The Maine Public Broadcasting Network is ending its local radio show Down Memory Lane, which has run since 1979, it announced Nov. 16. The last show will air Nov. 30. Host Toby Leboutillier originally created the nostalgic music program, which played 1940-55 pop hits, as a filler for late Friday afternoons. In the 1980s it spawned two additional offerings, Wind Up the Victrola, Toby, with pre-1925 tunes, and Those Oldies But Goodies, 1956-72 pop hits. In 2003, Leboutillier retired from MPBN and produced Down Memory Lane weekly on a volunteer basis. “Maine public radio has the likes of Toby Leboutillier to thank for building up interest and providing such great content over the years to listeners across the state,” said MPBN President Mark Vogelzang.

Three hours of Car Talk will soon air weekdays on SiriusXM Satellite Radio, the New York Times is reporting. Ray and Tom Magliozzi stopped producing new weekly episodes of the NPR show in October but the program continues on NPR in reruns. On Friday, SiriusXM will begin broadcasting three episodes from the Car Talk archive each weekday to its 23.4 million subscribers, during the evening rush hours. The SiriusXM Car Talk episodes will differ from the NPR reruns, Jeremy Coleman, SiriusXM’s senior vice president, talk and entertainment programming, told the newspaper. He declined to discuss terms of the deal.

Ron Hull, a former director of the Program Fund, reflects on the value of buffer from partisan politics   Jan. 2, 1979 — Robben Fleming, a university president and an authority on (labor) negotiations, comes to CPB as its third president. Also in January, the politically appointed CPB Board suspends its committees to reevaluate their roles. This decision shelved the board’s Program Committee, which traditionally had voted aye or nay on national production proposals for public TV. Even before Fleming arrived, the CPB Board had been rethinking this process. Jan. 30, 1979 — The second Carnegie Commission proposes replacing CPB with a Public Telecommunications Trust, including a separately governed Program Services Endowment that isolated decision-making from political appointees.

Ruby Calvert, who has worked at Wyoming PBS for three decades, will retire as general manager in June 2013, according to the Ranger daily newspaper in Fremont County. “It was a very difficult decision,” Calvert said during a Central Wyoming College Board of Trustees meeting on Monday. “It’s still difficult. But I think it’s a good time, for both me and the station.” Calvert has been at Wyoming’s sole public television broadcaster since it went on the air 1983, working as the programming director for 23 years as well as supervising production, promotion and educational services. She has served on the University Licensee Association, the Pacific Mountain Network Executive Council and the Small Station Association.

Ken Burns’ The Dust Bowl has a clear message: What happened before can happen again.

Torey Malatia’s argument against “advocacy journalism” — leveled at Smiley & West after Chicago's WBEZ carried the program for two years — is merely a weapon of mass distraction from the real issue.

WNET in New York City has announced a capital campaign to raise $150 million, reports the New York Times. Half will go to the station’s $91.2 million endowment, and most of the remainder will support WNET’s local and national programming, including Great Performances and Nature. About $50 million has been pledged already.

The segment produced for All Things Considered’s “Radio Diaries” by Joe Richman, Sue Jaye Johnson and Samara Freemark told the story of 16-year-old boxer Claressa Shields’ preparations for her gold medal–winning performance in the 2012 Olympics. At the Third Coast awards ceremony Oct. 7 in Evanston, Ill., Shields said that she would have been disappointed if the documentary had lost because she had never received anything less than gold in her life. She then led a brief tutorial on proper jab technique. This American Life won a silver award for best documentary for “What Happened At Dos Erres,” the story of a 1982 military massacre in Guatemala produced by Brian Reed and Habiba Nosheen, and co-reported by Sebastian Rotella of ProPublica and Ana Arana of Fundación MEPI.

Produced by Small World Productions for American Public Television, the Adventures With Purpose episode “Pearl River Delta, Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong: Quest for Harmony” delved deeply into what the producers called “three pearls in one exquisite setting.” Citing the program’s vidoeography and writing, judges in the competition praised the show for “telling a story rooted in culture and tradition.” The Lowell Thomas Awards winners were chosen by faculty members of the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Allan Pizzato, who was suddenly terminated in June as executive director of Alabama Public Television, is the new president and general manager of WYES-TV, the New Orleans station announced today. Pizzato takes over in January 2013, succeeding Randall Feldman, who is retiring after 22 years. Jonathan McCall, chair of the WYES Board of Trustees, said in a statement that Pizzato “possesses a great depth of experience in award-winning television production, development, financial management, engineering and technical infrastructure, education and outreach, as well as leading successful new building construction and campaigns.” Pizzato served 12 years at Alabama Public Television prior to his dismissal, which came in the midst of a programming dispute with the state licensee’s governing body.

Following this week’s  media scandal over allegations that were aggressively rebutted and later recanted, award-winning Sesame Street puppeteer Kevin Clash remains on a leave from his role as Elmo, one of the show’s most beloved characters. An accusation that Clash had an inappropriate relationship with an underage boy, published online early Nov. 12 by gossip news site TMZ, prompted Clash to request leave so that he could defend his reputation. Sesame Workshop, which looked into the allegations after learning of them in June, granted the leave and issued a statement: “We . . . conducted a thorough investigation and found the allegation of underage conduct to be unsubstantiated .

Might public radio be heading down the same rocky road as newspapers and public television? That’s what pubradio consultant John Sutton is pondering in his latest column. Several top executive positions at NPR, he notes, have recently been filled by former pubTV and newspaper people. Thus, “public radio is well-positioned to repeat many of the same mistakes made by PTV and the newspaper industry. It will take much more than smartphone apps, mobile websites, and local news to avoid the fate of these other industries.”

The Hollywood Reporter has proclaimed an “A+++ guest list” for the Beverly Hills premiere of the new American Masters documentary Inventing David Geffen on the life of the agent, producer and philanthropist. Just a few of the luminaries at the Tuesday event: Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Warren Beatty and wife Annette Bening, Cher, Bruce Springsteen, Ron Howard and Jane Fonda. “PBS execs who flew in from New York were beside themselves with joy — understandably,” the newspaper noted.