Chris Douridas, a host on KCRW-FM in Santa Monica, Calif., pleaded no contest July 25 to a charge of cocaine possession, the Los Angeles Times reported.

A former underwriting rep for Michigan Radio in Ann Arbor was convicted July 26 of conspiracy to commit embezzlement, the Ann Arbor Times reported. Jeremy Nordquist was one of three former employees tried in the investigation. (Earlier coverage in Current.)

San Francisco Gate columnist Mark Morford attacks the PBS Sprout Network’s decision to fire Melanie Martinez for her “Technical Virgin” history. “What, exactly, is the fear here?” Morford writes. “Is it that Martinez would suddenly start extolling kiddies to, say, drink more vodka and turn gay?”

MoveOn.org is soliciting donations for a campaign to “Beat the NPR-PBS 24“–the 24 members of Congress up for reelection who voted to cut pubcasting’s federal aid. “With your help, together we can retire enough of these representatives to tip the balance on this issue—and send a signal that cutting public broadcasting comes with a political price,” writes MoveOn.org’s “Political Action Team” in an e-mail solicitation [Via Indybay.org].

Chicago Public Radio’s Julie Shapiro blogs about the Grassroots Radio Conference, which begins tomorrow in Madison, Wis. “though i respect, not to mention adore the community of public radio producers i’ve come to know over the past six years, the public radio system at large feels pretty sterile, isolated and starched compared with the sometimes crazy, often manic and totally dedicated community station devotees,” she writes.

Commercial networks, broadcast, cable and consumer electronics trade associations, film studios and the Ad Council are partnering on a broad campaign to educate parents about V-chips, cable channel blocking and other tools and techniques for controlling what kids see on TV, reports Broadcasting & Cable. A new website, www.thetvboss.org, is the cornerstone of the campaign, which is an effort to stave off federal content regulation as FCC leaders aggressively police broadcast indecency and support a la carte cable models.

NPR’s Daniel Schorr “is a wise old man with all his buttons, and that is a precious resource,” says a media analyst in a USA Today feature on the newsman.

Digital cable net PBS Kids Sprout fired Melanie Martinez, host of the network’s nightly The Good Night Show, for appearing in two spoof videos titled Technical Virgin, the Associated Press reports (via the Washington Post). The videos, produced before Martinez joined the kids network, parody PSAs about how young women can keep their virginity. “PBS Kids Sprout has determined that the dialogue in this video is inappropriate for her role as a preschool program host and may undermine her character’s credibility with our audience,” said Sandy Wax, network president.

Longtime Internet journalist Robert X. Cringely, PBS.org columnist, outlines the ways in which musty old newspapers are still far superior to web news outlets. “The Internet is, in fact, the idiot savant of journalism,” he writes, “supremely good at a thing or two and not at all good at anything else.”

A host on WPFW-FM in Washington, D.C., has joined the effort to launch a cable channel for Native Americans. “We can see the culture, the history, the issues, the everyday life — the smiles and the frowns — of Native Americans,” says Jay Winter Nightwolf in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Nightwolf is news director and chief of television and radio program production for Native American Television Inc.

Washington Post Radio in Washington, D.C., earned less than a one percent audience share in its first three months on the air, the paper reports. “It’s in the low range of what we expected,” says station exec Jim Farley, who has made clear his intent to draw listeners away from the city’s public radio outlets.

Six percent of web users in the United States have downloaded podcasts, according to a Nielsen Analytics report, and 38 percent of podcast downloaders say they’re listening to radio less often. “For a technology that’s relatively new, it’s a good number that indicates growth,” says an analyst in the Washington Post.

Sirius Satellite Radio has admitted that it directed manufacturers to make radios that did not comply with FCC regulations, reports Radio World. Radio listeners have complained that satellite radios in nearby cars at times drown out terrestrial stations at the lower end of the dial, posing a problem for some public and Christian stations. Also in Radio World: A Media Audit study found that listeners to NPR-formatted stations have the second-highest incomes among listeners to more than 60 radio formats.

Friday marked NPR’s first live webcast of a classical music concert, according to Playbill. The performance originated from the Festival de Sole in northern California’s Napa Valley.

Todd Mundt will join Iowa Public Radio in Des Moines next month as director of content and media. Mundt now serves as chief content officer at Michigan Public Media in Ann Arbor. On his blog, he writes, “I’m excited because there’s a chance for Iowa to be one of the leaders in re-imagining the partnership we have with our audience.”