A fire that knocked Austin community station KOOP off the air last weekend was set intentionally, city fire officials say. The blaze caused more than $300,000 in damage. The station, which shares the 91.7 frequency with the University of Texas’ student-run KVRX, moved to its current location in 2006 after two fires at its previous home caused more than $4 million in damages, total, with the latter blaze destroying the building entirely. Neither of the earlier fires was ruled to be arson. KOOP has a history of infighting, though things had apparently stabilized, according to local reports. That said, Jim Ellinger, KOOP’s founder, ousted in 1999, said Monday that the station keeps burning down because of its “own bad karma.”

A new report from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center on the children’s interactive media market finds that most digital products for kids do not utilize available research on children’s educational needs. “D is for Digital,” which focused on products for ages 3-11, found only two explicitly curriculum-based video games on the market. The report, which includes recommendations to the industry, researchers and policymakers, can be downloaded here.

“My prediction for 2008 will be that a tidal wave of innovation will converge and make TV on demand normal for the mainstream audience by early 2009,” writes Robert Patterson today in his blog. “As this happens, the money now invested in TV advertising and in supporting public TV will shift away – it will follow the audience.” In his first in a series of installments on the subject, he says this trend will cause the “slow but sure death” of many local stations, reminiscent of the music and newspaper industry. Patterson will be writing about what pubTV stations can do to survive the shift.

Too Beautiful to Live, a three-hour talk show featuring former NPR host Luke Burbank, debuted last night on Seattle’s KIRO-AM. “I’ve always thought I was a little too interesting for public radio, and a little too smart for commercial radio,” Burbank said in a BlatherWatch preview of the new show. Like Bryant Park Project, the NPR show that Burbank left less than a month ago, Too Beautiful won’t sound like NPR. “We’ll be real people talking about our lives,” Burbank said.

Among other gadgets to be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show, the San Jose Mercury News previews a new HD Radio media access technology that NPR plans to introduce at CES. UPDATE: Here’s the official news release describing the initiative and today’s live demonstration at CES.

WAMC in Albany, N.Y., agreed to drop its bid to build a new full-power radio station in territory already served by North Country Public Radio, according to the Albany Times-Union. The proposal, one of three vying at the FCC for the 91.7 frequency in Lake Placid, would have bumped NCPR’s translator service to the town.

A couple of blog postings about the marketing of HD Radio prompted vigorous debates about the viability of the nascent broadcast technology. Consultant Fred Jacobs critiques the concept behind the new ad campaign created for HD Radio Alliance stations, prompting a pre-holiday venting about all that is wrong with HD Radio. And Mark Ramsey, who predicted two years ago that HD would die on the vine without a better marketing plan, comments on the lackluster sales of HD Radio units [Via PRPD].

PRX’s three Public Radio Talent Quest finalists completed their pilot episodes last month and posted them to the PRTQ website. Listen and review Al Letson’s State of the ReUNION, Rebecca Watson’s Curiosity Aroused and Glynn Washington’s Snap Judgment. The trio are competing for CPB series funding with each other and three aspiring pubradio hosts recruited by a separate team of producers.

A Sacramento Bee feature on Capital Public Radio’s KXJZ describes a respected, nonsensational news source with a growing local news staff (seven going on nine, plus four regular contributors) that placed fourth in 25-54 morning audience this spring.

DirecTV and APTS said today the satellite broadcaster will carry local high-definition feeds of public TV stations starting next year, along with PBS video-on-demand programming and two national standard-def pubTV channels. The deal was approved yesterday by the APTS Board and faces votes by the PBS Board and the stations. DirecTV’s lineup includes 265 channels, includng more than 80 in HD. (News release via TVPredictions.com.)

The filmmaker and New Hampshire resident said he’s disappointed in Hillary Clinton’s negative tone and speculated she’s getting bad advice, AP reported.

“Jihad: The Men and Ideas Behind Al Queda,” a documentary funded by CPB’s America at a Crossroads initiative, is one of four pubcasting programs to win 2008 duPont-Columbia Awards. During an awards ceremony to be held Jan. 16, the competition’s silver batons will also be presented to This American Life for a report by Alix Spiegel on the discrimination faced by a Muslim family after 9/11; NPR and Daniel Zwerdling for investigative reporting on the treatment of Iraq War veterans suffering from serious psychiatric post-traumatic stress injuries; and to producers of “Through Deaf Eyes,” a PBS documentary on the deaf community in the United States.

North Country Public Radio and WAMC in Albany, N.Y., are feuding over their competing applications to operate a full-power station in Lake Placid. For 21 years, NCPR has broadcast to the community on a translator on 91.7, the only frequency available in Lake Placid for a full-power station. During the FCC’s October filing window for new noncommercial FM stations, WAMC applied to take over the channel. The Daily Gazette of Schenectady first reported on the dispute, but the Albany Times Union reported earlier on WAMC’s plans to expand into the service areas of other regional pubcasters. The Adirondack Daily Enterprise reports on negotiations between NCPR and WAMC for the frequency.

‘PBS gives everyone the opportunity to explore new worlds” — this is the meaning that station communications to viewers and donors should evoke, the network says. PBS plans to test new messages with stations and make a new round of spots for its “Be More” brand campaign based on new research about language that moves people to donate to pubTV. The network’s goal is to create more consistent messaging across the system, says Judy Braune, v.p. of strategy and brand management. “When we set out to do the research,” she says, “we were looking to answer the question, ‘How can we position PBS stations as a cause that people want to support for the long haul?’”

A newly formed consortium of Latino public broadcasters is calling for public radio to expand its service to the nation’s growing Hispanic population by creating multiple program services and strengthening Latino-controlled public radio stations.