Joaquín Alvarado, advocate for the National Public Lightpath fiber optic network for public media, will join CPB June 30 as senior v.p. for diversity and innovation. With PBS and NPR, CPB endorsed the Lightpath project for federal stimulus spending in January, and at last month’s IMA Public Media Conference, Alvarado urged involvement in the expansion of fast Internet broadband service. (He describes the Lightpath idea in this video.) Alvarado is founding director of the Institute for Next-Generation Internet at San Francisco State University and a board member of the Bay Area Video Coalition and Latino Public Broadcasting. Earlier in the decade, Alvarado worked on films, as cinematographer and associate producer on Alcatraz Avenue (2000) and writer and director on The Silent Cross (2003), and he has written scholarly articles on ethnic diversity in media.

General Motors is ending its long financial support of public broadcasting documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, due to the automaker’s dire business outlook. GM had covered 35 percent of each film’s budget and funded outreach under a 10-year contract inked in 1999, and had financially supported Burns’ work for years before then. The last film made with GM backing is The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, a six-part series airing this fall. “We’ve been proud to be associated with Ken’s work over the years, as he is certainly the ‘gold standard’ of documentary filmmaking,” GM spokeswoman Kelly Cusinato told The Detroit News.

An update on three New England pubcasters via The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass.: WAMC in Albany, N.Y., has cut staff by 5 percent through attrition and layoffs. Also, Word to the Wise, a longtime daily feature, was discontinued after Merriam-Webster withdrew its funding. WHMT in Schenectady, N.Y., with a budget deficit of $235,000, just mailed its 30,000 members letters marked “urgent, action needed!” G.m. Scott Sauer cited “a serious financial shortfall” during the December fund drive. New York pubcasters also have started a webpage, SaveNYPBS.org, to counter Gov. David Patterson’s pending 50 percent funding cut. Happier news at WFCR in Amherst, Mass.,

Two NPR staffers contribute to today’s Washington Post Outlook section. Steve Inskeep writes about his travels through Iran. He reports that “some of the most insightful words I heard came from a guard at Iran’s holiest shrine.” And Senior Editor Greg Myre reviews the book, Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Riseof Hamas.

NPR head Vivian Schiller spoke to Bob Garfield for On the Media this week. The transcript will be available March 9. Listen to the interview here.

Sesame Workshop next week will announce a collaboration with the federal Women, Infants and Children Nutrition program, reports Packer.com, the business newspaper of the produce industry. Characters will extol the healthy delights of fresh fruits and vegetables, as part of the Workshop’s Healthy Habits for Life program. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack will be on hand when the announcement of the project is made March 10 in Washington.

Western Reserve Public Media in Kent, Ohio, has made cuts due to a downturn in state, federal and private funding. The station cut full-time staff salaries by 10 percent, instituted a 10 percent reduction in weekly hours and froze overtime. One staffer was laid off. The station’s monthly printed program for members has been reduced from 20 pages to 12. It also suspended production of three other publications. All changes were effective March 1.

Andy Carvin, NPR’s social-media chief, talks about the network’s strategy for connecting with its audience in a new podcast interview featured on The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s website. Other podcasts in the Social Good series include Turning Online Friends into Funders, Building a Network that Works and Using Text Messaging to Raise Money.

Former FCCer Mark Seifert will head the policy side of the NTIA’s allocation of broadband stimulus grant and loan funding. Seifert is a past staffer for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and was a Common Carrier Bureau deputy chief. Reps of the NTIA, the FCC and the Rural Utilities Service are meeting next week to decide how to distribute the $7 billion-plus in the economic stimulus package to provide broadband to unserved and underserved areas.

Ruby Calvert, g.m. of Wyoming PBS, reports that the station has secured $75,000 from the state to remove its tower and analog antenna. Gov. Dave Freudenthal signed a supplemental appropriation bill March 5 that provides the station’s funds. Removal of the deteriorating, 50-year-old tower, which stands nearly 9,000 feet up Limestone Mountain near Lander, will take place this summer. See Current’s story detailing Wyoming’s challenges.

Cable channel PBS Sprout, a joint venture of PBS, Sesame Workshop, Hit Entertainment and Comcast begun in 2005, has released two iPhone apps for preschoolers, available for free at Apple’s App Store. Sprout Player streams 3- to 4-minute Sprout shows and offers parents a peek at Sprout’s programming schedule. Dress Chica is an extension of a Sprout website game where kids can drag items of clothing onto the chicken mascot. Kids can also make Chica dance by shaking their parents’–or their own?–phone. The apps were created with the New Wave Entertainment studio.

In a filing to the FCC, the Association for Public Television Stations is asking that pubTV stations wishing to do so be allowed to transition to digital this month or next. Numerous stations want to switch to digital as soon as possible for technical and financial reasons. But the commission last week proposed no more analog shutdowns until April 16. Also in an FCC filing, Wisconsin Public TV asked that it be permitted to transition on April 5. The FCC has proposed various deadlines and requirements for the new June 12 deadline.

The Foundation Center has compiled information detailing how the economic climate may be affecting foundation giving. The list includes several longtime pubcasting supporters, such as the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which “will maintain or increase grantmaking in 2009, despite the performance of the market to date,” and the Ford Foundation, which “will honor all outstanding commitments to its grantees and will increase the percentage of its endowment that is paid out in grants in 2009 and 2010.”

Some four million viewers on the waiting list to receive DTV converter coupons should start getting those soon. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has its funding and coupons should be flowing next week. On Jan. 5, NTIA announced it had run out of money for the $40 federal coupons that subsidize purchase of converters. The Obama administration put $650 million in the economic stimulus package to allow NTIA to start sending out the coupons once again.

As was expected, President Barack Obama has announced his intent to nominate Julius Genachowski to head the FCC. The president cited Genachowski’s “diverse and unparalleled experience in communications and technology, with two decades of accomplishment in the private sector and public service.” Genachowski formerly worked at the commission as chief counsel to Chairman Reed Hundt, and as special counsel to FCC General Counsel (later Chairman) William Kennard.