Pat Mitchell announced that she will leave her job as PBS president when her contract expires next year. News accounts in the New York Times and New York Post tie Mitchell’s exit to her controversial decision to pull an episode of Postcards from Buster that featured children with lesbian parents.

For lovers of classical music, these are difficult times. Once pubradio’s dominant format, classical music is still widespread on the airwaves. As of fall 2002, 340 public stations aired a “very significant” amount of classical each week, according to a Minnesota Public Radio report on the genre. But news programs from NPR and other sources have been pushing symphonies and operas off stage. News eclipsed classical in 2000 as public radio’s most prevalent format and more and more stations have been shearing hours of the music from their schedules. Dozens have eliminated it from middays. Sagging ratings prompted WFDD in Winston-Salem, N.C.,

PBS President Pat Mitchell tells the Los Angeles Times that she’s troubled by criticisms from liberal advocacy groups. “They are our natural allies and friends,” she said. “I’d expect them to be more understanding.”

CPB seeks a producer for a daily 4-6 hour Native music program that will be part of the American Indian Radio on Satellite (AIROS) feed.

WETA-FM in Washington, D.C., will switch to a news/talk format Feb. 28. The Washington Post‘s Marc Fisher accuses WETA and public radio at large of adopting “the commercial model of going for the biggest possible audience.”

In a letter to Congress, the National Association of Broadcasters restates its longstanding support of existing channel protections limiting the licensing of low-power FM stations.

PBS has launched an internal review to find out why the gay mommies episode of Postcards from Buster took so many people by surprise — especially the show’s main funder, the U.S. Department of Education, and numerous aggravated conservatives. Two weeks after new Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings blasted the children’s program for depicting same-sex parental couples, Minnesota conservatives were urging the state legislature to slash aid to Twin Cities PTV for airing the “Sugartime!” episode. Though PBS dropped the episode Jan. 25, mere hours before receiving Spellings’ searing letter, a quarter of public TV’s licensees — 46 of about 170 — have aired the show or plan to.

To stop a long slide in audience, WETA-FM in Washington, D.C., will adopt an all-news format Feb. 28. With almost unanimous approval from its board of trustees, the station will add news programs from the BBC, NPR and other sources, replacing classical music during middays and evenings, Monday through Friday. Saturday broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera and a weekly folk show will be WETA’s last music offerings. Middays will feature NPR’s Day to Day, as well as News and Notes with Ed Gordon, the replacement of Tavis Smiley’s program that is also aimed at black listeners. Both shows will repeat at night.

The website for James Dobson’s Focus on the Family reports on new public TV funding proposals. “What they want to do is create an endowment so that they’re insulated from Congress and from the taxpayer so they can go do whatever they want,” says a spokesman for the Media Research Center.

Update on the affair that almost nobody calls Mommygate: In a Houston Chronicle interview, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings positions herself as an opponent of federal intervention in curriculum about homosexuality, evolution and other topics.”I’m not going to sit up here in Washington, D.C., and try to dictate that,” she said. Meanwhile, PBS President Pat Mitchell has asked for an internal probe into the gay moms blowup, says the Los Angeles Times. Stations reaching at least half of U.S. households have aired the Buster episode condemned by Spellings, Current will report in its Feb. 14 issue, which features an extended interview with Mitchell on pubTV’s recent weeks of Heck.

A report released by the Miami-Dade school superintendent calls for the district to exert more control over programming decisions at WLRN-TV/FM, according to the Miami Herald.

Read the “Special Non-Gay Edition” of comic strip Tom the Dancing Bug.

Three Senators introduced a bill today that would allow the licensing of more low-power FM radio stations.

Karl Haas, host of Adventures in Good Music, died Feb. 6 at the age of 91. He had hosted the classical music show since 1959.

More than 20 pubTV stations have aired the gay moms episode of Postcards from Buster, or plan to, producing station WGBH told the press. Included are big ones in Chicago (says the Tribune), Los Angeles (says UPI), San Francisco (says Insidebayarea.com), San Diego (says the Union-Tribune) and Seattle (says the Post-Intelligencer). Also: the Oregon network (press release), the North Carolina’s UNC-TV (says ABC11, Durham), Buffalo (says the gay paper Outcome Buffalo) and Spokane (ABC affiliate KXLY-TV). Some are airing it in daytime hours when kids are watching (S.F., San Diego, Seattle, Buffalo, Spokane). Among those choosing not to air the show, at least for now, are those closest to Capitol Hill: WETA and Maryland PTV (says DC’s gay Blade), as well as stations in Kentucky and Cincinnati (Cincinnati Post) and Moline, Ill.