“Finding the Future of Public Television” is the topic of a day-and-a-half workshop backed by CPB in Los Angeles on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 14-15. Speakers include CPB programmers Michael Pack and John Prizer, leftie performer Harry Shearer, conservative producer Lionel Chetwynd, former studio chief Frank Price and other producers and writers. They’ll debate whether PBS can “fully represent America’s diverse culture.” Organizer of the workshop, the conservative American Cinema Foundation, will hold it on AFI’s Western Avenue campus.

Radio World lists several noncommercial radio licensees, including WAMC-FM in Albany, N.Y., who received licenses after the FCC resolved conflicting applications.

Ron Della Chiesa will step down next month as the weekday morning classical music host on Boston’s WGBH-FM, reports the Boston Herald. He has hosted classical music on the station for 35 years. (He is not retiring, as this item formerly and erroneously stated.)

Longtime Prairie Home Companion sponsor Lands’ End has ended its underwriting deal with the show, reports the (Madison, Wis.) Capital Times.

Josh Kornbluth, host of a quirky new local series and weblog for KQED-TV, dreamed of being an NBA point guard, but he never imagined having his own TV show. “You look at someone who belongs on television . . . they’re solid, like they belong there…. An animated character can be like me, ” he tells the San Francisco Chronicle. “Look at Jim Lehrer, and look at his hair. There’s no way I can compete with that.”

CPB seeks a firm to help with developing public radio services for Latinos in Los Angeles.

“A lot of people probably don’t know me or haven’t heard about me and are not used to having this additional channel for challenge,” says Michael Getler, describing his new job as PBS ombudsman. Getler, a veteran newspaper reporter and editor who is ending a five-year term as Washington Post ombudsman, joins PBS on Nov. 15.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the left-wing weekly The Nation, picked up on a senator’s jibe at Ken Tomlinson, suggesting that CPB put $5 million into a commentary program run by her magazine just as it did for the Wall Street Journal’s roundtable show. “We’re serious. With the departure of Bill Moyers from Now, PBS has no outspoken liberals at all offering commentary,” she wrote, concluding, “We eagerly await your response.”

NPR will beef up coverage of the southern U.S. with a reporter stationed in Nashville, reports the Nashville City Paper.

WUNC-FM in Chapel Hill, N.C., hopes to launch a national talk show hosted by Dick Gordon, former host of The Connection. A plea for funds on the website of the Triangle Community Foundation lays out the plan.

Michael Getler, who holds the position at the Washington Post, will become the first ombudsman for PBS. Getler worked for the Post 26 years, reporting on the Pentagon, Central Europe and London beats, then serving as foreign editor and deputy managing editor. He became executive editor of the International Herald Tribune in 1996 and returned to the Post as ombudsman in 2000. With backing from a panel of journalists, PBS decided to hire an ombudsman this summer. CPB had hired a pair of journalists for the purpose. In three months, they’ve published seven essays on CPB’s website.

There’s a LiveJournal community for public radio fans.

“I am by definition a reporter. Not an editor, not a publisher. A reporter,” says NPR Co-Managing Editor Bill Marimow in the Johns Hopkins Newsletter.

NPR has tried to make it easier for listeners to offer feedback but still has work to do, says Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin in his latest column.

“Whenever I’m not sure about something, the ethics of something, the question I ask myself is what would Murrow have done? What would Murrow say?” says NPR’s Daniel Schorr. (Via Romenesko.)