Recent headlines about the state of broadcast TV news, particularly at the local station level, have been almost as harsh as the grim reports about the fate of newspapers.

Established TV news outlets have been shedding editorial staff, even at the once-vaunted O&O level. Stations are relying more and more on pre-fab wire reports and in some cases even running thinly veiled promotional vids complete with bogus "correspondents" as part of regular newscasts. On too many stations, newscasts have been tarted-up, tabloid-ed, dumbed-down and frequently prostituted for corny tie-ins with adjacent entertainment programming. Old-school broadcast journos like the late great Bill Stout (oh how I miss him) are sneering at us from beyond the grave.

Given these unfortunate truths, it was extra-heartening to see in the list of 2007 Peabody Award winners announced last week that the 16 esteemed members of the awards committee found plenty to commend at one old-guard network affiliate that has long nurtured and protected its reputation as a provider of local news that matters.

WFAA-TV, serving the Dallas-Fort Worth market, earned a Peabody that recognized for a series of influential, in-depth reports from the station's dedicated investigative reporting unit on four topics: fraud and negligent lending practices at the federal U.S. Export-Import Bank; the lethal lack of oversight of the maintenance of natural gas pipelines running near residential areas; a probe of the unconscionably cozy relationship between a local police department, NBC's "Dateline" and a watchdog group that set up a series of sting operations to nab men who trolled on the Internet to arrange sex dates with teenagers; and a heartbreaking look at conditions in a Homeland Security detainee center and the story of one immigrant family's ordeal.

Each one of the reports is incredibly detailed, well-reported and well-told in terms of its impact on the people of the state of Texas. Each report had a swift and significant impact on the moves taken by others to address problems raised in WFAA's reporting. But most impressive was the intelligent and altogether sober presentation of reports on complex topics with lots of specific information, documents, whistle-blowers and opinions from all sides of presented to viewers in segments than run as long as -- gasp -- six minutes or more.

This is reporting that takes time and shoe leather, extensive research and the support of an editorial staff with a deep understanding of the communities they serve. This is television that respects the intelligence of its audience. There are no histrionics or hyperventilating in the delivery, just two seasoned investigative reporters tackling important stories in a fearless, responsible manner. The rhyme of the slogan "News 8 Investigates" is as gimmicky as it gets.

Tuesday p.m. update: Jerry Lewis has issued an apology for using a foul slur on air Monday during the waning hours of his annual MDA telethon:

"I obviously made a bad choice of words. Everyone who knows me understands that I hold no prejudices in this regard," he said. "The success of the (telethon) and all the good that will come from it shouldn't be lost because of one unfortunate word. I accept responsibility for what I said. There are no excuses. I am sorry."

Tuesday a.m. update: It's widely reported on the wires today that Jerry lost it toward the end of the telethon on Monday and called someone an "illiterate fag" on air. TMZ.com has a clip of Lewis' unfortunate comment posted on its website, and it sure sounds like he's making that reprehensible statement, though it's unclear exactly who is the target of his ire. Why Lewis would sully his annual moment in the good-works spotlight by using such a slur on air is unfathomable, but then again, people have always said that Lewis is his own worst enemy.

Say what you will -- LA LA LA NICE LLLAAADDDYYY -- about Jerry Lewis, but every year he raises a boatload of money for a worthy cause with his Labor Day weekend MDA telethon, and there's no way that this is not a good thing in the grand scheme of things.

The haul from this year's 21.5-hour show, broadcast from Las Vegas, was $63.8 million, nearly $3 million more than last year, as detailed on the telethon's website. Lewis has been hosting the telethon for half of his life. (He's 81; the telethon is 42 this year.)

The live shots of a goggle-eyed Jerry panting, sweating, crying and yukking it up with Norm Crosby and Ed McMahon, et al, interspersed with cutaways to local news anchors in formal wear, is one of those TV traditions (for those of us born before the Ford administration) that we'll miss, sorely, when it inevitably ends.

After years of yakking about it, digital multi-casting on local TV stations is really starting to blossom.

There have been a number of pioneering efforts going on for the past few years at enterprising local outlets around the country. North Carolina-based Capitol Broadcasting has been in the vanguard of putting its extra digital bandwidth to good use with dedicated sports channels. NBC affils banded together in the WeatherPlus venture. And NBC's Los Angeles O&O KNBC-TV has for more than a year been going without a net with its wonderfully uninhibited News Raw service, which offers C-SPAN-esque live feeds of news conferences and events a la the Phil Spector trial, as well as an insightful look at the newsroom's daily planning meeting. (Click here for a broadband peek).

But what caught my eye today were two separate news releases that hit the wire today about private companies partnering with major broadcast TV players to bring fresh programming services to the small but growing number of people who have digital TVs at home (whether they can pull in these burgeoning digital offshoot channels via their cable and satellite providers is a whole 'nother distribution conundrum, unfortunately.) It's always seemed to me that the surest sign of a gen-u-ine market forming is transactions between unrelated entities, and if it involves "Hawaii Five-O" reruns, well, so much the better.

