Salt Lake City’s KCPW-FM has secured a loan that will allow it to stay in business. The Salt Lake City Council unanimously approved last night a $250,000 loan to the community-licensed station, which will go toward repaying another lender. KCPW was staring down an Oct. 31 deadline for repaying a $250,000 loan from National Cooperative Bank. Failure to do so would likely have shut down the station, which is still working to pay off several loans that financed the 2008 purchase of its license from previous owner Community Wireless of Park City. (Earlier coverage in Current.) KCPW tried to raise the money during a recent 12-day on-air drive but fell significantly short of the goal.

Free Press and the New America Foundation are sponsoring a panel, “The Next Big Thing: How Public Media Innovation Is Changing Journalism,” Oct. 18 in Washington, D.C. Experts will discuss how public media in the U.S. and U.K. are investing in innovative Web, mobile and community media projects and collaborations. Speaking will be Caroline Thomson, chief operating officer of the BBC; Sue Schardt, c.e.o. of the Association of Independents in Radio; Joaquin Alvarado, s.v.p. of digital innovation at American Public Media; Jake Shapiro, c.e.o. of Public Radio Exchange; and Craig Aaron, president of Free Press.

For the first time, a Nature film has won the Grand Teton Award, the top prize at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival, considered one of the wildlife doc industry’s highest honors, for Broken Tail: A Tiger’s Last Journey. In all, Nature received six of 22 awards at the festival, for films including the season opener, Radioactive Wolves, about species living in the “dead zone” around the disabled Chernobyl nuclear reactor. On hand for the award announcements in Wyoming were Series Executive Producer Fred Kaufman, Series Producer Bill Murphy and Series Editor Janet Hess. The biennial conference, which ran Oct.

Oh that Peter Sagal. The host of pubradio’s Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me has recorded a truly unique pledge pitch for WCQS/WYQS in western North Carolina. It references state Sen. Jim Forrester’s statement in an interview last month that Asheville is a “cesspool of sin” due to the state’s tolerance of homosexual “mischief.” Sagal gleefully congratulates listeners for Ashville’s victory over Wilmington and Chapel Hill, and proclaims that “nothing helps keep Asheville drowning in ungodly filth more than WCQS.” He ends the pitch by urging, “keep Asheville demonic, people.” For a $100 contribution, members can get a nifty “Welcome to the Cesspool of Sin” T-shirt, destined to become a collector’s item.

CPB Ombudsman Joel Kaplan received a complaint letter from a 9-year-old in North Carolina who is unhappy with the end of production for FETCH! With Ruff Ruffman last year. “There has been a huge uproar about FETCH! going away,” says Kate Taylor, executive producer at WGBH. “PBS decided that 100 shows were enough and they needed to save their money for new shows.” “It is true that we are not commissioning additional episodes,” responds Linda Simensky, PBS v.p. for children’s content, “but we have produced 100 episodes of the series, which is a substantial number. We are continuing to feed the program to our stations and they are continuing to air it.”

Two of the latest Nobel Peace laureates, announced on Oct. 7, are profiled in public broadcasting documentaries. Pray the Devil Back to Hell, one of the five-part Women, War and Peace series, premieres tonight (Oct. 11) on PBS (check local listings for times), and tells the story of Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee. And Johnson Sirleaf is one of the Iron Ladies of Liberia on Independent Lens. Both docs are part of the public media initiative Women and Girls Lead from ITVS, PBS and CPB, a three-year television and outreach campaign.

The Association of Public Television Stations has hired The O Team to lobby on spectrum fees and the upcoming spectrum incentive auction, reports The Hill, citing lobbying disclosure records. Bob Okun, a former NBCUniversal vice president and one-time assistant to ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), will work for the public broadcasting advocacy group. Other Okun clients include the National Association of Broadcasters and Comcast.

I’ve Got Issues, a community affairs program on KTWU-TV in Topeka, Kan., generally concentrates on the big picture: affordable healthcare, teacher pay, terrorism. But for its upcoming “Face Your Fears” episode Wednesday (Oct. 12), it’s exploring the topic of phobias by bringing participants face to face with what they’re most afraid of — such as big spiders and wriggly snakes, reports the local Capitol-Journal. “We’re going to have some fun with it,” VanDerSluis said. “It’s going to be serious and quirky at the same time.” Jared Gregg, coordinating producer, said the topic emerged during a brainstorming session when a staffer admitted being terrified of roller coasters.

WUWF Public Media in Pensacola, Fla., has compiled 12 songs singing the praises of pubradio for its Public Radio Song Project, and is offering the music free to stations in time for fall pledge drives. Joe Vincenza, station manager and program director, came up with the idea about three years ago. “The collection of tunes took a little longer to gather than we originally thought since we were relying completely on the good intentions of the writers to pen, produce, and record a tune worthy of inclusion, without any monetary compensation from us,” he told Current. “A lot of the artists coming through town said they loved the idea, but this group represents the ones who followed through and made the project a reality.”

NPR’s choice of Gary Knell as its next c.e.o. signals that the biggest challenges ahead for public radio are all about funding, not journalism, according to Politico‘s Oct. 9 story on the appointment. By hiring the president of Sesame Workshop, the NPR Board went for a leader with “a long history of both defending the federal funding of public media and raising money,” writes reporter Keach Hagey, who explores whether public radio would be better off without the congressional subsidies it receives through CPB. Hagey quotes Jeff Jarvis, journalism professor and author who advocates for an end to congressional appropriations, even though the change would jeopardize small stations that rely heavily on federal aid.

Music Director Seth Williamson, who had been with WVTF in Roanoke, Va., since October 1983, died Thursday night (Oct. 6) at Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg, Va., following surgery. He was 62. Williamson hosted the daily Morning Classics program as well as the weekly Back to the Blue Ridge, focusing on the traditional acoustic music of the Blue Ridge Mountains. “On the air, Seth was never simply an announcer,” said WVTF General Manager Glenn Gleixner in a statement. “Rather, he was really talking with his friends — about about music, life and nature. He was deeply connected with his audience and that’s how he saw radio, as a personal connection with listeners.”

In case you missed it, NBC’s Parks and Recreation opened with a hilarious two-minute send-up of an NPR interview with character Leslie Knope on Thursday night (Oct. 7). Here’s a link.

WGBH Open Vault, the Boston station’s online media archives and library, has posted raw footage of a May 1990 interview the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. (The final version of the edited interview is here.) NPR’s David Greene hosted a live streaming special on Oct. 6 that remembered Jobs’ life and assessed his legacy. The hour-long special was featured on the NPR News iPhone app and on NPR.org. “We wanted to make sure [the special] could be heard on the devices that Jobs created,” said spokesperson Emerson Brown. NPR.org’s archive of the show, which may be broadcast on NPR member stations, is here.

A Curious George episode titled “Monkey Fever” has Dr. Carl E. Bartecchi, a professor of clinical medicine at the University of Colorado, hot under the collar. “The lack of rational science in that show was appalling,” he writes to PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler. Dorothea Gillim, executive producer for WGBH, responds.

The BBC Trust, in consultation with BBC management, today (Oct. 6) announced proposals including cutting some 2,000 jobs from across the network to save nearly $2 billion annually by 2016-17. The changes “follow a review last year of the future strategy for the BBC,” the Trust said in a statement, “which culminated in Trust approval for four new strategic priorities for the corporation — distinctiveness, value for money, serving all audiences and openness and transparency. The proposals have been shaped by these priorities.” BBC Director General Mark Thompson said the changes would lead to “a smaller, radically reshaped BBC.”