Veteran public broadcasting newsman Ray Suarez, who resigned from PBS NewsHour Oct. 25 after nearly 15 years, will host Inside Story on satellite news channel Al Jazeera America starting Nov. 11. The program, an interview-driven newsmag airing at 5 p.m. Eastern time weekdays, covers the major stories of the week from AJA’s Washington, D.C., bureau. Suarez interviewed Al Jazeera EP Bob Wheelock in January, when the Qatar-based Al Jazeera Media Network bought Al Gore’s Current TV. Suarez told Current that back then, “heading there was not on my agenda, but I started to think about it. Then a close friend headed there, then another friend and colleague headed there, and said, ‘It’s a start-up, it’s a little frantic, but it’s fun, and they’re trying to do this the right way.’

Longtime pubcasting consultant Michael Marcotte is weighing in on the new Knight Foundation report on nonprofit journalism sustainability, which examines 18 news organizations nationwide, several of which partner with public broadcasters. Marcotte notes that CPB “has not been open about sharing comparative data like Knight is doing here. Nor does it seem as concerted in its effort to grow public media through a national conversation about the future of news, as Knight is so good at doing.” He adds: “I suggest public media leaders borrow a page from the Knight Foundation and initiate a concerted look at our long range plans for growth and sustainability, especially as it relates to the future of journalism in America.

Tom Scharpling is ending his The Best Show on WFMU on Dec. 17, according to Radio Survivor. Scharpling, who has been hosting the quirky program for 13 years, announced the news on Tuesday. “It is a huge commitment . . . It’s hard to do something that’s more or less a full-time job for free,” Scharpling told listeners. “I’ve done it for as long as I can do it . . . the reality of this is I can’t sustain my life and this show and the commitment it takes to do it right.” Radio Survivor noted that The Best Show has “a uniquely strong audience for a community radio program.”

A grass-roots organization that protested Ken Burns’s exclusion of World War II Latino soldiers’ experiences from his 2007 documentary The War is speaking out in the wake of PBS NewsHour Chief National Correspondent Ray Suarez’s resignation from the program. Defend the Honor, headed by Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, sent an Oct. 31 email to its 5,000-member database saying it is “distressed that PBS has treated veteran journalist Ray Suarez so disrespectfully.” Suarez left the show Oct. 25 after nearly 15 years and subsequently told Fox News Latino in an Oct. 28 interview that he felt his contributions to the program had been minimized during his tenure.

Next week PBS will host the annual conference for Public Broadcasters International (PBI), expected to draw hundreds of broadcasters from around the world. This year’s event will be Nov. 6-8 at the Mayflower Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C. PBS last hosted in 1997. The agenda includes panels on “Public Media in Times of Public Challenge,” children’s programming, digital-content opportunities, historical and cultural documentaries, and financial sustainability. The audience will hear from broadcasters such as PBS President Paula Kerger; Noel Curran, director general of Ireland’s RTÉ; Masayuki Matsumoto, president of Japan’s NHK; Jane Vizard, legal director of the European Broadcasting Union; and Ralph Rivera, the BBC’s director of future media.

Space agency NASA helped develop segments for a children’s show heading to public TV in spring 2014 from presenting station Maryland Public Television, reports Entertainment Weekly. NASA reps worked with Space Racers creator and E.P. Richard Schweiger and his team on 50 segments, 11 minutes each, for the show’s first season. Each half-hour episode includes two of the NASA shorts. Directing is Mark Risley, who won an Emmy in 2003 for the Nickelodeon series Rugrats. Schweiger raised $2.2 million from 27 investors for the series, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing earlier this year. He is a partner in Pilot Mountain Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm based in New York City.

PBS ranks No. 7 of 10 popular brands among Democrats in this year’s “Red, Blue and Independent Rankings,”  the annual aggregate indicator of “brand health” from YouGov’s BrandIndex, “a daily measure of brand perception among the public, tracking many brands across multiple sectors simultaneously.” Google, PBS and Dove appear only on the list for Democrats, not Republicans or Independents. More than 1,100 consumer brands are tallied for the index, which combines scores for quality, value, general impression, satisfaction, reputation and willingness to recommend. Results from respondents age 18 and older are filtered for their political party affiliation.

