Suspecting that Masterpiece Theatre is showing its age after 36 seasons — an eon in TV years — the program’s producers at Boston’s WGBH will “polish” the brand and expand into new media platforms in order to bring more structure and predictability to the schedule and reach the next generation of Sunday night drama fans. The same courtly theme music by French composer Jean-Joseph Mouret will open the program, but it will lose the little tabletop journey of its video opening and half of the series name. The producers will drop “Theatre” and add headings for three distinct seasonal strands: Masterpiece Contemporary in the fall, Masterpiece Classics in winter/spring and Masterpiece Mystery!

Word has reached Poland that Tinky-Winky may be gay — and possibly a threat to children. Reuters reported that a government official became concerned when she learned that the purse-carrying purple member of the Teletubbies kidvid quartet was a boy tubbie. Tittering over the news item began within days after the death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell. CNN wondered whether the “King Lear” remarks of Falwell’s recent years would outweigh his legacy as a leader for faith-based politics.

Sacramento’s Capital Public Radio has purchased its outlet in Stockton, KUOP, which it has operated for six years under an agreement with the station’s licensee, the University of the Pacific, Central Valley Business Times reported Saturday.

On Saturday, the government of Arlington County, Va., will name a street that runs past WETA’s offices after the station’s founder, the late Elizabeth Campbell, WETA said. It’s South 28th Street, the main drag of the Shirlington shopping area, where you can see NewsHour and WETA staffers lunching in outdoor cafes. Mrs. Campbell died two years ago at the age of 101.

The February 2009 analog shut-off may not be such a doomsday scenario as television broadcasters have come to fear, pubTV technology analyst David Liroff recently told the Public Television Programmers Association [Via Technology 360].

Prompted by online developers’ need for quick cash infusions, CPB is offering Public Media Innovation grants of $5,000 to $20,000 for stations to experiment in emerging media platforms, with target audiences. Round 1 applications, due June 18, must relate to the 2008 national, state or local elections. Round 2 will be open to other projects. Details are online. Mark Fuerst is project director, publicmediainnovationsgmail.com.

The Morning Edition audience trends reported by the Sacramento Bee were wrong, according to pubradio analyst John Sutton, who compares key audience stats from the Bob Edwards era and after. He reports that Morning Edition‘s national cume has increased but the average listener is spending less time with the program.

CPB and Oregon Public Broadcasting said today that OPB will distribute the hot-potato documentary Islam vs. Islamists to pubTV stations, relieving public TV of complaints that pubcasting was bottling up the documentary funded by CPB but rejected by PBS. (American Public Television also rejected the film, the syndicator told Current.)

What does YouTube have today? How about the Sesame Street theme on beatbox/flute?

In the three years since Bob Edwards was ousted as host of NPR’s Morning Edition, the morning newsmag has gained 3 million listeners, according to the Sacramento Bee. Reporter Sam McManis writes that the show is “a better, newsier, more nimble and relevant program with Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep as co-hosts.”

Mary G.F. Bitterman, who ran stations in Honolulu and San Francisco and now chairs the PBS Board, received CPB’s Ralph Lowell Award at PBS Showcase over the weekend. In nine years as president of KQED, she led its revival as a local producer and helped stabilize its finances. In between her station jobs she ran the Voice of America.

“I’m beginning to think that PBS may need a separate ombudsman just to deal with the weekly mail praising or pillorying this lightening-rod/icon,” writes PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler, referring to Bill Moyers’ recent return to PBS. In his first column in nine weeks, CPB Ombudsman Ken Bode steps into the breach to make a “very good point” that Getler wishes he had made regarding “Buying the War,” the lead documentary of Bill Moyers Journal. Bode describes the documentary as “embarrassingly flawed” because Moyers and his producers failed to examine how PBS’s own NewsHour with Jim Lehrer failed to scrutinze the Bush Administration’s case for initiating the Iraq War.

Presidential debates planned for exclusive broadcast on NPR stations next January will be made available for full and free public access by bloggers, podcasters, mainstream media, and anyone who wants to create a mash-up. NPR and Iowa Public Radio, partners in the production, announced the unrestricted license agreement today, prompting cheers from Jeff Jarvis, a journalist and blogger pushing to “free the debates” from copyright restrictions.

Faced with a $100,000 reduction in support from its licensee, Oxford’s WMUB-FM asked Miami University of Ohio to reevaluate its future relationship with the station, according to the Dayton Daily News. In a statement announcing the review, the university described technological changes in public radio and declining state support to the university as “forces making the review necessary.”

Pubcasting lobbyists added information about the ongoing web streaming rate battle and links to a constituent letter generator to the system’s advocacy website, TellThemPublicMatters.org.