Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) is expected to become chair of the FCC-overseeing Commerce Committee, but the present chairman, John McCain (R-Ariz.), may keep the communications subcommittee, Roll Call reports. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) would have to take his chair elsewhere.

Some lovers of classical music dislike Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s recent decision to dump some classical in favor of news and jazz, reports the Clarion-Ledger. “Public radio is designed to provide us with something you can’t get on commercial stations,” says a listener.

Get Fuzzy speculates on what you might hear on National Cat Radio.

Sandra Tsing Loh will return to the Los Angeles airwaves–though with no profanity, even of the bleeped variety–on KPCC-FM, reports the Los Angeles Times (reg. req.).

Bob Edwards will leave Morning Edition April 30 to become a senior correspondent for NPR. He tells the Washington Post he would have preferred to stay with the show: “One day you change flavors at Baskin Robbins. I think that’s what this is.” Edwards discussed his job in a 1998 Current Q&A.

The National Endowment for the Arts is looking to commission a study of audience and programming trends in classical music on radio. (Word document.)

WETA President Sharon Rockefeller and doc film auteurs D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus will be honored April 22 by CINE, the filmmakers’ organization announced.

Hiring former Baltimore Sun editor Bill Marimow as a managing editor will help NPR do “the kind of reporting that sets the agenda, gets under the surface,” says network news veep Bruce Drake in the Sun. (Via Romenesko.) (NPR release on Marimow’s hiring.)

Since CBS aired Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain show in 1967 “no one, not even public television, has put the performance on the air,” Bill Moyers observed during an interview with Holbrook aired on Now March 19. PBS, like other broadcasters, balked at the word “nigger,” from Huckleberry Finn excerpts. Holbrook said: “Well, when you get into corporate decision-making, especially in these days of political correctness, you are in jail.” Alan Foster told the story last fall in Current.

NPR hired William K. Marimow as an additional managing editor, a new position. Marimow edited the Baltimore Sun until January, when the paper’s publisher fired him, telling the Washington Post that “our partnership was not where I wanted it to be.” (Latter article via Romenesko.)

James Randi, the magician and debunker of paranormal hoaxes, observes on his website that public TV stations “are featuring both Dr. Wayne Dyer and Dr. Gary Null, to take advantage of the public’s taste for quackery.” (Scroll down to the photo of Null’s book “Healing with Magnets.”)

Leslie Cagan, former chair of Pacifica’s interim national board, urged an audience at a March 12 meeting to abandon “the ugly and at times de-mobilizing ways” that struggle has manifested within the network. Cagan stepped down as a newly elected board assumed power. Pacifica has also settled differences with a former manager of its New York station.

Peter Troxell, former g.m. of KUSP-FM in Santa Cruz, Calif., died of cancer March 17. His son kept a moving weblog about his death.

The Associated Press looks at competition between public radio and religious broadcasters for spectrum, with a recent Marylan dispute as an example.

APTS goes public with a release about its digital-only proposal, suggesting that public TV could relinquish analog channels ahead of time in exchange for a trust fund that would supplement CPB aid. See also Current‘s article.