Plus: Invisibilia's big launch, and growth in listening to non-music web streams.

A new fellowship program from the Association of Independents in Radio pairs a dozen content creators with coaches in an incubator-style approach to training. The program, an extension of AIR’s long-running mentorship program, aims to boost the participants’ entrepreneurial skills, said Sue Schardt, executive director of AIR. “What we were looking for is people who have very clear goals for what they’re trying to achieve,” she said. “These are people with their chops in place and [who] are ready to launch in a new direction in their career or take on a new venture.” AIR received about 36 applications and selected 12 from those.

Steen is credited with the decision in 1990 to add news to KPBS-FM’s format.

The $5,000 prize is awarded to a young public radio journalist each year.

The two-minute spots on the joint newscast on Honolulu’s KHNL and KGMB are valued at a total of $30,000.

Bankrupt Internet TV service Aereo’s curtain call will be a sale of its assets, ending a series of legal setbacks that landed the company in Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year. Aereo filed for bankruptcy Nov. 11 following legal losses that essentially prevented it from operating and thwarted its attempt to reinvent itself as a cable television operator. The bankruptcy court approved a process last month for Aereo to sell its streaming technology, allowing broadcasters who initiated the legal fight to weigh in on the sale. Aereo had operated a subscription service using banks of dime-sized antennas to capture broadcast signals and convert them into streaming video distributed over the Internet.

CPB reacted Jan. 8 to the attack on journalists at the French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo by announcing grants totaling $7.5 million to four public media newsrooms. “Now more than ever it takes so much courage to be a journalist,” said CPB President Pat Harrison in an to public media managers. “To understand that every word you may write, every cartoon you might draw could be your last. The chilling effect this can have may result in stories not told, reports not filed, journalism watered down.” CPB awarded the grants in memory of eight journalists who were killed. The money is given “in support of freedom of the press and freedom of expression,” Harrison said.

NPR says the new show is public radio’s biggest program launch ever.

Sssshhh . . . the sound of public radio is about to get a little quieter. But if all goes according to a plan unveiled last month by the Public Radio Satellite Service, listeners won’t notice the change in audio levels for programs distributed to stations around the country. On Feb. 26, PRSS plans to remove a 6 decibel (dB) boost that was added to its uplinked audio levels in 2013. The higher levels had been adopted to adjust for differences between PRSS technical standards and those of the European Broadcast Union (EBU), which were built into IDC SFX 4104 Pro satellite receivers adopted by PRSS during its last technical upgrade.

The pubcaster is issuing a $5.75 million bond to buy the commercial FM signal and try to grow its Open Air audience.

Raymond Davis, a veteran broadcaster who influenced and nurtured the bluegrass music scene as a music host for WAMU in Washington, D.C., died Dec. 3 of leukemia. He was 81. Davis capped his 65-year career in radio broadcasting as an afternoon host on WAMU’s all-music station Bluegrass Country. He joined the pubcaster in 1985, when the station split its weekday format between NPR News programs and bluegrass, and retired in 2013. Davis started in radio at age 15 with a job at WDOV-AM in Dover, Del., according to a tribute page on WAMU’s website. He spent 38 years at WBMD in Baltimore, where he hosted live broadcasts from Johnny’s Used Cars.