A Sacramento Bee media columnist stares in the face of extreme boredom without flinching: he listens to almost all of Capital Public Radio’s pledge drive and writes about the experience. “Oh, it’s all there: intriguing suspense, riotous humor, wrenching pathos and pure spoken-word poetry,” he says. “It’s a wonder that the Peabody Award judges have yet to recognize the genius of the KXJZ (88.9 FM) pledge drive.”

Wired summarizes last weekend’s Beyond Broadcast conference. “I think we’re at a very strange point of all these enormously powerful, old, rich institutions — the great brand names of the business — dying in front of our eyes. And they won’t pick up the clue phone,” says Christopher Lydon, host of public radio’s Open Source.

NPR Ombdusman Jeffrey Dvorkin examines a recent blog-induced foofaraw regarding Mara Liasson and Fox News and concludes: “These blogs appear to be making our public life even more crude and vulgar than it has been up to now.” (UPDATE: Media Matters, one of Dvorkin’s culprits, responds.)

Chicago’s Center for Arts Policy presents a lengthy profile of pubradio indie Jay Allison and his myriad projects (PDF). “He is not a man of moderation but living a life at full tilt, waving the flag from his post where the individual gives way to something beyond himself,” writes Lauren Cowen.

Broadcasting & Cable breaks down the ongoing development of PBS’s Next Generation Interconnection System, scheduled to go online this fall. (subscription req.)

Todd Mundt and Mark Fuerst aim to answer the question: “Why do we need aggregation and consolidated technologies?” (Stephen Hill comments here.)

John Barth, managing director of the Public Radio Exchange, shares his thoughts and concerns about the public radio’s recent New Realities National Forum. One idea: “[W]hy shouldn’t NPR, PRI, APM and PRX all merge? . . . We do all waste a lot of money, resources, time and talent on competition with not much distinction.”

The interim president of the Public Radio Partnership in Louisville, Ky., will step down June 30, reports the Louisville Courier-Journal. Bob Irvine cited “disappointments and frustration” with the Partnership’s board in a letter to senior staff and board members.

After attending the Beyond Broadcast conference, Dennis Haarsager considers the nature of public media and says “a bright line definition” probably won’t be found.

Public radio’s StoryCorps is taking pains to distance itself from the “Story Booth,” a promotional tool launched by the JetBlue airline. It just so happens that both will be in Washington, D.C., next week.

KILI-FM, a Native station in Pine Ridge, S.D., hopes to get back on the air with emergency government funding after lightning hit its antenna, reports AP. “When I go out into the community, everybody asks, ‘When you gonna be on?'” says business manager Tom Casey.

House appropriators, apparently unsatisified with Smithsonian regents’ response to House leaders’ concerns about the controversial Showtime programming deal, yesterday cut $15 million from the Smithsonian’s proposed budget and sought a cap on salaries, the Washington Post reports (see also, the New York Times).

Washington Post business columnist Jerry Knight points up the differences between the iconic, pun-cracking Louis Rukeyser, recently-deceased original host of Maryland Public Television’s Wall Street Week, and over-the-top stock modern stock pickers such as Jim Cramer. “Watching Jim Cramer on CNBC, ripping the head off a toy bear, then raking his audience with machine-gun sound effects, left me longing for the days when Louis Rukeyser was considered ‘too showbiz’ to be talking about stocks on television,” he writes. (See earlier post for Rukeyser obit.)

Public Radio’s Regional Organizations gave their 2006 PRRO Award to Dennis Harsaager, associate v.p. and g.m. of educational telecommunications and technology at Washington State University. “His is a constant voice pushing the envelope of exploration of the most effective ways in which technology can help public radio best enhance its service to the American people,” said Ron Kramer, president of Western States Public Radio.

“One of my takeaways from the New Realities forum is that we simply haven’t organized our thinking to effectively deal with the two separate but inter-related challenges of nurturing our core service while embracing new opportunities,” writes John Sutton in his latest blog post. “About the time a station manager gets around to thinking about audience loss, she has to turn her attention to the latest big announcement about podcasting technology.”