“Elmo Compliments First Lady’s Arms, Tells Her Pizza Isn’t Healthy.” There’s a headline you don’t see every day. The Sesame Street Muppet donned a tie for the Wednesday White House appearance, with his pal Rosita tagging along.  “And I wore my pearls, my mom’s pearls,” Rosita told Michelle Obama, according to U.S. News & World Report. They were there to announce that Sesame Workshop and the Produce Marketing Association are joining the Partnership for a Healthier America in a two-year program to promote fresh fruits and veggies for kids. As part of the agreement, Sesame will allow the association to use Muppet stickers on healthy foods and grocery displays.

The Association of Independents in Radio and Public Radio News Directors Inc. are collaborating on a set of guidelines for local pubradio stations to consult when setting freelancer rates. To lead the initiative, AIR recruited Susanna Capelouto, former news director at Georgia Public Broadcasting. Over the next month, Capelouto will survey news directors and station managers across the country to inform the guidelines, which she hopes to publish by Dec. 1. AIR will draw from a pay guide that it developed for NPR in 2002 and updated last year and from a guide that it created for American Public Media’s Marketplace in 2012.

At the grand opening Wednesday of WCNY’s new $20 million Broadcast and Education Center in Syracuse, N.Y., PBS President Paula Kerger declared the facility “spectacular.” At 56,000 square feet over two buildings, it includes two TV and two radio studios, seven technical editing suites, a production control room, public cafe and courtyard. The educational centerpiece is Enterprise America, a mock town for students to apply Common Core curriculum to real-life situations and learn career, leadership and entrepreneurial skills, the local Post-Standard reports. The facility is also home to the Centralcast master-control hub, which handles programming streams for all nine pubTV stations in New York state plus New Jersey’s four-station network.

Andrew Phillips resigned last month as interim p.d. of Pacifica’s WBAI in New York, a post he accepted less than three months ago in an effort to rebuild the audience of the financially troubled station. Phillips cited a disagreement over fundraising programs airing on the station, including shows featuring products pitched by alternative-medicine promoter Gary Null, as the reason for his decision. “It’s a model destined to failure, and I don’t want to be a part of it,” Phillips said. Pacifica assigned Phillips to WBAI in August after imposing a workforce reduction intended to sharply reduce the station’s operating costs. To attract more listeners, Phillips introduced news and public affairs shows from Pacifica’s KPFA in Berkeley, where he had previously overseen programming, and Los Angeles station KPFK.

The Senate confirmed former PBS Board member Tom Wheeler Tuesday night to head the FCC, reports The Hill. “Tom Wheeler will be a strong advocate for consumers and the public interest at a time when the FCC is facing decisions that will shape the future of our nation’s telephone network and the wireless, broadband, and video industries,” said Senate Commerce Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller. The West Virginia Democrat and others initially expressed concern about Wheeler’s role as a former industry lobbyist. Wheeler was president of the National Cable Television Association from 1979-84 and later led the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association.

Elaine Rivera, a reporter for New York’s WNYC from 2006–09, died Oct. 26. She was 54. The cause of death has not been released, but Rivera had previously battled liver disease. Raised in Cleveland, Rivera came to radio from print journalism, having previously worked for the Washington Post, Time and Newsday. She covered politics for WNYC, including Eliot Spitzer’s run for governor in 2006 and Hilary Clinton’s run for president in 2008. She also reported several well-received pieces on New York’s neighborhoods, particularly stories that originated out of the Bronx, where she lived. Maria Hinojosa, founder of Futuro Media Group and a close friend, met Rivera in the mid-1990s while working as NPR’s New York correspondent.

Bill Moyers announced today to his colleagues in public TV that the last broadcast of his Moyers & Company public-affairs show will air Jan. 3, 2014, when current funding commitments end. He also said that his production company is “exploring the possibility of continuing to serve that audience through BillMoyers.com with the goal of engaging them in the renewal of democracy.” The show has more than 315,000 Facebook likes, Moyers said, and that number “grows every day by the hundreds. They — like so many of our viewers — take their citizenship seriously.” The veteran public broadcasting newsman came out of retirement two years ago “thanks to the generosity of some unexpected funders and the loyalty of  long-time funders” for the weekly series, he said in the memo posted on PBS Connect, the online communication hub for member stations.