PBS Hawaii staffers were treated to a meeting of two divas in the station lobby recently, reports President and CEO Leslie Wilcox in her blog. Both Hawaii Opera singer Marlene Sai and Broadway actress Loretta Ables-Sayre starred in productions of South Pacific; Ables-Sayre landed a Tony nomination for her performance. The two, in the station for separate tapings of the weekly show Long Story Short, hugged, held hands and chatted “for a long time,” Wilcox says.

Campus-wide lay-offs announced yesterday by the University of Florida include 12 employees of Gainesville’s WUFT-TV/FM, the public broadcasting outlets that are being reorganized by outside consultants to College of Journalism and Communications Dean John Wright. “I don’t know how they’re going to run things,” Bill Beckett, program manager of WUFT-FM, tells the Gainesville Sun. As a faculty member, Beckett has a year before his job ends; staff who aren’t on the faculty will be out the door in 45 days. Lay-off notifications came down on the same day that classical music fans mounted a street protest of WUFT’s recent switch to an all-news format.

With registrations for the upcoming PBS Development Conference running “very low,” network President Paula Kerger said network management made the”extremely difficult decision” to cancel the Oct. 1-3 conference and fold it into the PBS Showcase event next spring in Austin, Texas. On behalf of attendees, PBS cancelled hotel reservations for the Dev Con in Orlando, Fla. The network now plans a broader Showcase event for fundraisers as well as general managers and program execs. In the meantime, Kerger said, PBS will plan more webinars and other professional development options for fundraisers.

Perky little Abby Cadabby gets a 3D animated makeover in her new Abby’s Flying Fairy School, which Sesame Workshop will show off in October at MIPCOM. Characters for the CGI-animation series were created by Peter De Séve, character designer for the big-screen Ice Age. Each segment works to foster preschoolers’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills, according to a Workshop press release. Abby, along with new pals including fairies, trolls and a part-gerbil/part-unicorn named Niblet, attend Fairy School with Ms. Sparklenose. Other shows debuting at MIPCOM include Munchin’ Impossible, teaching healthy eating; and Elmo’s Backyard, introducing science concepts.

Martin Savidge, anchor of WNET.ORG’s Worldfocus since its launch (Current, Sept. 2, 2008), is shifting from that seat to become a special correspondent in the field. Daljit Dhaliwal, a contributing correspondent, will become anchor. The changes are effective Aug. 31, according to a statement from the show. Dhaliwal has most recently hosted Foreign Exchange, a weekly half-hour international affairs series on PBS; she will continue in that position in addition to her new role with Worldfocus, according to APT, which distributes both programs. Eight weeks after its premiere, Worldfocus was seen in the top 30 markets (Current, Dec.

The Community Broadcasters Association (CBA) disbanded July 15 and has canceled its trade show scheduled for this fall, it announced last Thursday, according to Broadcasting & Cable. The group represents more than 2,800 Class A and low-power television stations and has drained available funds in recent regulatory battles, including work to ensure that all DTV converter boxes eligible for coupon discounts include analog pass-through capability. Amy Brown, CBA’s former e.d., predicted that around 40 percent of Class A and LPTV station operators may have to shut down in the next year if they are not helped through the digital transition.

Tapes of Sesame Street episodes along with a Muppet camel were stolen by Iraq’s Republican Guard troops during their 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Sesame Workshop President and CEO Gary Knell tells CNN.com’s World website. “To this day, they’ve never been recovered,” Knell added. “That’s how much the show is loved there.” Children in some 120 countries watch versions of the show, and the Workshop hopes to add to that number with localized programming in other conflict areas such as Pakistan, according to the site. Meanwhile, in Denmark …

The NPR News App for the iPhone and iPod touch is now available for free downloads from Apple’s App Store. The application, one of several that NPR is developing, is the first news-oriented app allowing users to read or listen to news stories and programs, or to do both simultaneously. It also offers live or on-demand streams from 600 NPR stations. NPR introduces its news app here, where Weekend Edition‘s Scott Simon hosts a video demo of its features and navigation. Unlike the Public Radio Player, which serves up web streams and programming information for more than 300 pubradio stations, the NPR News app is focused on the “NPR experience,” Kinsey Wilson, senior v.p.

