PBS and Oregon Public Broadcasting have announced a new primetime series, working title Time Team, USA, to air in 2009 or 2010. Based on the UK’s Channel 4 series, the show follows a group of archaeologists who have 72 hours to unearth artifacts and other info from a dig site. Possible locations include the Indian Mounds of Mississippi and the earth pyramids near St. Louis, Mo. Producers from the UK series will team up with OPB, which produced History Detectives for PBS.

As TV viewing options explode and money for program production dries up, “small and midsize public television stations (not the rich behemoths like WGBH) that want to produce original programs of public value” have two paths to tread, writes Alaska Public Media’s John Proffitt in his blog Gravity Medium. Big productions will be few, will “mostly involve outside contractors rather than inside employees, and will draw most of their funding from external one-off granting sources.” Small, local productions will have to scale back to “one person + camera + laptop” and “must be aimed at multiplatform niche distribution rather than mass entertainment.

“Peter and the Wolf,” winner of this year’s Academy Award as best animated short film, debuts tomorrow night on PBS’s Great Performances.

Washington Post radio columnist Marc Fisher surveys the landscape of user-customized online music providers and finds that those proposing songs based on listener preferences aren’t generating “exotic and creative” playlists. On the most popular sites, “the lists of most popular songs are almost indistinguishable from what’s on most pop or hip-hop radio stations,” he writes.

Citing the growth of digital audio choices for radio listeners, the Justice Department yesterday approved the proposed merger of the XM and Sirius satellite radio companies. The Washington Post and New York Times report on reactions from opponents to the merger, and what may happen when the FCC takes up the proposal. On Hear 2.0 radio researcher Mark Ramsey describes why the merger will have minimal consequences for the radio industry.

In 2012, when NPR moves to its recently acquired headquarters site seven blocks east of its present home, it will have much more room for growth than it had after its last move, with as much as four times the floor space. In 1994, when the network moved into its present home, 635 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., it had about 400 employees. The building, with less than 150,000 square feet, could accommodate just 480, NPR said at the time. The space was soon outgrown. Since then, the NPR staff has grown by half to about 600, overflowing into rented space. The developer of the new site at 1111 N.

There was no single reason why the NPR Board ended Ken Stern’s 18-month run as chief executive officer — or at least none that any participant in the decision would describe publicly after Stern’s abrupt exit March 6 [2008].

In 2012, when NPR moves to its recently acquired headquarters site seven blocks east of its present home, it will have much more room for growth than it had after its last move, with as much as four times the floor space. In 1994, when the network moved into its present home, 635 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., it had about 400 employees. The building, with less than 150,000 square feet, could accommodate just 480, NPR said at the time. The space was soon outgrown. Since then, the NPR staff has grown by half to about 600, overflowing into rented space. The developer of the new site at 1111 N.

Conversation continues in the pages of the Monterey Herald about the failed merger between two local public radio stations,.

There was no single reason why the NPR Board ended Ken Stern’s 18-month run as chief executive officer — or at least none that any participant in the decision would describe publicly after Stern’s abrupt exit March 6 [2008]. Judging from what board members, station execs and other observers are willing to say, it came down to a lack of confidence in Stern’s ability to lead the organization in directions that public radio’s various stakeholders — especially NPR stations — could embrace. “I can’t comment on the nature of that decision,” said Dennis Haarsager, a longtime station leader now serving as interim c.e.o.,

In letters to PBS ombudsman Michael Getler (scroll down), a handful of viewers accused Gwen Ifill of being soft on Barack Obama during a Newshour interview on Monday. Getler agrees the interview was “somewhat disappointing,” but he doesn’t blame it entirely on the interviewer. “I don’t know if Ifill could have extracted more from Obama or not,” he writes, “because he seemed subdued in his responses.”

Facing a $200 million budget shortfall, the Miami-Dade public school system will consider selling part or all of its WLRN-FM/TV duo, schools Supt. Rudy Crew told the Miami Herald editorial board. The stations are on reserved channels, the newspaper reported, so they could be sold only for noncommercial use.

In another story about the firing of WYPR’s Marc Steiner, The Baltimore City Paper reports that President Anthony Brandon’s “answers–and his nonanswers–during an hour of questions on March 13 suggest displeasure with not just Steiner’s personality but also his unusual employment contract.” Brandon says, “Marc was under contract for $125,000 per year to produce eight hours of programming a week. He was also given the latitude to operate other business ventures at the same time.” Since Steiner stepped down as station v.p. in 2005, his paycheck has been written out to a company Steiner founded in 1998, Lasko Round Inc.,

WNIT, the pubTV station in South Bend, Ind., has discontinued analog broadcasting after its two major signal amplifiers failed, writes General Manager Mary Pruess in the South Bend Tribune today. If the expensive repairs wouldn’t be obsolete within a year, when the FCC mandates the final analog sign-off, WNIT would do them immediately, she writes. WNIT offers a phone hotline and webpage for info about over-the-air viewers’ options. In Tennessee, where cable carriage is limited, Cookeville’s WCTE rented expensive equipment rather than turn off its analog signal this winter.

PBS Kids Play!, an Internet-based subscription educational gaming service for kids ages 3 to 6, officially launches today. The curriculum-based service, which has been in beta test for two months, features PBS Kids characters including Curious George and the Berenstain Bears. It costs $9.95 a month, or $79 a year, and includes a free 15-day trial.