Tavis Smiley will host a late-night talk show on PBS, starting Jan. 5. [Earlier Current coverage of Smiley’s NPR show.]

NPR and the International Association of Audio Information Services have asked the FCC for more time to reply to a study of low-power FM interference. They requested a 90-day extension of the deadline, originally set for Sept. 12.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bob Graham showed up on a recent (off-the-air) performance of Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, reports the Concord Monitor.

Radio drama isn’t dead, notes the New York Times, but it’s not exactly thriving either.

Bob Edwards tells The Tennessean that union-management relations at NPR have been “a little testy” lately: “A nonprofit thinks it’s doing God’s work, whether it’s NPR, the Red Cross or NATO. They’re doing God’s work and how can you argue with God? — that’s their attitude. So sometimes you need a union to just cut through that.”

A decision on the fate of WNCW-FM in Spindale, N.C., has been postponed for two weeks, reports the Asheville Citizen-Times. [More coverage in the Rutherford County Daily Courier and the Hendersonville Times-News.]

iBiquity Digital Corp. says it has resolved problems with audio encoding at low bit rates by using HDC, a newly developed codec. Engineers who have heard tests back up iBiquity’s claims. iBiquity has also extended its licensing fee waiver to public stations until Aug. 29 and agreed to waive royalties on ancillary data services used for noncommercial programming.

Psychologist Shirley Glass (Ira Glass’s mom!) talks about marriage and infidelity in the Baltimore Sun.

Read the advance hype for Naked in Baghdad, in which NPR’s Anne Garrels details her experiences covering the war in Iraq.

Trustees at Isothermal Community College in Spindale, N.C., meet tonight to decide the future of WNCW-FM, which belongs to the school. A sale is unlikely, but the board wants to spend less on the station, reports the Ashville Citizen-Times.

Today’s Doonesbury digs on NPR.

Officials at WETA in Washington, D.C., have resigned themselves to the prospect of day laborers–mostly Latino men–gathering at a new pavilion near their offices, reports the Washington Post.

A Dayton Daily News report revisits a year-long dispute between WYSO-FM in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and disgruntled listeners who protest the station’s decision to end locally produced jazz and folk programs.

Two Stanford profs have started Philosophy Talk, a public radio show concerned more with timeless conundrums than with car repair.

Geov Parrish writes that MITRE’s recent report on low-power FM may mark a welcome swing toward localized broadcasting. “The damage that LPFM would supposedly cause to broadcasters simply didn’t exist, and the case for re-instating the original proposal is overwhelming,” he writes for AlterNet. (Coverage in Current.)