NPR’s David Folkenflik reports that former NPR chief executive Ken Stern was paid more than $1.3 million in fiscal 2008, the year in which he was ousted from NPR’s top job. Folkenflik got an early look at NPR’s tax documents for 2008 and did some math to figure out the cost to NPR for Stern’s hasty exit. “The actual cost of the buyout was not broken out in the documents for the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30, 2008. But in the previous year, Stern earned about $426,000. So the tax records reflect a payment beyond that of an additional $900,000,” Folkenflik reports.

Longtime music hosts Paul Ray and Larry Monroe lost airtime when Austin’s KUT revamped its evening schedule, and their fans are mighty upset about it. Cleve Hattersley of the Greezy Wheels, a quintessentially Austin band from the 1970s whose influence lives on, organized a public forum last week for listeners to discuss ways to reverse KUT’s programming changes. “At least 100 people attended Hattersley’s town hall meeting, where suggestions for action included cutting off donations to KUT, a position not endorsed by everyone,” reports the Austin American-Statesman. Meanwhile, the Facebook group Support Larry Monroe and Paul Ray at KUT, “two of the best DJs ever to spin a record,” has 940 members.

Long Island University is looking to sell WLIU, an NPR News and jazz station broadcasting from its campus in Southhampton, N.Y. The station “currently runs at a deficit that the university can no longer afford to subsidize,” said Robert Altholz, Long Island University’s vice president for finance and treasurer, in a news release. The Southhampton Press reports that LIU covers roughly 54 percent of the station’s $2.4 million budget. Under orders of the university’s trustees, all subsidies for the station are to end on October 3. Wally Smith, WLIU manager, learned about the university’s plan in April; efforts to find another public institution to take over the license and preserve the service have failed.

Public Radio Today 2009, Arbitron’s analysis of public radio listening patterns and demographics, digs into Fall 2008 diary and Portable People Meter ratings and sifts out details about the performance of the eight different public radio formats. Driven in large part by interest in the 2008 presidential elections, news/talk stations increased their weekly share of all public radio listening to 48 percent, a 10 percent increase from Fall 2006, the period covered in Arbitron’s last report on public radio. Led by the emergence of KUSC in Los Angeles and WETA in Washington, D.C., as the only all-classical stations in their markets, the classical music format boosted its average quarter hour share of pubradio listening to 13.7 percent.

Patricia Cahill was approved by the Senate Friday to serve on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s board. She’s g.m. of KCUR-FM in Kansas City, Mo., and will serve through 2014.

PBS has compiled a nifty list of all 30 or more interviews its rep conducted with TV producers, stars and other bigwigs during the recent Television Critics Association tour in Pasadena, Calif. Videos include Paula S. Apsell, senior executive producer of NOVA; actor Jonny Lee Miller of Masterpice Contemporary’s “Endgame” (and Angelina Jolie’s ex-husband) and doc legend Ken Burns. Most popular, with nearly 3,000 hits, is David Tennant, the new Masterpiece Contemporary host and former star of BBC’s Doctor Who.

Austin City Limits in October will be designated an historic rock and roll landmark site by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Rock Hall President and CEO Terry Stewart and ACL Executive Producer Terry Lickona made the announcement today at the KLRU-TV studio, home of the series. “Austin City Limits represents one of the most unique archives of modern American music,” Stewart said. The Rock Hall will unveil a historic marker Oct. 1 to celebrate the premiere of the 35th season of ACL on PBS. The Rock Hall’s Landmark Series designates historic rock and roll landmarks around the United States that are essential to tell the story of rock and roll music.