KCPT in Kansas City, Mo., has launched a monthly pubaffairs show in the midst of struggling with funding and staff cutbacks, reports Kansas City Star TV critic Aaron Barnhart. The Local Show will spotlight local nonprofits, and then those groups may use the segments as promotional material. The “Difference Makers” features are underwritten by Hallmark’s corporate foundation. Local Show Producer Nick Haines said the greeting-card company “was interested in funding nonprofits to tell their story.” Inspiration for the show was the Minnesota Channel, a 24-hour station created by Twin Cities Public Television, which airs programming that the station creates through a partnership among TPT and nonprofits.

KIXE in Redding, Calif., is “angering progressives” by dropping Democracy Now!, says the local Record Searchlight newspaper. General Manager Philip Smith arrived in July from KLRU in Austin, Texas, where he was oversaw engineering and programming. Smith told the paper he hadn’t seen the show, which airs on more than 850 pubtv and pubradio stations, until he got to the station. “If it were properly couched as a progressive informational or opinion show … that would be OK,” Smith said. “Then I’d probably line it up with something with an opposing viewpoint. … (But) they present it as newscast.

A company headed by “a former manager of mixed martial artists” has purchased Nightly Business Report, according to the New York Times. Mykalai Kontilai told the paper that the deal was completed Aug. 13 and the staff was informed today (Aug. 18). Kontilai’s partner in the venture is Gary Ferrell, a former president and chief executive of North Texas Public Broadcasting, parent company of KERA in Dallas. The two also own Public Media, identified on its website as a “design, advertising and production” company. Rick Schneider, president of NBR‘s producing station WPBT in Miami, told the New York Times that NBR wasn’t in play when Kontilai approached him in February, but the sale “made sense,” adding, “it is at a point where they as a company can do more things with it than we as a station could.”

A former videotape librarian for pubstation WTTW in Chicago was the jury foreman in the high-profile corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. James Matsumoto, 66, told the local NBC affiliate that deliberations were “frustrating” and “exhausting,” and that he knew from early on that the jury would have trouble reaching a unanimous verdict. On Tuesday (Aug. 17) that verdict came down: Guilty on one count of lying to the FBI, hung jury on 23 other counts. Matsumoto worked at WTTW from December 1978 to October 2006, according to the station.

The city council of Green Bay, Wisc., voted 10-2 on Tuesday (Aug. 17) to waive $10,000 of its $48,000 bill for law enforcement for Wisconsin Public TV’s LZ Lambeau event in May, according to local ABC affiliate WBAY. The outreach event, a belated “welcome home” to Vietnam veterans, drew some 70,000 vets and supporters to Lambeau Field (Current, June 7, 2010). The Packers NFL team, the Chamber of Commerce and Brown County also have pledged contributions to assist the station, which ran $350,000 over budget for the $1 million event.

Rice University students have launched a “sincere and civil” protest to block the sale of their campus radio station KRTU to the University of Houston, the Houston Chronicle reports. “We are totally opposed to the sale,” KTRU p.d. Joey Yang tells the newspaper. “This is our radio station, and we’d like to keep it.” The UH Board of Regents approved the $9.5 million purchase yesterday, but the FCC must also approve the license transfer. UH plans to expand its public broadcasting operations by converting KRTU into a classical music service broadcasting on 91.7 as KUHC; KUHF on 88.7 FM, the hybrid-format NPR station that it put on the air in 1950 with student volunteers, is to devote its schedule to news.

WUNC-FM reporter Laura Leslie in Chapel Hill, N.C., continues to doggedly pursue the perpetually breaking news story on UNC-TV’s Alcoa coverage controversy (Current, July 26). The Raleigh station was widely criticized for turning over reporter Eszter Vajda’s notes and unbroadcast footage from her story on Alcoa’s bid to re-license four dams. Leslie reveals that internal UNC-TV e-mails show that station management did not want to comply with the lawmakers’ request. “They fully intended to fight it on journalistic grounds,” she writes in her station blog. “But they got no backing on that from UNC President [Erskine] Bowles, from board members, or from the AG’s office, where they sought legal expertise.”

