Now that he’s retiring, Ron Hull has time to find out who he is. Not that he or anyone else in public TV is uncertain on that point. Hull is one of the field’s most prominent advocates for good programs and a memorable character who flips his tie over his shoulder when he gets excited, which is often. He worked most of 47 years at the University of Nebraska’s public TV network, leaving periodically and coming back again to its program side, which he tended while Jack McBride built the transmitters, the relationships and an array of ambitious projects based in Lincoln.

This summer public radio will get a taste of an impending change in the technological status quo: the Content Depot. This far-reaching set of upgrades and innovations in the field’s means for moving audio around the country will streamline how producers and stations select, send, acquire and automate programming. In particular, the Content Depot standardizes how the NPR-operated Public Radio Satellite System (PRSS) stores programming and feeds it to stations. Today the process relies on a hodgepodge of media on both ends of the transfer. PRSS stores programming in forms including analog tape and compact disc, while stations download it from a PRSS satellite and save it on hard drives and other media before broadcasting it.

Frontline won the Television Critics Association‘s news and information award this year, Zap2It.com reported.

After trying for seven years, Pittsburgh’s WQED won FCC approval July 18 to sell its second public TV channel and raise money to get out of debt and go digital, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. [PDF file of FCC decision.] Diane Sutter, the broadcaster who will pay $20 million for the UHF channel, said in the Tribune-Review that the win was an example of persistence paying off. Jerry Starr, longtime opponent of the sale, said his group had not decided whether to appeal. [Current article about WQED’s 2001 petition for dereservation]

Don’t stick your mic in the turtle’s butt. That and other bits of advice from NPR reporter John Burnett are intended for radio journalists, but many apply to other media as well.

The new hosts of Wall Street Week lack the stage presence and rigor of Louis Rukeyser, even though the veteran host’s delivery on CNBC is stodgy and predictable, writes Slate’s reviewer. The Wall Street Journal‘s critic says the new WSW is “achingly dull–rather like a dinner made up only of broccoli and undressed arugula.”

Chicago’s WBEZ might assume management of Loyola University’s WLUW, according to a Sun-Times report.

Sesame Street plans to introduce an HIV-positive Muppet character to the cast of its South African program and is discussing a similar move in the U.S., the Washington Post reports. Current earlier reported on other big changes made to the U.S. show.

Folks at the community weblog MetaFilter are discussing the NPR anthrax story muddle, with a Fox News report as a starting point.

A Pennsylvania court sentenced appraiser/dealer Russell Pritchard to a year in jail and repayment of $830K defrauded through his appearances on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow, the New York Times reported (second item). [Earlier Current articles on his firing by WGBH in 2000 and indictment in 2001.]

At July 10’s House hearing, NPR President Kevin Klose offered his personal and professional apology to the Traditional Values Coalition for a news segment that linked the Christian organization to the anthrax investigation, Variety reports (see Current‘s earlier report on the flap).

Read a suite of dispatches from a conference on public radio talk shows, held in April.

A New York Times critic lauds tonight’s report from Iraq by Gwynne Roberts as “the timeliest possible beginning to Wide Angle,” a new PBS foreign affairs series. [The program’s website.]

The L.A. Times profiles public radio’s Studio 360, which host Kurt Andersen says goes beyond high culture to show us the art “on TV and in our bathrooms.” [Current profiled the show last summer.]

Staci Kramer of the Online Journalism Review supports NPR’s new linking policy—with a few reservations. [Read the Current story about the debate.]