Host Alison Stewart is departing WNET’s Need to Know, reports the New York Times Media Decoder blog, when it switches to a 30-minute format on Sept. 16. The shortened show will focus more on the 2012 election, and Stewart said she decided to bow out. “For a show about politics you have to have someone available and present 110 percent of the time,” and able to travel extensively, she said. Between a book she is completing and her 3-year-old, she said, “I didn’t feel like I was the right person and that it was the right time to continue with the show.”

Here’s a good update from Radio World of news so far on the Federal Communication Commission’s move toward broadcast emergency message delivery via a Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) instead of the legacy Emergency Alert System (EAS). In general, opponents object to the timing of the switch, and say that many stations have had to order new gear even before CAP-EAS system requirements have been finalized. Supporters say CAP it is an improvement over EAS, allowing for better delivery, higher-fidelity audio, text-to-speech, matching audio and text, and other benefits. Included in Radio World’s post are excerpts of comments to the FCC from groups such as the National Association of Broadcasters, Prometheus Radio Project and the Broadcast Warning Working Group.

The latest incarnation of Bill Moyers’ distinctive brand of talk programming will be the hourlong, multiplatform Moyers & Company, distributed by American Public Television. The January debut for the program — provided fully funded to pubTV stations — will mark the first time PBS has not been the distributor of an ongoing Moyers program to public TV stations, dating to his first show in 1972. His most recent series, Bill Moyers Journal, left the air April 30, 2010, when he retired. “Collaborating with APT offers stations flexibility in deciding where a broadcast can best serve their communities and it offers producers greater flexibility regarding the Web,” Moyers told Current in an email.

New England pubcasters are preparing for a major expansion of public radio services in Rhode Island through partnerships with schools that have frequencies but limited resources for running them.

After more than two years of talks, a potential collaboration among Alaska public broadcasting stations that held great promise of potentially coming together has fallen apart, reports the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. The stations, KUAC in Fairbanks, KTOO in Juneau and Alaska Public Telecommunications in Anchorage, were looking to consolidate bookkeeping, engineering and other functions to cut costs. “But after studying a plan to merge many of the administrative functions at the stations, it didn’t become clear those changes would actually result in any savings,” according to the newspaper. Patty Kastelic of Fairbanks, a member of the merger exploration committee, said there also was concern the state’s smaller public broadcasters would lose their local identities to the bigger stations.

Globe-roaming pubcaster Rick Steves has donated $1 million to his hometown arts center — the amount he has saved in tax breaks since President Clinton left office, he said in a press release. “I see it as a civic duty for businessmen like me, who’ve directly benefited from our vibrant communities, to do our fair share,” Steves said. The money goes to support and expand the Edmonds Center for the Arts‘ performances and community programs. A portion also will underwrite all facility costs for the next decade for the Edmonds’ Cascade Symphony Orchestra. Steves also said that to celebrate the donation, he will perform “Rick Steves’ Europe: A Symphonic Journey” with the Cascade Symphony Orchestra on Oct.

In honor of its 50th anniversary, KERA is premiering the documentary Bob Wilson and the Early Years of KERA, focusing on a defining era in the Dallas station’s history, the impact of one of its early chief executives (right), and its national influence on pubcasting. Interviews include KERA veteran Jim Lehrer (Wilson gave him his first TV news job) as well as Wilson. The doc will run in conjunction with a historic episode of the station’s Newsroom series from Aug. 3, 1971, focusing on the federal court order to desegregate the Dallas Independent School District. Both shows air Sept. 21 with a repeat Sept.

OK, Masterpiece “Wallander” fans, here are a few on-location photos of star Kenneth Branagh snapped during filming in Latvia last week. Enjoy.

The Lakota version of The Berenstain Bears, Matȟó Waúŋšila Thiwáhe — The Compassionate Bear Family, will debut at 9 a.m. Sept. 11 on South Dakota Public Broadcasting and Prairie Public Television in North Dakota. The idea came more than a year ago from the Lakota Language Consortium (LLC), a group dedicated to restoring the Native language. LLC board member and Rosebud Sioux Tribe member Ben Black Bear is the voice of Papa Bear. The new show will get a special preview screening Sept. 7 at the Tribal Leaders’ Summit Banquet during the 42nd Annual United Tribes Powwow in Bismarck, N.D.

San Francisco’s KQED Radio will re-launch its pledge-free stream for donors seeking respite from on-air pitches during its fall fundraising drive. Listeners and members who contribute $45 to the station before Sept. 8 will gain access to a web-based alternative channel of regularly scheduled KQED Radio programming delivered to their computers or mobile devices. When KQED first offered its pledge-free alternative channel during its spring drive, it was a big hit with donors. In a survey of contributors, 98 percent of those who used the stream asked KQED to bring it back, according to the station.

The Independent Television Service and the National Center for Media Engagement are partnering up this fall on ITVS’s tremendously successful Community Cinema engagement work. In six years, Community Cinema has expanded to more than 100 communities nationwide, with more than 150,000 participants so far attending some 2,500 screenings and discussions. ITVS’s commitment to bringing communities and local organizations together through documentary film “aligns perfectly with NCME’s CPB-funded mission to support public media in working collaboratively with their communities to discover, understand, and address community concerns,” NCME Executive Director Charles Meyer said in announcing the collaboration. NCME will focus on “developing and delivering impact strategies and collaborating with stations to capture and convey stories that demonstrate the program’s overall performance and impact in communities,” Meyer said.

The Florida Board of Education, which has purview over public broadcasting, has made it official: For the first time in 35 years, the state will not provide funding for the 26 stations, “throwing the future of state-funded public broadcasting into question,” according to a report from the Orlando Sentinel. The board approved a budget list in line with Gov. Rick Scott’s veto in May of $4.8 million the Legislature had previously provided to public broadcasting. The Florida Public Broadcasting Service said in a statement to Current: “Florida’s public broadcasting stations make important contributions to education. Our children’s programs are standards-based and have proven value in getting kids ready for school.

Andy Carvin’s epic weekend of tweeting the Libyan revolution inspired MediaShift to storify a day in the life of NPR’s star Tweeter. The chosen day, Aug. 23, turned out to be an extraordinary news cycle. Carvin was following Libyan rebels’ takeover of Moammar Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli and the plight of western journalists being held in the nearby Rixos Hotel, then reacted with shock as a 5.9 magnitude earthquake rocked his home outside Washington, D.C.

The second speaker in ITVS’s short-video series on the future of public media is PBS President Paula Kerger, who calls this a “profoundly interesting” time for pubmedia, especially with all the collaborations taking place. “Being able to leverage journalism from multiple places is really, I think, an exciting development for public media,” she says, “because it enables many voices and many stories to be told but also the talents of a diverse range of reporters than can bring stories forward.”

Longtime Minnesota Public Radio news host Gary Eichten will retire in January 2012, he announced at the end of his Midday program Monday (Aug. 22). Eichten has spent more than 40 years with MPR, in roles from station manager to news director and now host of Midday. Eichten began his career at MPR as a student announcer at Collegeville’s KSJR, the network’s first station. He has received numerous honors, including induction in 2007 into the local Pavek Museum of Broadcasting’s Hall of Fame. Most recently, he received the prestigious 2011 Graven Award from the University of Minnesota’s Premack Public Affairs Journalism Awards Board for his contribution to excellence in the journalism profession.