In his latest column, PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler takes note of some positive aspects of Bill Moyers’ interview with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., but goes on to say, “…I do feel that there were not enough questions asked and some that were asked came across as too reserved and too soft, considering the volatility of the charges.” Viewers shared some stronger words with Getler.

Talk shot host Diane Rehm tells a Michigan TV station that she expects to continue hosting her show for at least another five years. “[A]s long as my voice holds out, I’ll be there,” she says. (Via the PRPD blog.)

Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil have been chosen to receive this year’s Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, reports the Arizona Republic. The award is bestowed by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

“The idea that we don’t see our future intertwined with public television and radio is absolutely not true,” says Michele Grant, the executive vice-president for news and sport at BBC Worldwide America, in a Guardian article about the British broadcaster’s loss of the U.S. distribution deal for its nighty news program via New York’s WLIW. The Guardian reports that the deal “broke down partly because the US channel wanted to combine BBC content with US content to produce a tailored programme for US viewers.” A Guardian blogger also weighs in with a commentary.

CPB will give $3,000 to the stations that produce the three most compelling My Source radio testimonial spots, the corporation announced. CPB will also fly the top winning producer and the community member featured in his or her testimonial to the Public Radio Development and Marketing Conference in Orlando in July, where they will be recognized. The Development Exchange Inc. will manage the radio testimonial awards for CPB. The deadline for submitting testimonials is June 20th; tools and other guidelines are available at www.mysourcefor.org.

Jim Lehrer will return to the Newshour in a few weeks after recovering from heart valve surgery, Linda Winslow, e.p., told PBS’s new Engage blog. Winslow “said she’ll know Mr. Lehrer is feeling better when he starts phoning her with story tips and suggestions.” Anchor duties will rotate among the Newshour correspondents until Lehrer returns.

Daytime Emmy nominations announced this week by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences include 44 for PBS programs. Ten series produced by Boston’s WGBH, including two foodie shows distributed by American Public Television, garnered 26 Daytime Emmy nods. Sesame Street, a perennial favorite in the annual competition, leads the pack of PBS Kids fare with 13 nominations. Nominees in three or more categories include Between the Lions, Design Squad, Curious George, Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman and From the Top: Live from Carnegie Hall. PBS has the second-highest tally of Emmy nods among commercial and cable TV networks, topped only by CBS.

James Day, co-founder of San Francisco’s KQED and host of the influential weekly interview program Kaleidoscope, died last Thursday from respiratory failure. He helped establish public television’s reputation for in-depth, serious programming and blazed the trail for pubTV on-air pledge drives and auctions. In 1995, he penned a history of public television, The Vanishing Vision: The Inside Story of Public Television. Current contributing editor David Stewart drew from Day’s account for this feature on KQED’s early years. Variety, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the New York Times have each published obits.

CPB and PBS have selected 10 new pubTV stations to participate in Raising Readers, a program to improve the reading skills of 2-to-8-year-olds, particularly those from low-income families in areas with low reading scores. Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the initiative pairs PBS children’s programs such as Between the Lions with a literacy curriculum based on recommendations of the National Reading Panel. Ten stations have already partnered with community organizations to create local literacy programs. The new participants are WHRO in Hampton Roads, Va; Iowa Public Television; Louisiana Public Television; WLJT in Martin, Tenn.; WNPT in Nashville, Tenn.;

Etsy, the online crafts marketplace that hired NPR digital media chief Maria Thomas as its new c.o.o., produced a video to introduce her to employees. “I love that ‘etsy’ means connecting with something authentic,” Thomas says. [Via Converge]

WLIW in New York is dropping BBC World News, which it has distributed to pubTV since 1998, and producing a new half-hour international news program for pubTV, working title Your World Tonight. KCET in Los Angeles will be the new distributor of the BBC nightly newscast. The BBC has been investing in a separate newscast on its own cable channel, BBC America, and had indicated it might limit the number of pubTV stations that could carry BBC World News, WNET president Neal Shapiro told The New York Times. “It would have meant 60 to 70 percent of the public broadcasting audience would lose access to the show,” said Shapiro, and BBC execs made it “pretty clear that the future of the BBC was not intertwined with public broadcasting.”

Mississippi Public Broadcasting will reduce power to four of its eight analog transmitters before the Feb. 17, 2009 shut-off, starting with its Raymond site, according to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. That signal currently reaches 50 miles from Raymond but will only reach around 20 miles from the city after the reduction, potentially making things tough for over-the-air viewers outside that radius. In the next few months, MPB will reduce analog power to stations in Bude, Greenwood and Meridian. “We’re going to be able to save a couple hundred thousand dollars by doing it this way rather than doing it all at once,” said Marie Antoon, MPB’s executive director, told the newspaper.

This Sunday Times article rounds up pubradio efforts to reignite the stalled growth of its audience, from WNYC’s new The Takeaway to projects including the Public Radio Talent Quest and Chicago Public Radio’s :Vocalo.

Former CNN anchor Aaron Brown is the new host of Wide Angle, PBS’s international current affairs documentary series, produced by WNET in New York. The former host was Daljit Dhaliwal, who anchors the pubTV international news program Foreign Exchange and also the recent pilot of Global Watch, a program from KCET about international perceptions of the United States.

WYBE’s new model, based on 5-minute programs that run online and on-air, aims for “a marriage of the often-frustrated community-TV ideal of locally produced original programming and the convenience and short-attention-span exuberance of free digital media-on-demand,” reports The Philadelphia Inquirer. On the new Mind TV, paying WYBE members get production training and a platform for their videos, which station execs hope will provide about one-third of all content. The rest will be produced by station staff or chunked from existing pubTV programs. Resources for the change came in part from NBC, which–in exchange for one of WYBE’s digital channels–provided the pubcaster with new studio equipment and training.