NPR Digital Services is experimenting with a new personalized streaming interface for public radio listening, the Infinite Player. “It’s dead simple: you press a button and it plays,” writes Michael Yoch, director of product development. “First you hear the latest NPR newscast. That’s followed by stories we think you’ll like from NPR’s three main focus areas, news, arts and life, and music. The only controls are skip, pause and 30-second rewind.” “We’re calling it the Infinite Player because it will continue playing stories until you turn it off, just like the radio.” Listeners can use the “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” buttons to indicate whether they like a story, and the player will adapt to their preferences.

In response to the recent scandal in its university athletic department, in which a former assistant coach has been accused of sexually abusing multiple boys over 15 years, Penn State Public Broadcasting is producing a special live one-hour interactive program, Confronting Child Sexual Abuse, at 9 p.m. Eastern Thursday (Nov. 17) on WPSU-TV and WPSU-FM as well as WHYY. It will also be simulcast on the Pennsylvania Cable Network (PCN) and streamed online.  Host Patty Satalia will moderate a panel including Lucy Johnston-Walsh, supervising attorney for the Children’s Advocacy Clinic of the Penn State Dickinson School of Law; David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire; Pamela G.

NPR’s Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me! will make its television debut on BBC America on Dec. 23 with a “2011 Year in Review” special at 8 p.m. Eastern. The show also will run on NPR stations that weekend, on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The hourlong special, complete with host Peter Sagal, scorekeeper Carl Kassell and a panel of cutups, will tape live at the Chase Bank Auditorium in Chicago on Dec. 2. “As a long-time listener of Wait Wait Don’t… Tell Me!, I think its television debut is long overdue,” said Perry Simon, g.m., channels, BBC Worldwide America, “and I can’t wait to see what Peter, Carl and the team look like.”

Nightly Business Report, purchased in August 2010 by educational video salesman Mykalai Kontilai (Current, Aug. 23, 2010), has now been acquired by private equity firm Atalaya Capital Management, NBR Worldwide announced today (Nov. 16). Atalaya backed Kontilai’s deal to buy the show. Under the new ownership, NBR Worldwide will be led by Rick Ray, founder of Raycom Media. The press release did not specify if Kontilai would continue to be involved with NBR Worldwide, and the deal price was not provided. A press representative told Current that Kontilai and Atalaya would have no additional comments.

During the nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) on Nov. 9, Public Broadcasting Atlanta hosted focus groups involving members of the community with vision or hearing disabilities. Participants listened to WABE-FM/90.1 or watched PBA30TV to provide feedback, which is being forwarded to the Federal Communications Commission. Research was conducted with the local Wireless Rehabilition Engineering Research Center (RERC), which promotes access to wireless technologies for persons with disabilities and encourages Universal Design to allow for wider use of future technologies. Above, an interpreter translates for hearing-impaired participants during an EAS focus group. (Image: PBA)

American Public Media’s Public Insight Network (PIN), a database of more than 130,000 sources worldwide, has its first international newsroom partner, the Mail & Guardian newspaper in Johannesburg, South Africa. “Media plays an essential role in addressing and exposing the top issues confronting communities, and the Mail & Guardian has long proven this with their groundbreaking news coverage,” said Joaquin Alvarado, senior vice president of digital innovation at APM. The newspaper was a leading opponent of apartheid in the 1980s and 1990s; more recently, its Centre for Investigative Journalism launched in April 2010. “In a country and continent where the voices of people on the ground are too often marginalized, PIN represents an exciting opportunity for the Mail & Guardian,” said Verashni Pillay, the paper’s deputy online editor.

