New York’s WNYC-FM has received a $1 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a new reporting unit focused on health issues. The unit will cover healthy living and wellness, the policy and economics of health care, and medical science and discovery. WNYC will use the grant to hire reporters, producers, editors and audience-development specialists. Content created by the unit will be featured on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show and the station’s local editions of Morning Edition and All Things Considered. The reporting will also be featured nationally on WNYC and Public Radio International’s The Takeaway and on American Public Media’s Marketplace.

Though the FCC’s incentive auction next year might give a short-term financial boost to a handful of public TV stations, it could erode the field’s ability to provide over-the-air signals to all of the nation’s homes, according to a new CPB white paper that outlines policy implications for local decision-makers. “Narrow financial calculations cannot measure the value of serving the educational needs of the nation’s children, providing trusted news, reliably delivering emergency alerts, presenting diverse viewpoints that would not otherwise be heard, and numerous other benefits provided today and in the future by the nation’s public media stations through over-the-air broadcasting,” says the report, “Facing the Spectrum Incentive Auction and Repacking Process,” released Thursday.

Plus: WFMU opens a new performance space, and Chris Hardwick compares NPR reporters to Star Wars characters.

Maryland Public Television in Owings Mills promoted executives. Steven Schupak rises from s.v.p. and chief content officer to e.v.p. and chief operating officer at the Owings Mills station. George Beneman, chief technology officer, is now s.v.p. And Jay Parikh steps up to v.p. and head of MPT’s content division. “The promotions were due to the talents of these individuals coupled with restructuring to accommodate MPT’s fundraising campaign and Vietnam initiative,” said Larry Unger, MPT president, referring to a major event honoring veterans and their families that the state network is planning for April 2016.  “We are very excited for what the future has in store for MPT.”

Plus: Scott Nourse joins PBS Digital, and the Radiolab guys visit Colbert.

WGBH News has resurrected the annual Muzzle Awards from the ashes of the Boston Phoenix as a stand-alone website with a podcast tie-in.

DENVER — A public radio station’s foray into native advertising, which seamlessly integrates paid content into a website’s editorial fare, stirred strong opinions at a July 10 session at the annual Public Media Development & Marketing Conference. Attendees packed the room to hear about plans for native advertising on the site of Southern California Public Radio in Pasadena, Calif. The broadcaster received a $33,000 grant in April from the Investigative News Network and the Knight Foundation to experiment with native advertising, also known as sponsored content. Over the six-month pilot stage, which ends in December, SCPR will develop a native-advertising framework for online and mobile platforms. 

Downton Abbey and Sherlock: His Last Vow each picked up 12 primetime Emmy nominations July 10, earning the lion’s share of the 34 nominations for PBS programs. Downton Abbey, a co-production of Masterpiece and Carnival Films, was nominated for outstanding drama series and outstanding directing for a drama series, while Michelle Dockery, who plays Lady Mary Crawley in the period drama, was nominated for lead actress in a series. Four additional cast members are vying for Emmys: Maggie Smith and Joanne Froggatt, both nominated for supporting actress in a drama series; Jim Carter, nominated for supporting actor in a drama series; and Paul Giamatti, a contender in the category guest actor in a drama series.

Margaret Low Smith, NPR’s senior vice president for news, is leaving the network to take a position with The Atlantic as president of its live-event division, AtlanticLIVE. Smith has worked for NPR for 32 years, heading the news division since 2011. Before holding that job, she worked as VP of programming. She started at NPR in 1982 as an overnight production assistant for Morning Edition. “Her departure will be felt as profoundly as any in recent memory,” NPR Chief Content Officer Kinsey Wilson wrote in an email to station executives. “Margaret has devoted nearly her entire professional career to NPR and in that time has become its most determined and eloquent champion.

Plus: A survey finds high loyalty among public radio listeners, and a former news exec moves to PR.

Inconsistent loudness among public radio shows frustrates listeners and poses challenges for technical staffers.

Three of the five final episodes in the Hercule Poirot detective series, a longtime favorite on Masterpiece Mystery!, will debut in the U.S. next month as an on-demand series available exclusively through online British content distributor Acorn TV. Masterpiece’s Mystery strand will present the broadcast debut of two detective stories, The Big Four and Deadman’s Folly, July 27 and Aug. 3, respectively. British drama fans who want to catch the series finale will have to sign up for Acorn TV, the subscription-based streaming service specializing in British drama. The distributor will provide the episodes via its website and Roku channel.

In the first and potentially only government-backed grant program supporting arts coverage by California’s public media stations, KQED, PBS SoCaL and Radio Bilingüe each received one-time funding from the California Arts Council. The Council created its Arts on the Air program as one of several initiatives funded by a special $2 million allocation from the California state legislature. The state aid was split between two arts education initiatives and three grant programs; the council created Arts on the Air specifically to support public, nonprofit media outlets and directed $200,000 to be distributed through a competitive grants process. “It’s a modest program, but the council really wanted to find organizations that would really impact public feeling about the arts, that would build public will and understanding about the value of the arts in our communities,” said Caitlin Fitzwater, spokesperson for the Arts Council.

Georgia Public Broadcasting will fund its new daytime public radio news service on Atlanta’s WRAS through private revenues, not state subsidies, according to Michael H. McDougald, a broadcaster who chairs the state network’s governing commission. GPB “has no intention of using taxpayers’ money to support this new initiative,” McDougald said in an open letter responding to criticism from Public Broadcasting Atlanta, which broadcasts a hybrid format news and music service to the state capitol on WABE-FM. McDougald said the state-owned pubcasting network expects earned revenues to fully support its news and talk programming on WRAS. GPB took over daytime programming of Georgia State University’s 100,000-watt FM station on June 29 through a channel-sharing agreement with the university.

Ange-Aimée Woods, a Canadian journalist who played a key role in the recent expansion of Colorado Public Radio arts coverage, died July 2 in Montreal of apparent heart failure. She was 41. Woods joined CPR in October 2013 as the Denver station’s first full-time arts reporter. She’d spent the previous decade with CBC’s Radio One, working a variety of jobs including as a senior producer on the live drivetime program Homerun and a social media producer. During her seven months at CPR, she worked on launch of its weekly arts program Colorado Art Report. “What really impressed me with her was not only her tremendous chops as a journalist, but also her clear passion for the arts in the very broadest way,” said Chloe Veltman, CPR Arts Editor, who hired Woods as a part of CPR’s grant-funded effort to launch an arts bureau.