President Barack Obama last Friday nominated Elko, Nev., news director Lori Gilbert to serve a second term on the CPB Board. She previously served from 2008-12, arriving as an appointee of the Bush administration. Gilbert is the news director for Elko Broadcasting Co. (KELK-AM and KLKO-FM) and KENV Television. Gilbert is the president’s fifth nominee to fill vacancies on the CPB Board of Directors.

In fall 2012, Tavis Smiley saw a decline in station carriage for his public radio program Smiley & West, including a high-profile drop from Chicago's WBEZ. Now Smiley has found a new platform: online radio.

William Stibor, the music director of NET Radio in Lincoln, Nebr., died in his home June 17. He was 49.

Actor Paul Giamatti (John Adams, Sideways) is joining the cast of Downton Abbey on Masterpiece Classic. He’ll play Harold, the “maverick, playboy” brother of Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham, according to a Masterpiece announcement today. Gareth Neame, managing director of producer Carnival Films, said, “We can’t wait to see him work alongside Shirley MacLaine, who are both sure to upset the Granthams’ apple cart in this year’s finale.” Downton‘s Season 4 premieres Jan. 5, 2014.

KEET-TV in Eureka, Calif., could lose its Community Service Grant as soon as September because it is not reaching its minimum non-federal financial support requirement, reports the local North Coast Journal in Humboldt County. Executive Director Ron Schoenherr told the newspaper that KEET has never raised its NFFS minimum of $800,000, in its 44 years of broadcasting. KEET has received waivers based on its rural location and limited resources until CPB policies tightened in 2010. In a letter to the station last fall, CPB told KEET it must show by June 30 that “it has significantly improved its long-term financial sustainability through a merger, consolidation, or collaboration.”

NPR is advocating for the Federal Communications Commission to loosen its policies surrounding broadcast decency standards, and retreat from a “zero tolerances” approach to one that only targets “egregious cases.”

NPR Digital Services has added four stations to its Local Stories Project, in which participants submit stories to be included on NPR’s Facebook page and geotargeted to Facebook users in their markets. The project launched a little over a year ago with KPLU in Tacoma, Wash., and has since expanded to include 18 stations. Stations submit online stories that are shared via NPR’s Facebook page but appear only in the News Feeds of users in each station’s market. In April the project drove 114,000 visits to station sites, according to NPR. The four new participants are WXPN in Philadelphia, KUER in Salt Lake City, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho and KALW in San Francisco.

A day after a shakeup of senior management at Marketplace, American Public Media announced that CNN’s Lizzie O’Leary would be joining the public radio business and economics show as host/correspondent. O’Leary will serve as the primary fill-in host for all the Marketplace programs. When not hosting, O’Leary will cover topics related to the intersection of “politics, policy and Wall Street,” APM said in its announcement.  Prior to joining Marketplace, O’Leary was the aviation and regulation correspondent at CNN. “As a longtime listener, I’m absolutely delighted to join Marketplace,” O’Leary said, in a statement. “Marketplace tells sharp, engaging stories about business and economics the best possible way: by making them about people.

CPB has withheld financial support for the Pacifica Foundation’s five radio stations after the organization missed deadlines for fixing errors and shortcomings in its accounting and operations. The errors were discovered during a CPB audit last year that cited Pacifica for insufficient accounting practices, misreported revenues and failure to comply with CPB rules on open meetings and financial transparency. The withholding of CPB funding hits Pacifica at a precarious time as its stations struggle to raise enough money to pay rent and staff. WBAI, Pacifica’s New York station, fell short of its on-air fundraising goal in May by 45 percent, or $343,000.

Shutdowns of a show and a reporting project at NPR have prompted the departure of “Political Junkie” Ken Rudin, who has worked at the network since 1991. Rudin appears weekly on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, which is ending production this month. He also served recently as editorial coordinator for StateImpact, a collaborative reporting project with stations that NPR is exiting. “With the combination of Talk of the Nation and StateImpact ending, there wasn’t really a place for me,” Rudin says. “It didn’t come as a surprise.” He will leave NPR at the end of September. Rudin has appeared weekly on TOTN for his “Political Junkie” segment since 2006.

During his June 18 Senate confirmation hearing for the position of Federal Communications Commission chairman, presidential nominee Tom Wheeler said it is “absolutely crucial” for the federal government to maintain its intended schedule for spectrum incentive auctions.

As broadcasters and their representatives prepare for the FCC’s upcoming auction of television broadcast spectrum, public TV’s top lobbyist is proceeding with the view that it presents more opportunity for the field than a threat.

Salt Lake City pubcaster Wasatch Public Media, licensee of KCPW-FM, will drop all NPR programs June 24, a schedule change intended to save money and differentiate its service from other pubcasters in the market. “A lot of the decision just came down to sheer economics – NPR is just getting more and more expensive,” said Wasatch C.E.O. Ed Sweeney. “And, when you already have NPR in the market with other stations, it just gets harder and harder to set yourself apart when pitching to sponsors and underwriters.” The University of Utah’s KUER-FM is KCPW’s primary competitor for NPR news listeners. “We were just looking more and more alike, and you can’t stay in business doing that,” Sweeney said.