Sad news last week about the passing of Joel Siegel, ABC News' longtime film critic, at the age of 63 after a struggle with colon cancer. "Good Morning America" plans to devote the second hour of Monday's telecast to a tribute to Siegel, who delivered weekly film reviews for the morning show for 26 years, on top of logging a more than 30-year stint on  WABC-TV New York. "GMA" alumni Charles Gibson, David Hartman, Joan Lunden and Spencer Christian will make guest appearances on the hour, and it's expected that various actors and filmmakers will contribute taped pieces commenting on Siegel's work, per ABC.

Beyond his work as a critic, Siegel led an eclectic life, working as everything from a flavor-inventor for Baskin Robbins to a joke writer for Robert F. Kennedy. He was an eyewitness to history in 1968 when he accompanied the senator from New York to his fateful visit to L.A.'s Ambassador Hotel. He wrote the Tony-nominated Broadway play "The First," about Jackie Robinson, and when he was diagnosed with cancer six years ago, shortly after learning that he was to become a father for the first time, he penned a book of stories, "Lessons for Dylan: From Father to Son," he wanted to pass on to his son and wife, artist Ena Swansea. Monday's tribute ought to be an interesting and emotional hour of live television.

Wow, this is a really good, well-rounded view of Rupert Murdoch -- the man, the mogul, the dealmaking machine, by Time magazine's Eric Pooley. It feels like an objective take on a guy who is unfairly demonized at times, overly lionized at others. It's clearly Rupe's PR antidote to the New York Times series that rean earlier this week, and it's surely a much more interesting read.

"We're very proud of what we do at all our papers," (Murdoch) says on another day, in another mood. "And we just feel insulted by the coverage. We've got more than 50,000 people [in News Corp.]." We're sitting in his New York City office on a June afternoon. "We make mistakes here and there. But there's nothing wrong with the Post — most people would prefer to read it before they go to the Times. There's such a thing as a popular newspaper and an unpopular élite newspaper. They play different roles. We have both kinds. Just like we have the Fox network with American Idol and 24, and we also have the National Geographic Channel. It's hard for outsiders to understand that."

Still don't know what to make of what's going on at ION TV, the erstwhile Pax TV, and haven't for a while now. The West Palm Beach, Fla.-based company seems to have been held in limbo by payments it owed to NBC Universal that the former Paxson Communications couldn't possibly have paid back. (Back in 1998 NBC struck a doozy of a deal that called for Paxson to essentially reimburse NBC for its minority-interest investment in a few years if the Peacock wasn't happy with the company's progress.) Now it's being bought out and taken private by a Chicago-based investor group, Citadel Investment Group, but they're still giving NBC U a chit to buy back its stake in ION at a later date. Another investor group with the funny name of Contrarian Capital Management was also trying to bid for the company in May but were beaten back without much of a fight, apparently, given that Citadel and NBC U are friendly partners in their transaction. The latest press release on this buyout process is comical for its sheer confused-ness, take a look. A lot of the convolutedness in NBC U's dealings with the company has to do with station ownership limits -- NBC U would be over the FCC's 39% national household reach limit if it took full control of ION too (considering that the Peacock already has NBC and Telemundo O&Os). It's just always struck me as strange that a station group with 60-odd outlets with decent signals in top markets can't make a go of itself as a network, or even an ad-hoc group of stations doing interesting things on the local level. I suppose it is all about the programming, local, national or whatever. So we'll see what the rest of this year brings for the company. Until then, if you're looking for less-than-stellar prints of repeats of "Kojak," "Green Acres," "Battlestar Galactica" and "Mama's Family," you know where to turn. (Besides, now I have an excuse to have a "Kojak" shot on my blog.)

"If we can't restrict the use of the words 'fuck' and 'shit' during primetime, Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want" -- so says Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin (pictured left) in a heated statement released today after the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals completely and totally smacked down the FCC's hyper-protective policy on four-letter words uttered on TV.

The decision in question stems from the FCC's ruling that the use of "fuck" and "shit" by Cher and Nicole Richie, respectively, during Fox's telecast of the Billboard Music Awards in 2002 and '03 constituted an indecency violation. But it's part and parcel of the FCC's scarily-groundbreaking decision that the use of "fuck" in any context, in any circumstance during the 6 a.m.-10 p.m. time frame is an indecent, fine-able offense -- unless of course it's in a patriotic war movie a la "Saving Private Ryan," in which case the commish will relent.

I'm wading through the 53-page decision right now, looking for the money quotes from the ruling applying appropriate scrutiny of what broadcasters have decried as the FCC's nonsensical and arbitrary application of its indecency rules. Variety's William Triplett does a fine job explaining the ins and outs of what it all means. I just had to poke some fun here at the line above from Martin's reaction statement. What part of the First Amendment does the commish not get? Of course, the notion that "Hollywood" can now run amok with salty language is laughable. Television networks are private, for-profit businesses, equipped with standards and practices departments. "Hollywood" can only go as far as its advertisers and viewers will allow -- that's the wonderfully democratic part of the invisible hand that guides free-market capitalism, remember?

But Martin, who's said to have aspirations to run for elected office, seems bent on framing the defeat he was just handed as a case of evil urban centers sending the children of heartland-America down the road to ruin with...dirty words on B-grade awards shows! In his statement Martin notes that he finds it "hard to believe that a New York court would tell American families that 'shit' and 'fuck' are find to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience."