Amazon.com and PBS Distribution are expanding their licensing agreement.

Sesame Workshop, production home to the iconic pubTV children’s program Sesame Street, announced Tuesday that it is laying off 10 percent of its workforce, or about 30 positions. The workshop’s most recent audited statements, for fiscal 2012, reflect a $24.3 million loss. That compares with a $10.8 million loss for the previous fiscal year and a $130,000 loss for FY10. Cash on-hand also plunged over the past several years, from $50.5 million in FY10, to $29.1 million in FY11 and $10 million in FY12. For FY12, Sesame Workshop was able to pare $9 million in expenses from year-to-year, largely from a reduction in production and development.

CNN Radio, the cable channel’s digital-only audio news platform, is shutting down effective immediately, according to a CNN press release. Today will be its last day of broadcast, and staff’s final day will be Friday. The decision will affect about 12 staffers, according to the release. The network had been digital-only since April 2012. In February 2011, former Georgia Public Broadcasting News Director Susanna Capelouto left her job to become a producer at CNN Radio. Former NPR producer Chip Grabow also joined the network in 2011.

PBS LearningMedia, which delivers free on-demand digital educational resources, is offering a new fee-based custom tier service. So far, nearly 1 million educators and parents of home-schooled children have registered to access LearningMedia, a partnership with WGBH that was initially announced two years ago and received nearly $2 million in CPB support in April. The new custom tier adds tools to help administrators manage the service, more than 800 hours of additional content, an upload option for schools to add specific local content, and analytical tools. PBS is launching the custom tier at the International Society for Technology in Education conference this week in San Antonio.

President Barack Obama last Friday nominated Elko, Nev., news director Lori Gilbert to serve a second term on the CPB Board. She previously served from 2008-12, arriving as an appointee of the Bush administration. Gilbert is the news director for Elko Broadcasting Co. (KELK-AM and KLKO-FM) and KENV Television. Gilbert is the president’s fifth nominee to fill vacancies on the CPB Board of Directors.

In fall 2012, Tavis Smiley saw a decline in station carriage for his public radio program Smiley & West, including a high-profile drop from Chicago's WBEZ. Now Smiley has found a new platform: online radio.

William Stibor, the music director of NET Radio in Lincoln, Nebr., died in his home June 17. He was 49.

Actor Paul Giamatti (John Adams, Sideways) is joining the cast of Downton Abbey on Masterpiece Classic. He’ll play Harold, the “maverick, playboy” brother of Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham, according to a Masterpiece announcement today. Gareth Neame, managing director of producer Carnival Films, said, “We can’t wait to see him work alongside Shirley MacLaine, who are both sure to upset the Granthams’ apple cart in this year’s finale.” Downton‘s Season 4 premieres Jan. 5, 2014.

KEET-TV in Eureka, Calif., could lose its Community Service Grant as soon as September because it is not reaching its minimum non-federal financial support requirement, reports the local North Coast Journal in Humboldt County. Executive Director Ron Schoenherr told the newspaper that KEET has never raised its NFFS minimum of $800,000, in its 44 years of broadcasting. KEET has received waivers based on its rural location and limited resources until CPB policies tightened in 2010. In a letter to the station last fall, CPB told KEET it must show by June 30 that “it has significantly improved its long-term financial sustainability through a merger, consolidation, or collaboration.”

NPR is advocating for the Federal Communications Commission to loosen its policies surrounding broadcast decency standards, and retreat from a “zero tolerances” approach to one that only targets “egregious cases.”

NPR Digital Services has added four stations to its Local Stories Project, in which participants submit stories to be included on NPR’s Facebook page and geotargeted to Facebook users in their markets. The project launched a little over a year ago with KPLU in Tacoma, Wash., and has since expanded to include 18 stations. Stations submit online stories that are shared via NPR’s Facebook page but appear only in the News Feeds of users in each station’s market. In April the project drove 114,000 visits to station sites, according to NPR. The four new participants are WXPN in Philadelphia, KUER in Salt Lake City, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho and KALW in San Francisco.