Plus: Paula Poundstone says NPR listeners are "polite and fun. There’s not a lot of head-bangers."

David Candow, who was nicknamed “The Host Whisperer” for his work training hundreds of public radio hosts and journalists, died Thursday at his home in St. John’s, Newfoundland. He was 74. After a long career with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Candow started a consulting business in 1995 and became known throughout U.S. public radio for his extensive work training journalists in writing, editing, interviewing and delivery. In 2008, the Washington Post described him as “a kind of Henry Higgins to broadcasting’s Eliza Doolittles.” His death prompted an outpouring of remembrances throughout public radio from the hosts and reporters he helped over the years.

PUBLIC RADIO PROGRAM DIRECTORS Craig Oliver, a public radio audience research consultant, received the Don Otto award for career contributions to the field. Oliver is the owner of Craig Oliver Consulting, which provides audience research and insight to Public Radio International, Greater Public, and several public radio stations. Oliver co-founded PRPD in 1987 and served as its first president. He was also president of the Radio Research Consortium, where he is now a board member. The Otto award is given annually by PRPD and Audience Research Analysis to recognize creative contributions to public radio. The award is named after Don Otto, the late former director of Eastern Public Radio, who was a mentor to the public radio programmers who started PRPD, including Oliver.

Plus: the FCC's to-do list grows, and podcast listening rivals radio among some consumers.

An FM signal in Santa Barbara, Calif., recently acquired by KCRW, became the first broadcast home this week for Eclectic24, a previously web-only music stream produced by the Santa Monica–based station. KCRW broadcasts on two signals in the market and is using its former repeater at 106.9 FM as the first over-the-air outlet for Eclectic24. Since June, the station has also been simulcasting its Santa Monica station’s programming on 88.7 FM in Santa Barbara, which it purchased earlier this year. “We’ve never had the opportunity to do an all-music station in L.A., so when this opportunity came up, we grabbed it,” KCRW General Manager Jennifer Ferro said in an email.

The president of Greater Public responds to a commentary.

Station managers who worry they can’t afford to do news and public affairs have only to look at Lakeland Public Television in Bemidji, Minn., for inspiration. Since 1998, the station has produced a full half-hour weeknight news program. It currently operates on a yearly budget of just $375,000 to $400,000. Lakeland News is “structured like a commercial newscast, without commercials,” said Bill Sanford, the station’s chief executive and director of engineering. It was conceived after the station secured funding to evaluate how to reinvent itself. The study revealed that viewers wanted a local newscast to replace a commercial program that had disappeared after a spate of media consolidation.

Three years ago, a delegation from Kansas City Public Television, including the board chair, trekked out to San Diego’s KPBS to evaluate how that station’s extensive radio, television and online news operation might be adapted in Kansas City. A few months later, an influential visitor to Kansas City, PBS NewsHour anchor Jim Lehrer, urged KCPT leaders to act on their nascent ambitions to develop a locally focused news service for the community. Over dinner at the restaurant Lidia’s, Lehrer “kind of threw the gauntlet down,” recalled Kliff Kuehl, KCPT president, challenging executives to step up the station’s commitment to news coverage.

A 12-page essay titled “PBS Self-Destructs: And What It Means for Viewers Like You” in the October issue of Harper’s Magazine has prompted PBS to reply to the magazine and provide stations with talking points in anticipation of viewers’ responses. In the piece, writer Eugenia Williamson traces the history of the network with special attention to conservative interests that have buffeted PBS over the years. “[I]t doesn’t matter that the Republicans couldn’t defund PBS — they really didn’t need to. Twenty years on, the liberal bias they bemoaned has evaporated, if it ever existed to begin with,” Williamson writes.

Some 800 people attended the Sept. 13 dedication of Public Media Commons in St. Louis, a unique 9,000–square-foot outdoor media environment located between Nine Network and St. Louis Public Radio that features two-story–high video walls and 5-foot interactive touch screens. The $6 million project, funded by local contributions, is a collaboration among the stations and the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Construction began in November 2012. In his opening speech, Nine Network President Jack Galmiche called the commons “a symbol of who we are at 60 — forward-thinking, innovative, collaborative and committed to the power of a community that comes together to explore and improve the human experience.”

The departure of Jeannie Ericson from Greater Public and the cancellation of the short-lived Digital Day at the Public Media Development and Marketing Conference represent a damaging retreat from public media’s digital future. Over the past 11 years, the Integrated Media Association was one of the only focal points within public media for collaboration on digital strategy and realistic, shareable solutions for public TV and radio stations. Under the leadership of Mark Fuerst and then Jeannie Ericson, with the commitment of lots of smart people at local stations, iMA worked to bring public media into the digital age. When iMA merged with Greater Public last year, it seemed like a positive step toward integrating digital with our marketing strategies and revenue generation.

If any part of the broadcast plant ever merited the label “necessary evil,” a top nominee would be the tower. Expensive to maintain, fraught with potential hazards, bound by an ever-growing web of regulations, unloved by neighbors and often located inconveniently far away, a pubcaster’s tower still serves as the essential link between its program service and its audience. In the early years of public TV and radio — before streaming and podcasting and cable and over-the-top video delivery — pubcasters and their audiences depended completely on the reach of the signals their towers could deliver. When broadcasting was a new and developing communications medium, those towers were much easier to build.