Chris Douridas, a deejay at KCRW-FM in Santa Monica, Calif., was charged yesterday with one count of cocaine possession, reports the Los Angeles Times. Douridas had been booked for poisoning and kidnapping as well, but the Los Angeles district attorney’s office was unable to support those charges. If found guilty of possession, Douridas could face three years in prison and fines of up to $10,000.

Todd Mundt writes that stakeholders in public radio have formed a Digital Distribution Consortium to map a shared digital infrastructure for the system. “Ultimately, we sense something bigger still — the opportunity to create new models for how networks, big stations, small stations and independent producers can relate to each other. That one piece alone could change everything,” say the consortium’s charter and principles. “Our effort, today and tomorrow, is to describe the services we want to create or enable — the ‘it’ that we’re aiming for,” writes Mundt in another post. UPDATE: The consortium now has a public wiki.

KOOP-FM in Austin, Texas, is building new studios after two fires destroyed the community station’s old home and knocked it off the air earlier this year, reports News 8 Austin.

Lovers of classical music are fighting to keep KTPB in Kilgore, Texas, on the air, reports the New York Times. “Just because we live out here in the middle of nowhere doesn’t mean we have to be a cultural void,” says a executive director of a nearby symphony orchestra.

A radio audience research firm found that only one percent of respondents to a telephone survey knew that HD Radio can provide more channels of programming. “Our research reveals that radio needs to explain HD Radio and its benefits for listeners,” writes Mark Kassof. Meanwhile, Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post writes that he returned his Boston Acoustics HD Radio out of frustration with the on-again, off-again status of a few multicast channels in the Washington area.

At Boing Boing, a former intern with This American Life weighs in on a debate over unofficial podcasts of the show. Thanks to this intern, we learn that “. . . Ira’s not trying to cheat you. He is, in fact, a very nice guy. Like, for instance, if he were going out to get lunch, he’d ask you if you wanted anything, and then he’d bring it back, and he wouldn’t make you pay for it. And, say, if you were going out to get lunch, and you asked him if he wanted anything, he’d tell you and give you money to go get it, and sometimes he’d let you borrow his car.

The Detroit Free Press reports that Michael Coleman, g.m. of WDET-FM in Detroit, was sentenced to two years’ probation June 22 for embezzling from Michigan Radio, his former employer.

Dennis Haarsager uses Alexa to compare web traffic for NPR.org and PBS.org and finds them pretty close. But the website of New York’s WNYC-AM/FM draws more traffic than that of WNET-TV.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is sponsoring an amendment to a telecommunications bill (PDF) that would ease protections for full-power FM stations from possible interference from low-power FMs, according to the Prometheus Radio Project. The low-power advocates are trying to drum up support for the amendment as debate on the bill opens this week.

“I meet someone, and, after they figure out what I do, they tell me how much NPR means to them,” says All Things Considered host Michele Norris in an interview with Ohio’s Columbus Dispatch. “I never heard that with ABC. I never heard ABC talked about by viewers in such reverential terms. I think, if we went off the air tomorrow, people would march in the streets.”

Slate‘s Sam Anderson analyzes at length the resolutely unstylish style of Garrison Keillor and dubs him “the shock jock of wholesomeness.”

Closing pubradio station KTPB will “devalue Kilgore College as an institution of higher learning,” pianist Van Cliburn wrote to the college trustees, according to the Longview (Texas) News-Journal. The trustees decided in April to sell the East Texas classical music station to Christian pop purveyor EMF Broadcasting, which has 180 frequencies across the country. Cliburn went to high school in Kilgore.

The Boston Globe reports on new PBS guidelines requiring producers to completely bleep compound swear words (such as “mother f*****!”) and visually blur the mouths of people who swear on camera.

Jeffrey Dvorkin is leaving his post as NPR’s ombudsman to serve as executive director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists and the Goldenson Chair of Community Broadcasting at the Missouri School of Journalism. Dvorkin was NPR’s first ombud and held the job for six years after serving as its v.p. of news. In his farewell column, he offers advice to his successor: “Know that public radio listeners are overwhelmingly smart, passionate and insistent. You will find that it is important to take their comments seriously, but never personally. You’ll live longer if you do.” (He also reveals that several colleagues refuse to speak to him due to past criticism of their work.)

The Washington Post reports that a three-year-old Minnesotan boy recently enjoyed a very special birthday party with, of all things, a NewsHour with Jim Lehrer theme. Henry Schally is a major fan of the show and knows its personalities by name. “When correspondent Kwame Holman started delivering his report, Henry yelled out ‘Kwame Holman!’,” according to WCCO-TV in Minneapolis.