Pubcasters win 14 Peabody Awards

Of the 35 George Foster Peabody Awards announced today, 14 went to programs produced and/or aired by public broadcasters. Winners, chosen by the Peabody Board as the best of electronic media in 2007 include: Design Squad, a reality TV show of engineering challenges for older kids; The MTT Files, a pubradio series featuring San Francisco Symphony Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas; and Just Words, created by former WYPR-FM host Marc Steiner to bring the voices of Baltimore's most under-privileged citizens to the air. Three of PBS's winning programs, including Design Squad, were produced by Boston's WGBH.

This American Life ... live ... in high-def ... in 317 theaters

On May 1, before its second season on the Showtime cable channel, This American Life will try a one-night-only live HD broadcast to 317 movie theaters around the country, satellite-fed through National Cinemedia. (The same company distributes live HD Metropolitan Opera broadcasts to theaters, including La Boheme, April 5.) The two-hour show will include previews of the upcoming TV season, also in HD, plus Ira Glass presenting a radio story and Q&A with the far-flung audience. Nearly 70 pubradio stations are promoting the event and using tickets as member premiums. It'll be 8 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Central, 6 p.m. Mountain and tape-delayed to 8 Pacific time. Tickets go on sale April 4. Here's a video trailer. More about Glass's big broadcast in Current, April 7.

Caring for Your Parents: only the noble

"Caring for Your Parents leaves the impression that we all love our mothers and fathers without ambivalence or reservation" and will honorably care for them, writes Ginia Bellafonte in a New York Times review. A more realistic look, she says, would include the "ornery and selfish patriarch of The Savages, the recent fictional film that regarded the same subject with more complexity and skepticism, examining how grown children respond when they are obliged to care for parents who failed to care spectacularly for them." The PBS doc, produced by Michael Kirk for WGBH, airs tonight.