PBS ranks No. 7 of 10 popular brands among Democrats in this year’s “Red, Blue and Independent Rankings,”  the annual aggregate indicator of “brand health” from YouGov’s BrandIndex, “a daily measure of brand perception among the public, tracking many brands across multiple sectors simultaneously.” Google, PBS and Dove appear only on the list for Democrats, not Republicans or Independents. More than 1,100 consumer brands are tallied for the index, which combines scores for quality, value, general impression, satisfaction, reputation and willingness to recommend. Results from respondents age 18 and older are filtered for their political party affiliation.

“Elmo Compliments First Lady’s Arms, Tells Her Pizza Isn’t Healthy.” There’s a headline you don’t see every day. The Sesame Street Muppet donned a tie for the Wednesday White House appearance, with his pal Rosita tagging along.  “And I wore my pearls, my mom’s pearls,” Rosita told Michelle Obama, according to U.S. News & World Report. They were there to announce that Sesame Workshop and the Produce Marketing Association are joining the Partnership for a Healthier America in a two-year program to promote fresh fruits and veggies for kids. As part of the agreement, Sesame will allow the association to use Muppet stickers on healthy foods and grocery displays.

The Association of Independents in Radio and Public Radio News Directors Inc. are collaborating on a set of guidelines for local pubradio stations to consult when setting freelancer rates. To lead the initiative, AIR recruited Susanna Capelouto, former news director at Georgia Public Broadcasting. Over the next month, Capelouto will survey news directors and station managers across the country to inform the guidelines, which she hopes to publish by Dec. 1. AIR will draw from a pay guide that it developed for NPR in 2002 and updated last year and from a guide that it created for American Public Media’s Marketplace in 2012.

At the grand opening Wednesday of WCNY’s new $20 million Broadcast and Education Center in Syracuse, N.Y., PBS President Paula Kerger declared the facility “spectacular.” At 56,000 square feet over two buildings, it includes two TV and two radio studios, seven technical editing suites, a production control room, public cafe and courtyard. The educational centerpiece is Enterprise America, a mock town for students to apply Common Core curriculum to real-life situations and learn career, leadership and entrepreneurial skills, the local Post-Standard reports. The facility is also home to the Centralcast master-control hub, which handles programming streams for all nine pubTV stations in New York state plus New Jersey’s four-station network.

Andrew Phillips resigned last month as interim p.d. of Pacifica’s WBAI in New York, a post he accepted less than three months ago in an effort to rebuild the audience of the financially troubled station. Phillips cited a disagreement over fundraising programs airing on the station, including shows featuring products pitched by alternative-medicine promoter Gary Null, as the reason for his decision. “It’s a model destined to failure, and I don’t want to be a part of it,” Phillips said. Pacifica assigned Phillips to WBAI in August after imposing a workforce reduction intended to sharply reduce the station’s operating costs. To attract more listeners, Phillips introduced news and public affairs shows from Pacifica’s KPFA in Berkeley, where he had previously overseen programming, and Los Angeles station KPFK.

The Senate confirmed former PBS Board member Tom Wheeler Tuesday night to head the FCC, reports The Hill. “Tom Wheeler will be a strong advocate for consumers and the public interest at a time when the FCC is facing decisions that will shape the future of our nation’s telephone network and the wireless, broadband, and video industries,” said Senate Commerce Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller. The West Virginia Democrat and others initially expressed concern about Wheeler’s role as a former industry lobbyist. Wheeler was president of the National Cable Television Association from 1979-84 and later led the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association.

Elaine Rivera, a reporter for New York’s WNYC from 2006–09, died Oct. 26. She was 54. The cause of death has not been released, but Rivera had previously battled liver disease. Raised in Cleveland, Rivera came to radio from print journalism, having previously worked for the Washington Post, Time and Newsday. She covered politics for WNYC, including Eliot Spitzer’s run for governor in 2006 and Hilary Clinton’s run for president in 2008. She also reported several well-received pieces on New York’s neighborhoods, particularly stories that originated out of the Bronx, where she lived. Maria Hinojosa, founder of Futuro Media Group and a close friend, met Rivera in the mid-1990s while working as NPR’s New York correspondent.

