Kathy Merritt, senior director of radio program investments at CPB, has accepted a position as vice president, content strategy and development at Public Radio International. Merritt will identify new talent, production and business partners, and work with producers on content development, audience research and new business opportunities, the Minneapolis-based PRI said in today’s announcement. She will report to Chief Content Officer Melinda Ward. “Kathy’s wide range of experience in public broadcasting,” Ward said, “including leadership positions at stations, industry associations like SRG [Station Resource Group] and Public Radio News Directors Association, and her most recent tenure at CPB, uniquely qualify her for her role in developing PRI’s content strategy, working with producers and ensuring that our content meets station and digital needs.”

Larry McDaniel, known for decades on public radio in Detroit as “The Arkansas Traveler,” died Jan. 4 after a lengthy illness, reports the Detroit News. He was 72. He was a fixture on WDET-FM from 1977 to 2009, with his bluegrass show that was part of a block of American roots music on Saturdays. A 2002 press release marking the program”s 25th anniversary noted it was one of the station’s most popular offerings, and one of the longest-running bluegrass shows in the country. “Larry was such an amazing host,” former WDET host Matt Watroba, now on WKSU in Kent, Ohio, told the newspaper.

Three nights after 7.9 million people tuned into the third-season premiere of PBS’s Downton Abbey, WGBY in Springfield, Mass., will broadcast an interview tonight with Lady Carnarvon of Highclere Castle, the filming location of the BBC-produced series. The interview is being shown as an episode of the program Connecting Point and is not available for national carriage, so only those New Englanders lucky enough to receive the WGBY signal will be able to watch this evening. “I got in touch with Lady Carnarvon’s personal assistant last fall for a different reason,” WGBY spokesperson Myrna Flynn told Current regarding how the station landed the exclusive. 

Robert Bednarek, a technology expert at CPB in the early 1980s, has died at age 55 after a battle with cancer, reports Space Policy Online. Bednarek was CPB’s deputy chief scientist. SatNews, which covers the satellite industry, said that while at CPB, he “managed the research, development and application of new telecommunications and information technologies.”  Following his tenure at CPB, Bednarek founded a D.C.-based technology consulting firm, Rubin, Bednarek and Associates, and then joined PanAmSat (now Intelsat) as chief technology officer, overseeing operation of its fleet of communications satellites. From there he joined Dutch satellite operator SES, rising to president and c.e.o.

New York Public Radio will launch an opera-focused radio show Jan. 19 on WQXR, its classical station in New York City, and also make the program available nationwide. Operavore will cover opera news, preview new recordings and feature interviews with opera personalities as well as playwright Terrance McNally, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and TV and theater star Tyne Daly. The show will be hosted by WQXR’s Naomi Lewin and will feature mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne as a weekly guest. Operavore expands on a WQXR website and all-opera web stream of the same name that launched a year ago. It will air weekly until May 25.

Aereo, the digital television distributor that grabs and streams over-the-air signals to web-enabled devices, is expanding nationwide, reports Hollywood Reporter. The new technology, backed at its New York City launch in March 2012 by broadcasting giant Barry Diller, has obtained an additional $38 million to spread service to 22 more cities. It says it uses “proprietary remote antenna and DVR” technology to enable subscribers, for a monthly fee, to watch over-the-air broadcasts on their smart phones, tablets and computers. PBS and WNET are among broadcasters with pending copyright infringement lawsuits against Aereo, saying that the company doesn’t have the right to sell access to their over-the-air content.

The Masterpiece Classic Season 3 premiere of Downton Abbey drew nearly 8 million viewers, a 5.1 household rating, almost doubling those numbers for the first episode of Season 2, according to PBS and Nielsen. The 7.9 million fans just about quadrupled PBS’s average primetime rating. From 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, PBS was the second-most watched network, behind only CBS. Local numbers were also strong: Seattle’s KCTS saw a 9.5; WGBH in Boston, 8.7; KLRU in Austin, Texas, 8.0; and New York’s WNET, 8.0.

One of pubTV's most beloved and good-natured personalities, Huell Howser, passed away Jan. 6 of natural causes.

PBS unveiled deals to distribute public TV programs on two additional on-demand video streaming platforms — Roku and Xbox Live. The contracts, unveiled last week by PBS Digital chief Jason Seiken, lay the groundwork for apps that will feature local station programming and a limited selection of national content. To gain access, Xbox and Roku users will provide email addresses and choose their local station. The graphic interface on both services will be cobranded with PBS and local station logos. “Xbox and Roku are leaders in the fast-growing ‘over-the-top’ television phenomenon, in which viewers access television programs on-demand on their TV sets using an Internet connection,” Seiken wrote in Jan.

Western Illinois University in Macomb has announced the four candidates for director of its WQPT-TV, Quad Cities Public Television. Interviewing for the position are Victor Hogstrom, executive director and general manager of the Utah Public Radio Network; Mary Pruess, former president and general manager of WNIT, South Bend, Ind.; Sharon McNeal, former coordinator of communication and marketing at Pinellas (Fla.) County Schools; and Andrew Chalanick, director of programming at WDSC-TV, Daytona Beach, Fla. Interviews should be concluded by the end of the month.

Philadelphia’s WXPN-FM has converted a long-running alternative-rock stream into XPN2 Singer-Songwriter Radio, the broadcaster announced last week. The new stream, which can be heard online and as an HD Radio channel in the Philadelphia area, highlights music by performers “rooted in the singer-songwriter tradition,” the station said in a press release. The stream had launched in 2006 as Y-Rock on XPN, a reincarnation of alternative rock station Y100. That former FM station went online-only in 2005 after falling victim to a format change. It then adopted XPN’s brand. In 2011 WXPN rebranded the stream as XPN2. The new Singer-Songwriter Radio features in-studio performances and an additional broadcast of WXPN’s World Café, as well as Mountain Stage and four hours of music from Folk Alley, a web stream programmed by WKSU in Kent, Ohio.

Crowdfunding website Kickstarter announced Thursday that independent film projects on its site had passed the $100 million mark in pledges since its 2009 launch, with $42.6 million of that total pledged to documentaries — the largest share of any film genre. Many Kickstarter-funded documentaries find their way to larger success, whether through film festivals, theatrical distribution or airings on networks like PBS. This year, three Kickstarter-assisted documentary features shortlisted for a Best Documentary Oscar nomination will also air on PBS in 2013: The Waiting Room, Detropia and Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.

Next Avenue — a web-based initiative focusing on Americans over 50 years old from Twin Cities Public Television, American Public Television and PBS — will now share content with RLTV, a cable and online network for seniors, the two announced Wednesday. RLTV, headquartered in Baltimore, will license for its website “targeted, mission- and category-aligned content that is selected from among Next Avenue’s rich array of original articles and blogs,” the announcement said. The deal, effective immediately, also allows for Next Avenue to develop custom exclusive online content for RLTV. Next Avenue, based in St. Paul and launched in May 2012, publishes original articles and blogs daily, written and edited by veteran journalists.

Dec. 31, 2012, marked the last day that Lisa Mullins, longtime host of PRI’s The World, held that position. On Jan. 1, reporter and substitute host Marco Werman took over hosting full time, a promotion that PRI announced Dec. 7. Werman, formerly a senior producer for the show, joined The World in 1995 and began stepping in as a host three years ago. Julia Yager, PRI’s v.p. of brand management and marketing strategy, said the show’s producers made the change because Werman “best embodies the direction of the program” as it aims to expand further on digital multimedia platforms.