Julie Walker, a freelance reporter for NPR, was among the journalists arrested yesterday when the New York City Police Department evicted Occupy Wall Street protestors from Zuccotti Park. Walker told Associated Press she was arrested for disorderly conduct after she requested the name and badge number of a police officer who had grabbed her arm twice. “I told them I’m a reporter,” she told AP. “I had my recorder on before he ripped it out of my hand.” At least seven journalists were arrested in New York during the police action, and several reported being rough-handled, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Public television stations serving rural areas are receiving $4.75 million in grants to complete the digital transition, according to Agriculture Under Secretary for Rural Development Dallas Tonsager. Fifteen licensees will get between $25,540 and $750,000 for projects under the Public Television Digital Transition Grant Program. Money may be used to acquire, lease, and/or install facilities and software necessary to finish the digital transition, the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service said in a statement. The funding is especially valuable in the wake of the end of the 49-year-old Public Telecommunications Facilities Program (Current, April 18).

Howard Swartz, executive producer of Nova, is joining Discovery Channel, effective immediately. He’ll be vice president of development and production at Discovery, a new position. Swartz will be based at the channel’s Los Angeles office to develop and supervise production of Curiosity. Swartz had joined Nova in January 2010. Swartz also worked at National Geographic Channel on programs including Explorer, Five Years on Mars and Inside the Living Body.

Two men who played key roles in the NPR fundraising sting in February have split with media trickster James O’Keefe. Simon Templar and Shaughn Adeleye, who posed as Muslim philanthropists and secretly recorded their conversations with NPR development execs, fault O’Keefe for selling them a “false bill of goods,” according to the Daily Beast. The pair say they designed a far-reaching, well-researched operation that was to extend far beyond NPR, but O’Keefe was only interested in a “hit job.” “All he cared about was that he had people saying embarrassing stuff on video,” Templar tells media critic Howard Kurtz.

Rick Steves, whose travel commentaries run on both public television and radio, is the Journalist of the Year in the 2011 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition, sponsored by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation. Steves also won gold awards for his travel blog and Travel With Rick Steves broadcasts on public radio, and a bronze award for Rick Steves’ Europe: Season Six distributed by American Public Television. “Rick Steves connects with a wide audience today,” the society said in a statement, “sharing his travel adventures and insight in all forms of media from print, radio and television to blogs and tweets.”

A report released today by media reform advocates at Free Press chronicles the impact of four years of budget battles in state capitals and finds that the public TV system is at a precarious tipping point. Since the onset of the recession in 2008, public broadcasting stations in 24 states have lost $85 million in financial support from what has historically been one of their most reliable funding sources — state governments. Public TV networks in at least four states — North Carolina, Oklahoma, Maine and Idaho — are considering shutting down transmitters serving sparsely populated regions, and New Hampshire Public Television is among those drastically scaling back on local production.

Children now have their own “augmented reality” educational mobile app from PBS Kids. The Fetch! Lunch Rush App was created by WGBH in Boston and is based on its PBS Kids Go! series, Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman. “Augmented reality is becoming a popular marketing tool and a compelling feature for gamers, but no one has fully explored what this could mean for educating children,” said Jason Seiken, PBS’s s.v.p., interactive, product development and innovation, in a statement. Augmented reality blends a physical, real-world view with computer-generated sensory input including sounds, video or electronic graphics. In the app, star Ruff Ruffman takes the lunch order for his studio crew.

Texas Public Radio’s KSTX/89.1 FM reports that Jim Leonard, an on-air host for 17 years, died Nov. 10 of complications from a heart transplant he received in September. Leonard was 61, and had battled heart disease for decades, the station said in a statement on its website. “First and foremost, Jim Leonard was one of our best voices on KSTX,” said Texas Public Radio’s Nathan Cone, director of classical programming, who worked with Leonard for more than a decade. “He was sharp at writing copy for air, and adept at handling the pressure of hosting our local broadcasts of All Things Considered and Morning Edition.

To the Point host Warren Olney is under fire for his Nov. 11 talk show linking the child sex abuse scandal at Pennsylvania State University to barriers that prevent same-sex couples from becoming adoptive or foster parents. “This entire broadcast was utterly worthless, embarrassing, and completely unacceptable,” wrote Gawker’s Seth Abramovitch in a scathing critique posted on Friday. After the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to objected to the program, Olney apologized for the misunderstanding and promised further discussion of the topic today. GLAAD has also requested that producing station KCRW and distributor Public Radio International remove the Nov.