to make as a voter.”

Repacking complications loom following broadcast spectrum auctions

Many broadcasters may be in for “unpleasant repacking surprises” following the FCC’s upcoming spectrum auctions, writes Washington, D.C., telecom lawyer Michael Berg on the TVNewsCheck media site. Stations on channels below 31 think they won’t be moved or reconfigured, but this will vary by market, he writes. And a station can be repacked even it it remains on its current channel. “It is important for television broadcasters to be aware of ongoing developments, and not to assume prematurely that repacking won’t affect your station,” Berg notes.

Few ‘Magic Moments’ in March pledge

Pledge results reported by public TV stations from recently concluded on-air fundraisers were down 20 percent to 25 percent from the March 2012 drive, according to Kristen Kuebler, director of station research for Arizona-based TRAC Media. For most stations, the March fund drive is typically the biggest of the year, and revenues generated from it influence budgeting for the next fiscal year. Stations reported to TRAC and PBS that audience response to the latest pledge shows was tepid at best. The top-performing show among TRAC’s client stations was Magic Moments: The Best of ’50s Pop, a program that was first released for public TV broadcasts in 2005. It brought in 8 percent of all pledges, below their strongest show from the March 2012 drive: a self-help special from motivational speaker Wayne Dyer, Wishes Fulfilled, that generated 11 percent of total dollars raised by TRAC stations.

Pat Perini, pubTV producer

Patricia “Pat” Perini, a public television producer, director, writer and production executive for more than three decades, died Feb. 21 after a long battle with leukemia. She was 68.

Roger Ebert, film critic and pubTV icon, dead at 70

Roger Ebert, the legendary film critic who got his television start on Chicago PBS station WTTW, died April 4 after a long battle with cancer. He was 70. “Everyone at WTTW is deeply saddened by the loss of Roger Ebert, whose courageous battle with cancer in recent years was an inspiration to us all,” WTTW President Dan Schmidt said in a statement.