Worldfocus and SundayArts, both new to the production slate at WNET.org, as the station’s licensee now calls itself, will be produced starting next spring in a new glass-walled, street-level production and broadcast studio at Manhattan’s Lincoln Center, the New York Times reported today. The studio is being built in cooperation with Lincoln Center at 66th and Broadway. Check out 360-degree photo of the intersection on Google Maps. The 15-year lease marks a return to the Lincoln Center area, where WNET was based for years, and an expansion of studio space, which it had reduced considerably when it moved its offices down to West 33rd Street.

More than a quarter of pubTV stations are having problems with liquidity and almost as many with debt burden, with “some stations in dire straits,” CPB station grants chief Kevin Martin told the CPB Board today. Martin said the financial distress “cuts across large, medium and small, urban and rural stations.” Community licensees are over-represented among those in trouble, but little stations are not. “When you looked at financial strength versus size, there’s no indication that size matters,” says Walter Parsons of BMR Associates in Seattle, Wash., the lead consultant. “Strong stations are large and small, less strong stations are large and small.”

It no longer makes sense for the federal government to fund a corporation for public broadcasting, writes David Sasaki, outreach director of the global citizen media project Rising Voices and contributor to the MediaShift Idea Lab blog on PBS.org. He proposes that President-elect Barack Obama create a National Journalism Foundation, modeled on the National Science Foundation and funded with some sort of tax on internet service providers or the giant telecom companies, to replace CPB. The foundation would fund PBS and NPR in addition to web-only journalism projects such as EveryBlock and FiveThirtyEight.com. “We need a federal body in charge of supporting the nation’s journalism, communication, and information needs,” Sasaki writes.

Laura Linney will be the new host of Masterpiece Classic, series e.p. Rebecca Eaton announced today in an online video release. Linney succeeds Gillian Anderson. Masterpiece Classic‘s second season as a distinct Masterpiece brand, separate from Masterpiece Mystery! and Masterpiece Contemporary, begins in January with a new adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Ubervilles. The season includes a special collection of Charles Dickens stories. 

Kentucky’s Louisville Public Media has launched The Mediavore, a blog that points listeners to don’t-miss content offered throughout public media. In a post on his blog, Todd Mundt, LPM’s director of new media strategies, explains the purpose of Mediavore. “It’s launching with a heavy tilt toward news/talk, but we expect to balance it over the next few months with more music and cultural content,” he writes. “We’re also looking to beef up our exploration of content produced by local stations, and we will add much more video content.”

An Utne Reader article looks at the international reach of Sesame Street, using The World According to Sesame Street, a documentary, as a starting point. “Sesame Street has to reprove itself in every country where it goes,” says one of the doc’s directors. “Here is an American organization coming in and wanting to teach their children. That’s alarm-bell city.”

The Association of Fundraising Professionals named Gretchen Gordon, director of development and outreach at KUAC in Fairbanks, Alaska, its Outstanding Professional in Philanthropy this week, reports the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Gordon doubled the station’s donations from listeners over four years to $1 million despite cutting back on on-air fund drives. “Saying it is a huge honor would be an understatement,” she said of the award.

Pubradio station KWMU will move to midtown St. Louis, next door to pubTV station KETC, the radio licensee announced Wednesday, the Post-Dispatch reported. Grand Center, the city’s redeveloping entertainment area, persuaded the licensee, University of Missouri-St. Louis, to drop plans for a new KWMU building on campus and locate at the Center on Olive Street. Students persuaded the university to allocate a third of the 27,000-square-foot building to non-station university space.

More listeners are tuning into KRCL, the Utah community radio station that overhauled its contemporary music format in March and replaced volunteers with paid djs, but the station fell short of its fall fundraising goal, according to the Salt Lake City Weekly. Two additional music stations that received CPB aid to revamp their formats–KDHX in St. Louis and WUMB in Boston–are soliciting online donations after missing their pledge targets.

Raising the profile of its production side, KCET chief Al Jerome upped Mary Mazur to e.v.p. and chief content officer, overseeing content development and production in all media, Variety reported. Mazur in turn promoted Bret Marcus to senior v.p., programming and production; he’s also overseeing its new weekly newsmag, SoCal Connected. In addition, KCET promoted Bohdan Zachary to v.p., broadasting and syndication, and Karen Hunte to v.p., program planning and development.

Cindy Browne, founding head of Iowa Public Radio and longtime exec at Twin Cities Public Television (TPT), died Sunday night, Nov. 9, after a long fight against cancer, according to former colleague Todd Mundt. He wrote in his blog: “Cindy was the most courageous person I ever knew; throughout her life, she confronted change, in her career, in her health, some of it unwelcome, and yet she was a fount of optimism, and maintained a laser-like focus on what she needed to do.” A memorial service will be held Friday, 4-8 p.m., at Holcomb Henry Boom Funeral Home in Shoreview, Minn.

Vivian Schiller, senior v.p. of NYTimes.com, has been appointed as NPR’s next president and c.e.o. Schiller, who will be the first woman to helm NPR, previously was a senior executive with the Discovery Times Channel, a joint venture of The New York Times and Discovery Communications, and led CNN Productions, specializing in long-form documentary work. “Her roots in the news business, as well as her inclusive management style and operational expertise, make her an ideal fit for NPR.,” said Howard Stevenson, NPR Chairman in this news release. His memo to NPR staff is posted here. Schiller’s first day on the job is Jan.

To attract younger listeners, public radio needs to “get off the news mountaintop,” former NPR host and correspondent Luke Burbank told station execs at last week’s Western States Public Radio conference. “Don’t talk down–be at eye level,” he said. Burbank, who departed NPR’s Gen X-targeted Bryant Park Project shortly after its launch last year, offered six suggestions for bringing younger adults into the public radio fold, reported by KUOW’s Jeff Hansen on the PRPD blog. From Burbank’s perspective as one of two full-time staff on a daily commercial talk show in Seattle, BPP was “overstaffed, overly-expensive, and over-supervised,” Hansen writes.

Lindsey is embarking on a vast project to collect elders’ knowledge from around the world — their methods of predicting future events, reconciling people in conflict, and understanding causes and effects of climate change.

Nic Harcourt, KCRW’s eclectic music tastemaker for 10 years, will leave the Santa Monica, Calif., station later this month. “It’s not the politician’s thing, like, ‘Oh, I’m spending more time with my kids’,” Harcourt told the Los Angeles Times [scroll down]. “The bottom line is I’ve been in public radio for 10 years, and regardless of how great my job is, I make public radio money, and I have two 5 year-olds. I have to think about their future … I’m going to busy. I’m looking forward to building some equity for myself.” Harcourt looks to “explore new career opportunities and expand upon my other activities in movie, television, voice over work, advertising and the Internet,” he said in a statement.