Michael Eric Dyson, a Georgetown University professor and ordained minister with his own pubradio show from WEAA in Baltimore, scored high ratings last week when he took over hosting duties on MSNBC’s The Ed Schultz Show, according to the Daily Beast. Dyson has been a regular guest on MSNBC and other networks for years, it notes, and, like the Rev. Al Sharpton, “was automatically considered the perfect guest host for primetime duties while Schultz was on assignment.” Now some observers are wondering if Dyson and Sharpton “may just be the new African-American faces of primetime news.” “Dyson dominates the pulpit, the classroom, and really, every arena he’s in, so of course audiences are drawn to him,” says James Peterson, director of Africana studies at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa.

The public Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is approaching its 75th anniversary. “The old dilemma — how to create original Canadian shows when it is much cheaper to pick up popular American ones — now has a new urgency,” reports the Globe and Mail. As commercial and international choices proliferate, it notes, a public broadcaster of Canadian programming becomes more distinctive and more relevant, not less. “It is going to be increasingly difficult to create content within the confines of national boundaries and national models,” media consultant Jerry Brown, an associate partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, told the paper. “[Yet] it’s vitally important each culture and each country tell its own story.”

Reporter Jennifer Waits continues her deep dive via Radio Survivor into the Federal Communication Commission’s look at the controversial sale of student station KUSF to the Classical Public Radio Network (CPRN).Waits found several interesting details in the reams of paperwork submitted for the FCC’s inquiry. As the acquisition process got under way, the broker and Public Radio Capital, 10 percent owner of CPRN, “predicted protests and recommended that KUSF be taken off the air when the sale announcement was made,” Waits writes. “Not only were they afraid of on-air comments about the sale, but they also wanted the appearance of ‘finality’ surrounding it.”

Ken Ikeda, co-managing director of Public Media Company (PMC), says he is “deeply, deeply concerned” that public media is not connecting with more diverse audiences. In a short video on ITVS’s Beyond the Box blog, Ikeda says that public media currently is “too focused on a narrow demographic,” and with few exceptions, very few people have taken risks to try to diversify the primary audience. It’s not a lost cause yet, he says, but demands more attention.

Steve Lickteig is returning to NPR after executive producing The Bob Edwards Show on Sirius XM, according to NPR. Lickteig takes over as e.p. of Weekend All Things Considered on Aug. 31. Previously, Lickteig had been an NPR producer from 1998 to 2006 working on Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation. He was with Edwards’ show for five years, four of those as e.p.

Philip Smith, g.m. of KIXE in Redding, Calif., has resigned after a year in the job. Board member Marlene Grant confirmed to the local Record Searchlight newspaper that Smith’s last day was Aug. 4. Smith told the paper that his mother-in-law has Alzheimer’s disease and her physical health had recently taken a critical downturn. Board member Mike Quinn, who owns Redding station KLXR AM 1230, is taking on the g.m. post temporarily. “We are in an interim place right now, and we have things we are working on,” Grant said. Smith made headlines twice in his short tenure: When he canceled Democracy Now!

“In public media, it’s getting more and more difficult to distinguish among content, engagement and fundraising. And that’s exactly as it should be,” writes Charles Meyer, executive director of the National Center for Media Engagement, in blog post today (Aug. 11). Meyer cites Why KLRU? in Austin, an experimental interactive pledge drive. This month, the station is asking donors to share via social media outlets why they support the station. The resulting Tweets and Facebook status updates run on the air. Public media “are moving beyond simply aligning content, engagement and fundraising toward actually integrating them,” Meyer notes. “That’s a good sign, as long as we maintain our editorial integrity and keep our focus on the community.”

Billboard.biz is reporting that SiriusXM Radio is attempting to directly license music from record labels, bypassing SoundExchange, the nonprofit performance rights organization. In a letter to independent labels via Music Reports Inc., Sirius is offering to pay a royalty rate of 7 percent of gross revenues. That’s less than the 7.5 percent it now pays SoundExchange, which tracks airplay on radio stations for the purpose of collecting royalties for copyright owners.

