AP reports that Inside Albany, a public affairs series broadcast by New York public TV stations since 1975, will shut down production on Dec. 31. “The frustration of not being able to cover more stories and the strain of running a business while running after news has caused us to decide to end Inside Albany’s long run,” the producers said in a statement.

The Washington Post Marc Fisher surveys his city’s public radio offerings in the wake of news that a commercial classical station is likely to be sold and change format. “Washington will now become the largest city in the country with no classical music on the radio at all,” he writes. “Listeners will have no choice but to look to pay satellite radio for the classics–or for many other genres of music.”

Discovery is cutting 84 jobs from Discovery Education, the division that sells educational videos and digital educational material to schools, the Washington Post reports. Discovery Education aggressively expanded in 2004, buying up competitors as it tried to establish a leadership position in the K-12 market.

WGMS-FM, a commercial station in Washington, D.C., that is the city’s sole classical outlet, could change hands and switch to a sports-talk format, reports the Washington Post. Dan DeVany, g.m. of public WETA-FM, would not speculate as to whether his station would return to a classical format if the sale of WGMS goes through. (Current article about WETA’s switch to all-news, 2005.)

John Sutton raises some questions about fears of competition from satellite radio: “If local programming is the future of public radio, especially the local content inserted in Morning Edition, then why is satellite radio considered serious competition? It shouldn’t be, unless the talk about local programming being the future is more bravado than reality.” Meanwhile, execs at Sirius Satellite Radio say they see value in a potential merger with XM Satellite Radio, their sole rival, reports the Washington Post.

Robert Paterson contemplates what lies at the heart of the public radio experience: “. . . [A]t the heart of good public radio is Story. And that Story is a ‘Transforming Process’ that at its best tells each of us about how to be more human.”

The Boston Globe reports on WGBH President Henry Becton’s plans to retire and the Boston Herald posts the memo sent to WGBH staff this morning.

Henry Becton will retire as WGBH president Oct. 1, 2007, and will be succeeded by Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Abbott, the Boston station’s board unanimously decided Dec. 6. WGBH released this statement.

The New Yorker has declined to post on its website the article about WBAI host and freeform pioneer Bob Fass that appears in this week’s issue. But you can download two MP3s of clips from Fass’s Radio Unnameable, one of which is 90 minutes of a 1966 appearance by Bob Dylan.

NPR’s Lynn Neary reports on the This American Life TV show as it prepares for its debut next year. “I don’t see any positive aspect of being on camera,” says host Ira Glass. “I am 47 years old, I don’t like looking at myself. After a certain point, no one likes looking at themselves on television. There’s just no upside.”

American Public Media has dropped Barbara Bogaev as co-host of Weekend America and is relocating some of the show’s staffers to St. Paul, Minn., according to an internal memo posted at LA Observed.

KOOP-FM in Austin, Texas, is moving into new studios this week, 10 months after its former studios burned to the ground.

PBS Blend — a coffee that’s “sweetly balanced and smooth, with full flavor and a rich finish” — will be sold by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, which announced it today from Waterbury, Vt. The coffee is grown in Mexico with environmentally responsible practices, and its Fair Trade Certified label indicates the farmers get a fair price, the company said. Green Mountain ranked No. 1 in Business Ethics magazine’s list 100 “best corporate citizens,” not far above Starbucks, and No. 98 among Fortune Small Business magazine’s top 100 fastest-growing small stockholder-owned companies, right after Peet’s Coffee.

“I would argue that the nascent social media phenomenon and a threatened public media field would mutually benefit from an early embrace,” writes Jake Shapiro on his blog. “Social media needs some of the articulation of the values and aspirations that have guided the best of what public broadcasting has achieved, and public media needs to break out of its broadcast borders to fulfill its public service media mission regardless of the particular technology delivery platform.”

Verizon will soon add the digital cable channel PBS Kids Sprout (Current story about the channel’s launch here) to its FiOS TV service. The fiber-based digital TV service is currently available in parts of California, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia, and will soon be available in parts of Delaware and New Jersey.