The funeral for former Sen. Ted Stevens, a strong champion for pubcasting on Capitol Hill, will be streamed live today (Aug. 18) at 2 p.m. Alaska Daylight Time (6 p.m. Eastern) on several pubstations, including KTOO via its 360 North statewide channel. Stevens died Aug. 9 in a plane crash. KFSK in Petersburg, Alaska, has an audio segment online about Stevens’ importance to pubcasting, particularly in that state.

Public Radio Program Directors will take over the NPR-backed Local News Initiative (LNI) and Morning Edition Grad School (MEGS) projects, a four-year national effort to provide training, conduct research and promote best practices in public radio newsrooms. Research and information resources developed through the projects since 2006 will be integrated into PRPD.org, and PRPD is planning a series of webinars based on the MEGS workshop findings. LNI began with the 2006 PRPD study, “A Sense of Place,” focus group research that examined how listeners valued the local news produced by their public radio stations. Morning Edition Grad School, a series of workshops and toolkits for enhancing local presentation of public radio’s most important national program, was the biggest of several projects aimed at improving local news.

The Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) announced today (Aug. 18) that it has hired executive search firm Spencer Stuart to find its new president and chief executive officer, a position Larry Sidman vacated in April (Current, March 14, 2010). Co-chairs of the APTS Board search committee are Polly Anderson, general manager and CEO of of KNME-TV in Albuquerque, N.M.; and Elizabeth Christopherson, president, CEO and director of the Rita Allen Foundation in Princeton, N.J. Lonna Thompson continues as APTS interim president and CEO.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music is hosting a Sept. 9 restoration fundraiser for a historic graffiti/hip-hop documentary that aired on PBS in 1984. “Style Wars” is widely regarded as the first doc to focus on the cultural genres. “Nearly 25 years since it first stunned viewers, the film’s negative stock is beginning to decay,” reports the HipHopDX website. The event will feature three screenings of the film, a question and answer session with filmmaker Henry Chalfant, a catered reception and — of course — hip-hop beats courtesy of DJ Kay Slay on the turntables. More about the restoration project here, tickets for the fundraiser here.

A new animated series debuts on PBS this evening–short adaptations of audio recordings collected by StoryCorps, the oral history project and NPR series created by public radio producer David Isay. POV, the indie film series now airing its 23rd season on PBS, will present Danny and Annie, Parts I and II, the stories of love and loss of Brooklyn couple Danny and Annie Perasa, who came to personify the StoryCorps motto, “listening is an act of love.” The animation will be paired with Salt, an “exquisite film about environment, artistry and solitude” by Australian photographer Murray Fredericks.

Got plans for Aug. 28? You might drop by Juneau, Alaska, for KXLL’s “Star Wars” party. It’s the latest event sponsored by the funky, eclectic pubcasting station that attracts an 18- to 34-year-old audience, said Bill Legere, g.m. of KTOO. It picked up KXLL (“Excellent Radio”) and another station “in a fire sale” three years ago (Current, Feb. 26, 2007). KXLL has planned several happenings for the young crowd, such as a pre-fireworks Fourth of July party drew that around 800. There was also a “Rocky Horror Picture Show” night and a Cinco de Mayo bash, “stuff that’s campy and fun,” as Legere told Current.

Houston’s KUHF-FM plans to buy KTRU 91.7 FM, a 50,000-watt student radio station owned by Rice University, and convert it to a full-time classical music service under the new call letters KUHC, the Houston Chronicle reports. KUHF, a broadcast service of the University of Houston that now airs classical music and NPR News on 88.7, will become an all-news station. The $9.5 million deal, approved this morning by UH’s Board of Regents, is to be financed by enhanced underwriting and major gifts fundraising. “The acquisition of a second public radio station delivers on our promise to keep the University of Houston at the forefront of creating strong cultural, educational and artistic opportunities that benefit students and the city of Houston,” said Renu Khator, chancellor of the UH System and president of the University of Houston, in a news release.

Rick Bayless, star of Mexico: One Plate at a Time on PBS, will open two restaurants in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, Crain’s Chicago Business is reporting. Look for them in Terminal 1 and Terminal 3 this fall.