For Round 3 of the Public Radio Talent Quest, the seven remaining contestants conducted and sat for pubradio-style interviews. Listen, vote and comment on their latest work by clicking on the pictures or names posted here.

Pat Finn, producer of Full Focus, the local weekday public affairs show produced by KPBS-TV in San Diego, laments the station’s recent decision to pull the plug in this editorial. KPBS is also canceling A Way With Words, its local radio show focused on language; the move eliminated 12 staff positions associated with the two programs. While both shows had some success in the past, Doug Myrland, g.m., said in a statement, “trends indicate their future potential for audience and revenue growth is minimal.”

CPB just gave Minnesota Public Radio an emergency $25,000 grant “for costs related to coverage of the collapse of the interstate bridge in Minneapolis last night,” the corporation reports. MPR has provided continuing, multiplatform coverage of the catastrophe since it happened at 6:05 p.m. central, Wednesday (timeline).

Like Vermont Public Radio’s new weekdaily Vermont Edition, the program’s theme has a bit of the unexpected, the network says. In the MP3 of the theme, you’ll hear the usual insistent throb of newscast themes going back to the early BJ-Leiderzoic Era, but this one sounds more like James Brown’s pulse instead of James Lehrer’s. Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, based in Vermont, did the theme. That’s Grace on organ. VPR launches the noon newscast Aug. 13 with former NPR journalist Jane Lindholm as host.

Critics of Colorado Public Radio recently launched the Colorado Public Radio blog, which aims to cover all public and community stations in the state but applies special scrutiny to the Denver-based network of NPR news and classical music stations. Frances Koncilja, a former CPR board member who resigned this spring and publicly complained about a lack of transparency and inclusion at CPR, contributes to the blog.

More than a million Chinese-made Mattel/Fisher-Price products, including Sesame Street character toys, are being recalled because their paint may contain toxic levels of lead, Bloomberg and other media reported. The 83 designs are listed on the Consumer Product Safety Commission website. Sesame Workshop said it “will develop more stringent procedures” to hold licensees to safety standards. The products had been sold since May, Mattel’s news release said. Pictured: one of the Sesame Street character toys on the CPSC website.

Baltimore’s WYPR will extend its service to Maryland’s Eastern shore with the pending purchase of WRXS in Ocean City, a top-40 commercial station broadcasting on 106.9 FM. “The idea is for WYPR to be heard across the state of Maryland,” said Andrew Bienstock, WYPR p.d., in today’s Baltimore Sun. The expansion “brings us darn close.” FCC approval of the acquisition is expected next month. Later in the fall, the Baltimore station will boost its signal to 15,500 watts and begin broadcasting a separate program stream in high-definition.

Media analysts and writers forecast what will happen now that Rupert Murdoch has succeeded in his quest to buy the Wall Street Journal. Richard Siklos reports in the New York Times that Murdoch will likely go after his newspaper and the Financial Times by “aggressively undercutting advertising and investing heavily in editorial content–particularly in Washington and international news.” Poynter Online‘s Rick Edmonds also predicts an expansion of the Journal‘s Washington bureau, and not as many defections among the Journal‘s editorial staff as many would expect. The special committee created to preserve the Journal‘s editorial independence “won’t amount to much,” Edmonds writes.

The National Archives announced a non-exclusive agreement to sell digital copies of its historic films on Amazon.com. The first DVDs, a collection of newsreels from the 1950s and 60s, went on sale July 16. The Washington Post contrasted the Archives’ agreement with the Smithsonian’s controversial contract with Showtime, the premium cable network.

The FCC is seeking comment (PDF) on potential digital TV transition consumer education initiatives, the commission announced today. The FCC wants input on proposals designed to “convey the timing, logistics and benefits of the DTV transition to consumers,” including PSAs, notices on consumer electronics equipment and in cable and satellite bills, employee training by consumer electronics retailers and tweaks to the DTV.gov partners program. Lawmakers last week complained about the government’s meager efforts to educate the largely clueless public about the Feb. 17, 2009 switch-off of analog TV. APTS, which has been working to secure some of the relatively paltry $5 million the government set aside for DTV education, endorsed a bill earlier this month that would boost such funding to $20 million.

At a hearing yesterday, Senators lamented the government’s puny efforts to educate people about the digital TV transition, reports the Los Angeles Times. Speaking to Federal Communications Commission and Commerce Department officials, lawmakers said more funding was needed for government-sponsored public education, in part because the television industry was not doing enough. The anxiety is fueled by a Association of Public Television Stations survey that indicated 61% of respondents had no idea a digital switch was coming (Current, Feb. 12, 2007).”I think there’s high potential for a train wreck here,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) Sen.

KETC in St. Louis did their first live webcast when Ken Burns visited

“I think PBS has enormous potential to become an engine of change in the new world of democratized video,” writes TV producer Michael Rosenblum, who spoke at last weekend’s National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA) board planning conference in New York [Via Technology360]. In his blog post following the speech, Rosenblum says, “Perhaps [PBS] is better positioned than anyone else to effect this change – this need for publishing instead of producing.” Rosenblum’s advice to pubcasters? “Become a node for video literacy. A place where people could come for training, have their work reviewed, edited and if good enough, published.

The Washington Post reports on why the proposed merger of two “bit players in the media world“–satellite radio companies XM and Sirius–has stoked such a huge lobbying battle in Washington. The National Association of Broadcasters has mounted an aggressive public relations and lobbying campaign, while NPR quietly petitioned the FCC on July 9 to block the merger. Granting one company a monopoly on digital satellite radio would “substantially harm the diversity of voices” heard on the media platform, NPR lawyers wrote in the petition, because the merged companies would pare their channel line-ups and very likely drop some public radio programming.

Bill Moyers responded to PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler’s July 20th column, which criticized Moyer’s program about impeachment for lacking balance, by writing “The journalist’s job is not to achieve some mythical state of equilibrium between two opposing opinions out of some misshapen respect — sometimes, alas, reverence — for the prevailing consensus among the powers-that-be. The journalist’s job is to seek out and offer the public the best thinking on an issue, event, or story. That’s what I did regarding the argument for impeachment.” The statement was part of a letter distributed to media who covered Getler’s critique, including Romenesko and the right-wing NewsBusters.