Billy Crystal will be the host of WNET’s upcoming comedy series Make ‘Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America, which documents more than a century of American comedy and is due to air on PBS in January. Crystal will introduce each of the six, one-hour episodes and contribute some of his own schtick to the special. Michael Kantor (Ghost Light Films), who produced the Emmy Award-winning Broadway: The American Musical, is creator and producer.

NPR was expected to tell the staff of its Bryant Park Project this week that the morning show will be discontinued July 25, the New York Times reported yesterday. After 10 months’ production, the show aimed at a younger-than-Morning Edition audience was getting an online audience of a million unique users a month this spring but aired on only five analog public radio stations and 19 digital multicast channels, the newspaper said.

Three finalists in the Public Radio Talent Quest won CPB research-and-development grants totaling $800,000 to refine and develop pilots they conceived and hosted. Two of the winners, Al Letson and Glynn Washington, rose to the top from a field of more than 1,400 contestants in the Public Radio Exchange’s Web 2.0-style competition by demonstrating their “hostiness” to online voters and a panel of judges. The third winner, community activist and MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” recipient Majora Carter, was recruited by a group of seasoned production execs who call their scouting project Launch Production Inc. “We were so impressed by the creativity and talent of all of the finalists, we couldn’t pick just one,” said CPB President Patricia Harrison in a video announcing the funding decision.

NPR launched Inside NPR.org, a blog, similar to advance blogs used to shape new programs such as The Bryant Park Project, that will serve as a sounding board for the network’s digital plans. Online staff will discuss services and products under development and seek feedback from users. “We hope that talking about these activities more openly will help create a virtuous cycle of product development and feedback,” wrote post authors Andy Carvin and Daniel Jacobson.

Washington Week made an apparently innocent slip-of-the-tongue much worse by erasing it from the program’s transcript, writes PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler. On June 20, moderator Gwen Ifill clearly didn’t mean to imply that Al Gore was gay when she said he “came out of the closet” to endorse presidential hopeful Barack Obama. But after a blogger named Tony Peyser asked about the slip-up, a producer changed the transcript. (The original transcript is available here.) Peyser, naturally, noted this in his blog, which points up the stupidity of the decision to change it in the first place, Getler writes. “Now, altering a transcript to remove a controversial or embarrassing statement is a very bad and fundamental journalistic sin, and also professionally stupid because someone will always catch it,” he said.

At a time when educational institutions are more likely to be spinning off broadcast stations, the University of Georgia has bought a CBS-TV affiliate in Toccoa, 50 miles north of the Athens campus. The school agreed to pay owner Media General about $1.6 million plus DTV costs f0r WNEG-TV, says the asset purchase agreement and will use it as a teaching lab for communications students producing local programs for the northeast corner of the state, according to Dean E. Culpepper Clark’s remarks on the station’s own newscast and in the Independent-Mail of Anderson, S.C. The station will remain a commercial broadcaster, but Clark indicated it may drop its CBS affiliation.

Chicago Public Radio programming v.p. Ron Jones exits for “a new adventure” as the station cuts two local programs, Hello Beautiful and Right Now, an afternoon talk show. The cuts, announced this week as the station’s board met to approve the budget for the new fiscal year, prompts Chicago Reader venting about Vocalo, the experimental service for younger, web-savvy media consumers and creators. Robert Feder of the Sun-Times summarizes staff reassignments (scroll down).

Rush Limbaugh, Premiere Radio Networks’ $400 million man, is profiled in the July 6 New York Times Magazine, published a few days early on the Times website. The piece quotes This American Life‘s Ira Glass on Limbaugh’s unique talent: “Rush is just an amazing radio performer . . . . Years ago, I used to listen in the car on my way to reporting gigs, and I’d notice that I disagreed with everything he was saying, yet I not only wanted to keep listening, I actually liked him. That is some chops. You can count on two hands the number of public figures in America who can pull that trick off.”

PBS launched PBS Teachers Connect, a new area of its PBS Teachers site that will allow member educators to start discussions and share lesson plans categorized by subject area, with more sophisticated messaging, feed options and other enhancements still to come (press release). PBS Teachers blogger Andy Carvin, also NPR’s social media guru, elaborates.

That’s what the Washington Week host told PBS’s Engage blog this week. Ifill was the most recent subject of the social media project‘s regular “Five Good Answers from…” pubTV interview feature. If the tables were turned, whom would she pick to interview her? “Since I’m writing a book that comes out next year, I suppose I’d most want an Oprah interview,” Ifill said. “Wouldn’t you?”

KETC in St. Louis has launched Facing the Mortgage Crisis, created in partnership with CPB. The multimedia project–which includes a partnership with the online newspaper The Saint Louis Beacon–aims to make KETC a central hub for information about how and where struggling homeowners can get help. A Google map on the project website maps partner service organizations across the metro area. The site’s other resources include information about the United Way’s help line and KETC-produced video stories about specific neighborhoods. The project, which was initiated in mid-May by CPB, is intended to create a template for other stations to use in their communities.

NPR News, Mississippi Public Broadcasting and XM Satellite Radio’s Bob Edwards Show are winners of 2008 Edward R. Murrow Awards for radio network news coverage announced yesterday by RTNDA. New York’s WNYC-FM is the only pubradio outlet earning a national Murrow in the large-market radio division, but six pubcasters serving small markets receive RTNDA honors for excellence in electronic journalism. NPR’s winning reports are “Sexual Abuse of Native American Women” by Laura Sullivan and “Rescuing the Wounded: Iraq to Germany” by Guy Raz. MPB Radio wins with “Emmett Till Apology” and “Kids Write the Blues.”

Public Radio Program Directors unveiled its redesigned website today. Upgrades include an improved search function, a knowledge base of tricks of the trade and a members forum. Reports on recent PRPD activities, such as a meeting on best practices in local talk programming and a webinar on social media produced by WXPN’s Bruce Warren, are available to non-members.

PBS 45 & 49, a public TV station covering northeast Ohio, including Akron, Canton, Cleveland and Youngstown, will reach back into the 17th century for a new name it will adopt this fall — Western Reserve Public Media. The Western Reserve name, shared by a major Cleveland university, comes from a strip of Ohio claimed by Connecticut in the 1700s, when present-day Ohio was the frontier, according to Cleveland’s Western Reserve Historical Society. By 1800, after a series of armed conflicts with Pennsylvania settlers, Connecticut had given up on its claims over a strip of land reaching to the Pacific.

Pacifica’s KPFT-FM in Houston has taken several steps to respond to what are being called “potentially crippling financial situations” throughout the network. KPFT’s board recently passed resolutions asking the Pacifica National Board to discontinue its in-person meetings as a cost-saving measure. The station board also asked Pacifica to allow “ethical sponsorships and underwriting” to boost station income. Pacifica does not now accept underwriting, relying on on-air fund drives for support. In a report to KPFT’s Board June 18, Duane Bradley, g.m., said, “It is the sense of the paid staff that the greatest threats to the network are the huge costs related to elections, national board meetings and lawsuits.”