Bill Moyers announced today to his colleagues in public TV that the last broadcast of his Moyers & Company public-affairs show will air Jan. 3, 2014, when current funding commitments end. He also said that his production company is “exploring the possibility of continuing to serve that audience through BillMoyers.com with the goal of engaging them in the renewal of democracy.” The show has more than 315,000 Facebook likes, Moyers said, and that number “grows every day by the hundreds. They — like so many of our viewers — take their citizenship seriously.” The veteran public broadcasting newsman came out of retirement two years ago “thanks to the generosity of some unexpected funders and the loyalty of  long-time funders” for the weekly series, he said in the memo posted on PBS Connect, the online communication hub for member stations.

KDB in Santa Barbara, Calif., one of the few remaining commercial classical radio stations, has been put up for sale by the foundation that has been operating it at six-figure losses for several years. Directors of the Santa Barbara Foundation, which has owned the license to broadcast on 93.7 FM for the past decade,  voted unanimously to sell the station, according to the Santa Barbara Independent. The station broadcasts on a commercial frequency, but the foundation opted to retain Public Radio Capital, which specializes in signal expansion for noncommercial public radio stations, to broker the sale. “As much as we love KDB, it isn’t our core mission,” said Ron Gallo, foundation c.e.o.,

Newsman Ray Suarez, who exited PBS NewsHour after 14 years last week, tells Fox News Latino that he resigned because his contributions to the program had been minimized over the years. “I felt like I didn’t have much of a future with the broadcast,” Suarez said. “[They] didn’t have much of a plan for me.” Suarez told Fox that his profile on the broadcasting network was so diminished that people on social media were asking what he had been doing since working at NewsHour, assuming that he had already departed.

Veteran pubcaster James Morgese will take over  Dec. 1 as GM of KUED-TV in Salt Lake City. Morgese has more than 30 years of experience in public broadcasting management, programming, production, engineering, development and community outreach. In October 2012 he signed on as g.m. of dual licensee WKYU in Bowling Green, Ky. Previously he worked at Rocky Mountain PBS in Denver, Idaho Public Television and WUFT in Gainesville, Fla. He also served as executive director of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra in Punta Gorda, Fla. In the past, Morgese has served on the boards of the Association of Public Television Stations, the Pacific Mountain Network and the National Educational Television Association.

Baltimore Sun Television Critic David Zurawik reports that PBS NewsHour has lost 48 percent of its audience over the last eight years. NewsHour‘s average audience, the number of people watching at any given minute in a program, is 950,000. “I firmly believe this nation needs at least one non-commercial, national news broadcast,” Zurawik writes. “It is important to democracy. But it is long past time to ask some hard questions about this one. I think it is reasonable to ask whether NewsHour is actually a national broadcast any more with these audience numbers.”

Newscaster Jean Cochran, the longest-serving member of NPR’s newscast unit, announced today that she has accepted a voluntary buyout offer from the network and will be leaving. Cochran made the announcement via Twitter this morning: “It’s official: I’ve accepted NPR’s generous Buyout. Leaving at the end of the year. Anyone need a newscast,I do birthdays, and bar mitzvahs!” The buyouts are part of NPR’s plan to balance its budget before fiscal year 2015. It aims to reduce staff by 10 percent to help reach that goal. Cochran started at NPR in 1981 and joined the newly formed Newscast Unit in 1989.

Walter Sheppard, a veteran public radio general manager who worked for the federal government’s Public Telecommunications Facilities Program for more than two decades as a federal program officer, died Oct. 19 at the age of 82. Over the course of Sheppard’s career, which began in 1947, he held roles at several public radio stations across the country, including WITF in Harrisburg, Penn.; Boston’s WBUR; and the West Virginia Educational Broadcasting Authority (today known as West Virginia Public Broadcasting), where he served as deputy director in the 1980s and added more radio stations to the network. He joined the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in 1990 to manage grant portfolios as part of PTFP.