Susan Farmer, longtime president of Rhode Island’s only pubTV network, died Sept. 16 after a 12-year battle with cancer. She was 71. Farmer broke down barriers in Rhode Island by becoming the state’s first female secretary of state in 1982. After losing a bid for lieutenant governor in 1986, she was offered the position of president of Providence’s WSBE (now branded as Rhode Island PBS) the following year. She ran the station for nearly two decades and, despite coming into the field from politics, became a beloved system leader due to her fundraising acumen, playful demeanor and commitment to the mission of pubcasting, according to pubcasting colleagues.

Celeste Headlee, former co-host of The Takeaway, is launching Middle Ground, a pubradio show concentrating on the vast swath of the country not fronting an ocean.

American Public Media has updated its popular online game Budget Hero to reflect the ongoing battle over sequestration cuts in Congress. This fifth version, backed by funding from CPB, also includes updated cost projections for federal spending in 2014 and new policy options to overhaul immigration policy, expand states’ Medicaid programs and reverse the effects of sequester cutbacks on defense and non-defense spending. The original game came out in 2008. Budget Hero currently gets some 40,000 plays a month, according to Linda Fantin, who heads APM’s Public Insight Network and oversees development of the game. The game has been played more than 1.7 million times, according to Diane Tucker, director of the Wilson Center’s Serious Games Initiative and APM’s partner.

Public Radio Exchange is adding a new weekly show to its development slate —  Reveal, a joint production with the Center for Investigative Reporting. The hourlong series will be hosted by Al Letson of State of the Re:Union and feature investigative stories generated by CIR. The partners plan to develop relationships with other investigative organizations and news stations to bring in additional reporting. Reveal is scheduled to hit the air next year, so PRX and CIR are producing a pilot to be distributed to stations next week. Details about the reporting to be presented in the first show are under wraps, but CIR and PRX officials described it as an original national investigative piece dealing with veterans’ issues.

This item has been updated and reposted with additional information. Susan Lacy, creator and e.p. of American Masters at WNET in New York, is leaving PBS for HBO, the New York Times is reporting. She will produce biographical films for the subscription cable channel’s documentary division Financing was often inadequate for American Masters projects, the Times noted, and Lacy found herself “having to find money to supplement the funding for each film,” she said. Money will not be a problem at HBO, she noted. “And I have to admit that was a big draw in taking this job.” In April 2012, American Masters suffered an 87.5 percent cut in funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, receiving just $50,000.

PBS Digital Studios premiered Game/Show, an online series that considers video games from a cultural perspective, Aug. 27 on its YouTube channel.

Atlanta’s WCLK-FM, a jazz station licensed to Clark University, aims to double its audience share with a new approach to programming music that went into effect Aug. 26.

Public radio listeners increasingly like music and news to go, according to findings of the fifth annual Public Radio Technology Survey (PRTS5), which shows the growing adoption of mobile devices among a sampling of listeners and donors.

A new report by the CPB Inspector General’s office released Sept. 12 and posted online today recommends that the corporation penalize WJFF-FM in Jeffersonville, N.Y., for failure to comply with various regulations dating to November 2011. The report was sparked by complaints to the IG’s office in March from several supporters of a canceled news and cultural magazine, Making Waves. After the public outcry over the cancellation, Winston Clark, g.m., resigned in April, and all but one board member quit soon after. The report determines that WJFF didn’t air quarterly announcements for open meetings; had no evidence that announcements of open meetings for its Community Advisory Board (CAB) or Board of Trustees were made at least seven days in advance; didn’t maintain CAB member attendance at meetings; didn’t always provide reasons for closing meetings to the public; and didn’t have written policies regarding open meetings and other transparency requirements.

President Obama on Sept. 12 announced his intent to nominate David Arroyo to the CPB Board. Arroyo is s.v.p. for legal affairs at Scripps Networks Interactive, where he has worked since 2004. Previously he was an associate at the global law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.  He is also a former chair of the Board of Latino Justice (formerly the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund) and in 2012 was recognized by the Imagen Foundation as one of the most influential Latinos in entertainment. Arroyo’s nomination, Obama’s sixth for the CPB governing body, requires Senate confirmation.

Public radio’s The Takeaway has more than doubled its carriage since cancellation of NPR’s Talk of the Nation, and the show’s producers are working to add even more outlets by building news collaborations with station-based reporters and programmers.

Of all the complex and potentially fateful decisions faced by public radio program directors as they navigate the emergence of multiplatform distribution, one of the most significant is the drive to “go local” and produce more local programs, especially news and information. This push signals a strategic shift for public radio, with potentially enormous consequences for growth or decline. Audience 2010, one of a series of landmark research reports on programming trends published in the previous decade, reported that much of the credit for the growth of public radio listenership could be traced to a shift “away from local production toward network production, away from music-based content toward news, information and entertainment.”