More power means a classical option for listeners around St. Louis

Classical radio in the St. Louis area won’t go away if KRCU-FM gets the power increase and antenna upgrade it wants. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has been in talks since last spring to sell its Classical 99, KFUO-FM in St. Louis, to Gateway Creative Broadcasting, which has two contemporary Christian stations in the state. Music and news KRCU at Southeast State University, 100 miles south in Cape Girardeau, hopes to reach the southern St. Louis market with an improved repeater at KSEF in Farmington. The station applied Sept. 30 to the FCC to go from 9,500 watts to 20,000 watts, the university said in a statement this week.

Emmys honor Biz Report anchor, founder; give pubcasters nine nominations

Lifetime Achievement Awards for Business and Financial Reporting will go to Paul Kangas of Nightly Business Report, and Linda O’Bryon, founder of that broadcast in 1979 and now chief content officer of Northern California Public Broadcasting, according to the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. In nominations announced this week, pubcasters pulled in nods for NewsHour, NOW, Frontline (four), Wide Angle, Nova scienceNOW and the PBS Vote 2008 project. A full list of the Emmy nominees here. Awards will be presented Dec. 7 in New York City.

Experts at Harvard ponder potential "terrible vacuum" of news

A panel of media experts gathered at the Harvard Kennedy School this week for a discussion that “acknowledged both the despair and the hope that journalists feel over the present state of the American news business, rocked by economic turmoil and the rise of the Internet,” according to the Harvard Gazette. One participant was Pulitzer Prize winner Alex Jones, former host of Media Matters on PBS and director of Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and author of the new book, Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy. He said that newspapers create most of the “cumulative reporting” that underlies American journalism, and if they disappear it will create “a terrible vacuum” of information that drives the national conversation, according to the paper. Read more about pubcasting's involvement in the future of news coverage in the Nov. 9 issue of Current.

Sesame gets actual street

The street running through Kiwanis Park in Charleston, Ill., will be permanently renamed Sesame Street on Sunday, according to the Daily Eastern News of Eastern Illinois University in the central-Illinois city. Mayor John Inyart will read a proclamation to kick off a day of activities hosted by pubstation WEIU and a local commercial radio station. Participants are encouraged to dress as their favorite Sesame Street characters, and have a chance to record their favorite moments from the show.

NPR and iBiquity agree to support lesser power boost for HD Radio

NPR joined with the proprietor of HD Radio technology, iBiquity Digital Corp., to propose that the FCC quadruple the permitted digital FM power level. In a statement released today they agreed the plan would protect analog FM broadcasts from interference while significantly improving reception of the digital HD Radio signal — especially by receivers indoors, where the digital signal sometimes can’t penetrate.

Last fall, after other broadcasters suggested a ten-fold power boost for the digital signal, NPR field tests found the larger increase would interfere with regular FM broadcasts.

If the FCC takes NPR's and iBiquity's advice, it would authorize a blanket 6 dB increase, from 20 dBc to -14 dBc. Most stations could boost their digital signals by more than 6 dB, they calculated, laying out the option of greater increases where spacing between stations and other criteria would limit interference.

Mister Rogers gets a bronze tribute

A sculpture Fred Rogers was unveiled today in Pittsburgh as a tribute to the children's television icon. He's seated and tying his shoe, facing the city skyline, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. It's titled, "Tribute to Children." The bronze piece created by sculptor Robert Berks is nearly 11 feet high and weighs more than 7,000 pounds. Berks may be best known for his bust of President Kennedy in Washington's Kennedy Center. Also, don't miss the nice audio tribute on WDUQ's news blog, from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. (Photo: Family Communications Inc.)

Blogger examines MPR/APM executive salaries; $600,000 for president

The member-supported local news site MinnPost is dissecting salary numbers of Minnesota Public Radio execs. Blogger David Brauer did "a little spreadsheet crunching" of MPR's IRS 990 forms for the year ending June 2008. Bill Kling, president and CEO of Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media, made $373,254 in compensation and benefits from MPR/APM, $180,000 from American Public Media Group (APMG) and $48,000 from Greenspring, MPR's for-profit arm.

Holiday furloughs hit WNET

Employees at WNET in New York will have three unpaid days off between Christmas and New Year's Day, according to Crain's New York Business. Senior managers at the pubTV station will have five days of unpaid leave. Production staffers involved in daily shows will be exempt.

Kids' writing contest revived after Rainbow's end

PBS is picking up where Reading Rainbow left off, launching a new annual writing and drawing contest for children in cahoots with public TV stations around the country. More at Current.org.

Viewers get grouchy over "Pox News"

Now here's an unexpected question: Did Sesame Street take a poke at Fox News? That's what PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler is looking at in this week's Mailbag. In the Oct. 29 episode, Oscar the Grouch hosted the Grouch News Network, covering "all grouchy, all disgustin', all yucky" news. But another character thinks it's not grouchy enough and threatens to switch to "Pox News, now there's a trashy news show." Viewers wrote Getler to complain that the character actually said "Fox" News. "I can't really blame them," Getler writes. "When I went and watched the tape for the first time, I thought I heard 'Fox' as well, perhaps because of the association one assumes when you hear 'news' right after the word." But closed captioning revealed it was indeed Pox News.