San Mateo County Community College District Chancellor is recommending that the district’s pubTV station, KCSM, be sold to a spectrum speculator owned by private equity firm The Blackstone Group. Mark Albertson, who covers technology in the San Francisco area for Examiner.com, reported Monday that Ron Galatolo,  chancellor of the college, had chosen LocusPoint out of the four bidders for the station. Other interested buyers include: Public TV Financing, an arm of Independent Public Media, a nonprofit working to preserve noncommercial spectrum; KMTP-TV, a multicultural independent public TV  station licensed to Minority Television Project Inc. in San Francisco; and the Oriental Culture and Media Center of Southern California, a nonprofit promoting communication among different cultures.

Boston NPR station WBUR announced May 10 two leadership changes in its newsroom. Richard Chacón will fill the newly created position of executive director of news content, while Tom Melville has moved to news director from the role of executive editor of content. Chacón was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and an Ethics Fellow at The Poynter Institute. He will start at WBUR June 10. Prior to joining WBUR in 2011, Melville was news director at New England Cable News. Melville changed roles May 10. “As the media landscape continues to evolve, WBUR is thrilled to have a team in place that will serve our on-air and online audiences with distinction,” said Charlie Kravetz, general manager, WBUR, in a statement.

NPR and Miami’s WLRN are collaborating to boost coverage of Latin America, with NPR’s Lourdes Garcia-Navarro assigned to a new foreign desk in São Paulo. In addition to Garcia-Navarro, the team of journalists includes Tim Padgett, a longtime reporter on Latin America and the Caribbean who previously wrote for Time and Newsweek and recently joined WLRN. Padgett’s primary task will be to coordinate coverage from Miami. Four reporters on the staff of the Miami Herald and its sister Spanish-language publication, El Nuevo Herald, will also contribute. WLRN and the Herald have collaborated on news coverage for a decade. The expansion positions NPR and WLRN to report on a country that has grown as a global superpower in recent years, said Edith Chapin, senior supervising editor of NPR’s foreign desk.

Ousted Iowa Public Radio C.E.O. Mary Grace Herrington on Thursday reached a six-figure settlement with her former employers that staves off future litigation. According to Iowa Public Radio, Herrington will receive two payments totaling $197,000 in return for forgoing any legal claims against IPR. The settlement was reportedly for “emotional distress and other compensatory damages, and attorneys’ fees and expenses.” Herrington was removed as c.e.o. in February by a 6-1 vote of the board of directors. Her dismissal came after the IPR board began responding to internal complaints about staff morale in June, according to board-meeting minutes and local press accounts.

At Texas Public Radio, “basic pet memberships cost $60, the same as basic human memberships,” according to the San Antonio Express-News. And so far, the new tactic is paying off. Of 617 new memberships, 126, or about 20 percent, are pets. That’s outselling a new children’s membership five to one. Pet members receive a “TPaRf” scarf and small bowl or rope toy. And a pet social event is also in the planning. Check out TPR’s newest members here.

It’s official, Downton Abbey fans will have to wait until winter 2014 for their next Edwardian drama fix. PBS announced its fall lineup today, with nary a mention of the Masterpiece megahit. In January PBS President Paula Kerger hinted that PBS was considering changing the premiere to the fall, when it hits the airwaves in Great Britain. Jennifer Byrne, PBS spokesperson, told Current that series Executive Producer Rebecca Eaton will announce the Downton Season 4 premiere date at the PBS annual meeting next week in Miami. Highlights of fall premieres on PBS include an interactive reality series, Genealogy Roadshow, “which uses history and science to connect participants nationwide to their individual and family histories,” PBS said in the announcement; “The Hollow Crown,” a four-part miniseries from Great Performances that combines Shakespeare’s “Richard II,” “Henry IV” (Parts I and II) and “Henry V” into a chronological narrative; and a four-hour, two-part special from American Experience on President John F.

Merrill Brockway, a producer and director of several PBS arts programs who was best known for his work on the Great Performances spinoff Dance in America, died May 3 in Santa Fe, N.M. He was 90. Brockway was born in Indiana and began a career as a piano teacher and accompanist before entering TV at the age of 30. He wrote and directed for CBS affiliates in Philadelphia and New York before leaving commercial TV for PBS in 1975, when Dance in America launched. He worked on the program, produced by New York’s Thirteen/WNET, from 1975–88, capturing some of America’s most renowned dancers and choreographers on film.

Variety is reporting that PBS has ordered a pilot script for a drama series, Alta California, from Dennis Leoni, e.p. and writer of Resurrection Blvd., which ran on Showtime 2000-02. The entertainment mag notes that the program was “the first and longest-running Latino dramatic skein in the history of American television.” Alta California will be set in the mid- to late 1800s and focus on an arranged marriage between two families, one Mexican-Californian and the other European American. Carrie Johnson, PBS spokesperson, declined to provide further details to Current, as PBS is still in contract negotiations for the project.

The WFMT Radio Network has unveiled a premium subscription service that provides access to hundreds of hours of archived programs from Exploring Music with Bill McGlaughlin. The internationally syndicated classical music series airs on 55 stations and draws a weekly audience of more than 400,000 listeners. “It’s a unique show and Bill is a great host,” said Steve Robinson, g.m. of the Chicago-based WFMT Radio Network and WFMT-FM. “Since the show started we’ve gotten something like 10,000 emails and this has been one of the things people have repeatedly asked us to do.” At launch, the new streaming service offers 500 hours of content selected from the show’s 10-year archive.

George Walker, the host of local broadcasts of All Things Considered on West Virginia Public Radio for nearly 12 years, was found dead in his Charleston home over the weekend, local authorities announced May 6. Details of his death are awaiting an autopsy. He was 60. Walker joined WVPR in 2002 as a part-time announcer. In addition to  hosting ATC, he produced the station’s weekly program Music from the Mountains until host Joe Dobbs retired in 2008. Prior to joining public radio, he worked for the privately held Bristol Broadcasting Corporation and Charleston’s V100 commercial station. He also did narrative and voiceover work through his own Walker Productions.

Moyers & Company has become the first American Public Television-distributed program to be presented on the PBS COVE online video player and PBS mobile apps. The weekly public affairs show, hosted by veteran public TV journalist and independent producer Bill Moyers, has been offered on COVE on a test basis for several weeks, according to spokesperson Joel Schwartzberg. With today’s announcement, PBS and APT signaled their intention to collaborate to bring more APT titles to PBS’s online video player. The arrangement helps to make Moyers & Company more easily accessible for public TV viewers. The series, which launched in August 2010, is the first from Moyers to be distributed by APT.