PBS talk-show host and social activist Tavis Smiley is creating a buzz today (Aug. 11) with comments on C-SPAN about his professional relationship with President Obama, of whom he is often critical. “Once he got elected,” Smiley said, “and my critique of him about holding him accountable to various things didn’t sit so well with him or the people around him, he has not at this point come on my TV or radio programs one time since he’s been in the White House. This is the first president in my professional career that hasn’t invited me to the White House.” Smiley and Princeton University professor Cornell West are currently on a 15-city “Poverty Tour,” attempting to make the problem a higher-profile issue for the 2012 election.

The fourth print edition of the SF Public Press is out, a news collaboration of several nonprofit organizations including KQED, KALW-FM and California Watch/Center for Investigative Reporting. In the feature article, reporters examine the city’s budgeting process, exploring “participatory budgeting,” the use of the Internet to promote transparency and the “unfulfilled promise” for government audits to identify and eliminate millions of dollars in waste. SF Public Press also publishes new content daily online. It says it “aims to do for print and Web journalism what public broadcasting has done for radio and television.”

PBS is looking for advertising partners for its first international channel, according to the British-based Mediaweek news site. The PBS-branded channel, bankrolled by a Canadian oil entrepreneur (Current, Aug. 1), has obtained its commercial Ofcam broadcast license and will initially be available to more than 9 million households on the Sky Digital platform; carriage negotiations also continue with Virgin Media. Initial content will include major program strands such as Nova, American Experience and Frontline. Filmmaker Ken Burns’ six-hour Prohibition series also will have its international premiere on the channel. “This initiative is a logical next step in creating wider distribution for PBS programs,” Anne Bentley, PBS spokesperson, told Current, “and the vision is to include most major icon series, as well as other films and specials, presenting the best of American culture to the UK.”

The CommLaw Center blog of law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman is cautioning broadcasters to pay closer attention to their public files. Media attorney Scott Flick observes that the Federal Communications Commission is taking a “hardening line on public inspection file violations.” In 1997, the FCC established a base fine of $10,000 for public inspection file violations, but tended not to issue fines for the full amount unless it was an egregious problem, such failure to keep a public file at all for some period of time, Flick writes. But over the past decade, $10,000 has become the standard fine for even minor public file violations — and in one recent case, the FCC adjusted that figure upward and issued a $15,000 fine.

Here’s some actual good news coming in the wake of the Florida state funding elimination. WSRE-FM in Pensacola won’t have to discontinue the longtime SightLine daily reading service for listeners with visual impairments after all, reports the North Escambia news website. WUWF-FM, University of West Florida’s UWF Public Media, approached the station with the suggestion to relocate the reading service and coordinating responsibilities there, but continue to use WSRE’s SAP (Second Audio Program) channel to deliver the service as it has for nearly two decades. (Although it had been impacted by state cuts, WUWF wasn’t hit quite as hard as WSRE.)

Public media reporters and producers made a strong showing in the 10th annual Society of Environmental Journalists awards: ProPublica and Frontline staffers for “The True Story Behind the Oil Spill”; PRI’s The World for ongoing environmental reporting; Maine Public Broadcasting for “Science Skeptics, Corporate Lobbyists and the Assault on Maine’s Environment”; and PBS NewsHour for “In Middle East, Coalition Aims to Ease Tension Over Water Resources.” A full list of winners is here.

Member Benefits Inc., which runs local member benefit programs for more than 140 pubcasting stations, kicks off its new MemberCardConnect website today (Aug. 8). (Here’s a look at the page for Chicago Public Media.) The company says the new site merges station content, branding and social networking tools with expanded MemberCard benefits and online rewards. Each station’s page contains sections highlighting underwriters and sponsors and announcing upcoming events, as well as links to station social network pages and an RSS applet.