President Obama's five nominees to the CPB Board were approved Thursday night by the U.S. Senate.

WLAE in New Orleans dropped PBS programming as of Aug. 1. General Manager Ron Yager told Current that the decision to forego PBS membership saves the station around $130,000 annually, allowing it to invest in local productions. As an overlap station, WLAE’s lineup of network fare had been limited by its use of the PBS Program Differentiation Plan (PDP). The primary PBS station in the market, community-licensed WYES, continues to air the full national schedule, although for the next month fans of the PBS NewsHour may have trouble finding the weeknightly broadcast. WLAE and its board first considered dropping PBS affiliation three years ago, when the station lost $270,000 in annual state funding.

American Public Media’s Marketplace introduced a new brand identity aimed at building awareness of its programs among audiences across broadcast and digital platforms. The July 29 roll-out coincided with relaunch of Marketplace.org as a fully responsive, mobile-friendly website. A logo resembling both a stock chart and the letter “M” establishes a shared visual identity for all of Marketplace‘s program strands. The new tagline, “Between economics and life” is to be the centerpiece of a consumer-oriented advertising campaign aimed at readers of The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, LA Times and Fast Company. A second campaign will launch later this year.

Among the new reporters for Al Jazeera America’s 12 U.S. news bureaus are several with public media backgrounds. The New York City–based AJA announced the bureaus and personnel today in anticipation of the network’s Aug. 20 launch. Ash-har Quraishi will be AJA’s Chicago correspondent. Quraishi has reported for WTTW’s Chicago Tonight since 2011. Previously, he divided his reporting time between that program and the Chicago News Cooperative, the nonprofit newsroom that closed in February 2012. Quraishi won a regional Murrow Award for investigative journalism. Jennifer London will report for the network from Los Angeles. London was a correspondent on KCET’s SoCal Connected from September 2011 through March 2013.

Pacifica station WPFW in Washington, D.C., is in “a pretty critical financial situation,” according to Summer Reese, interim executive director of the network. Reese discussed the state of WPFW during a July 25 Pacifica board conference call. Responding to a board member’s question about a WPFW on-air fund drive planned for in September, she said: “The concern there is, frankly, that you don’t have enough money to get through until September.” WPFW has fallen into a “perpetual” state of on-air fund drives, Reese said. “It’s not giving listeners much of a break.” Reese told the board she was following up with WPFW staff about which of the station’s bills must be paid most urgently.

Ophira Eisenberg, host of NPR and WNYC's bar trivia game show Ask Me Another, is taking her saucy memoir to the movies.

American Public Media Group is selling off the for-profit arm of its business that publishes boutique magazines in order to concentrate on its public media offerings, the company announced today.

Northern California’s KQED-TV is revamping its Friday evening public affairs show by reviving a title from its distant past.

A recent PBS Research analysis found that donors who contribute the most money to public TV rarely if ever watch its programming.

Torey Malatia, longtime president and c.e.o. of Chicago Public Media, has resigned effective immediately.

WFUV in New York has introduced UKNY, a weekly broadcast mixing new and classic rock music from the United Kingdom.

Former KPCC host Madeleine Brand, who left the Los Angeles station in September 2012, will host a new midday show on competitor KCRW. Brand will join the station in mid-September to begin work on the hourlong program, which will begin airing shortly thereafter, she told Current. “I’m really excited and I love KCRW,” she said. “I’ve been a big fan for many years, so I’m really happy to work with them.” Brand’s show, yet to be named, will be a host-driven, “news-based cultural show” in the vein of the show she hosted on KPCC, she said. She’ll return to the air as a solo host, as she was before the addition of a co-host to her KPCC show.

Colorado Public Radio filed a trademark infringement and violation suit in federal court in Colorado earlier this month against Minnesota's Twin Cities Public Television over the name Open Air.

Retiring from public radio finally afforded audience analyst David Giovannoni the time to turn his hobby, collecting antique phonographs and early sound recordings, into a full-time pursuit.

The House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over CPB is pushing once more for eliminating government funding to public broadcasting in its fiscal year 2014 budget proposal, according to the New York Times.