Jeff Smith, a popular advocate for simple and multicultural cooking on public TV, died in his sleep July 7 [2004] in Seattle. He was 65 and suffered from heart disease. The Frugal Gourmet, hosted by the white-bearded Methodist chaplain in a striped apron, aired on PBS from 1983 to 1997, making Smith a top chef on the network after Julia Child had established cooking as a staple for public TV. Smith virtually disappeared from public view in the late 1990s after a number of men accused him of sexually abusing them when they were teenagers.

A former finance-office employee at WTTW in Chicago was sentenced to 4-1/2 years in prison for stealing more than $500,000 from the station, AP reported. Fe Corizon Cruz-Fabunan agreed to pay back $370,000. [Earlier Current story.]

American University defended the firing of Susan Clampitt in a response to the lawsuit filed by the former g.m. of WAMU-FM in Washington, D.C. The university also denied Clampitt’s charges against it and its president, Benjamin Ladner.

The Washington Post‘s Marc Fisher takes a quick look at the operating costs of D.C.-area public radio stations.

Wal-Mart is salving its public-relations wounds by buying underwriting credits on KCET (The Tavis Smiley Show) in addition to NPR, which has been running blurbs for the big retailer since February, reports the New York Times (as reprinted in the Wilmington, N.C., Star-News).

A Minneapolis Star-Tribune writer questions whether Minnesota Public Radio needed to buy WCAL: “[I]t’s hard to understand how a virtual MPR monopoly in the state is a positive.”

Staff and volunteers at KPFA-FM in Berkeley, Calif., are accusing the station’s recently elected Local Station Board of micromanagment and unmerited attacks on staff. (Related Berkeley Daily Planet article.) In a letter to listeners, Interim General Manager Jim Bennett warns that “[t]he progressive politics that are sometimes put forward on the air will not flourish in a repressive mode of trying to get certain agendas rammed through.” Pacifica’s bylaws, enacted last year, provided for the creation and election of LSBs. Meanwhile, Pacifica pointed out that three of its stations have weekly cumulative audiences that put them among the top 30 in the country.

In The Nation, Eric Alterman, author of What Liberal Media?, concludes the funding of PBS’s Tucker Carlson and Wall Street Journal shows resulted from “naked political pressure” by “crybaby conservatives.”

A University of Wisconsin study finds that media ownership by national conglomerates doesn’t reduce local news coverage — in quantity, at least.

This article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian explores KALW’s FCC troubles and wonders why the city’s commercial stations aren’t being held to the same standard. The story, titled “Squashing David, ignoring Goliath,” quotes FCC commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, who said they are “troubled by the message we send when we send small, independent stations to hearings but give a pass to stations owned by larger media companies for troubling allegations.”

The school board in Austin, Minn., approved transfer of public TV station KSMQ to a new community nonprofit, the Austin Daily Herald reported. Consultant Don Thigpen, former head of WCEU in Daytona Beach, Fla., is acting manager.

St. Olaf’s College will sell WCAL to Minnesota Public Radio for $10.5 milliion, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports. The college founded an AM precursor to the FM classical music station more than 80 years ago. Last year the station had member revenues of $860,000 and aid of $130,000 from the college, but the college discontinued its assistance this year, according to the Twin Cities Business Journal.

The Cartoon Network will launch a new block of preschool programs that aims to be “fun, funny, and fearless.” Humor is a “skill kids need to know,” said Alice Cahn, v.p. of development and programming, a former director of children’s programs at PBS.

With Bob Edwards’ decision to leave NPR for a satellite radio company, public radio is debating again a highly ponderable question: Should it embrace satellite as a distributor for its programs or fear it as a competitor for listeners and revenue? Edwards’ new weekday morning gig, The Bob Edwards Show, will start the morning for a new channel, XM Public Radio. The one-hour show will originate weekdays at 8 a.m. Eastern time and will repeat at 9 a.m. The channel launches Sept. 1; Edwards’ show debuts Oct. 4. When NPR reporter Rick Karr broke the story of Edwards’ departure in July, he reported erroneously that Public Radio International was producing Edwards’ new show.

The Wall Street Journal will produce a new Friday-night roundtable, Journal Editorial Report, for PBS starting Sept. 17, WNET announced. The show has major funding from CPB and will feature members of the paper’s famously conservative editorial board. They won’t be “lapdogs” for the Bush administration, WNET’s Stephen Segaller told the Hollywood Reporter.