PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler thought several of the America at a Crossroads films were excellent and described one in particular, Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, as “one of the most gripping hours I’ve spent in front of the tube in quite a while.” But he also agreed with critics and viewers who blasted PBS for giving an hour to neocon adviser Richard Perle during the series. The decision to re-present the initial case for a war “that has, at the very least, gone badly” instead of examining what went wrong and where the powers that be should go from here represents a “stunning avoidance of the real crossroad that we are at,” Getler wrote.

Alison Stewart, host of MSNBC’s midday news show The Most, will co-host of an “upcoming 24-hour multimedia news service and morning drive show for Adults 25-44,” NPR announced today. The new show is working-titled the Bryant Park Project, now in a “Rough Cuts” blogging phase. Her new colleagues have posted a musical video tribute to Stewart. Before joining MSNBC in 2003, she anchored for ABC News, reported for CBS Sunday Morning and other shows and won a Peabody for MTV News election coverage. ‘Bistro says Stewart was music director of Brown University’s commercial college station, WBRU, when she was a student.

Detroit Public Television said yesterday that Steve Antoniotti, its president since 1995, “tendered his resignation because of an acknowledged failure to comply with station requirements, unrelated to financial matters.” Chief Operating Officer Dan Alpert will serve as interim g.m. The board chairman declined to discuss what those requirements were, the Detroit Free Press reported today.

The producers behind Islam vs. Islamists–the America at a Crossroads doc that PBS says it will not air in its current imbalanced state–will show the film to journalists and lawmakers at a series of invitation-only screenings in Washington, according to the Washington Times.

Jazz announcers Chuck Cecil and Helen Borgers stayed on the air at KKJZ in Long Beach, Calif., when Mt. Wilson Broadcasters took over operation of the station April 21, the Orange County Register reported. But others, including Joni Caryl and Scott Willis, lost their gigs. On the same day, listeners of KUOR-FM in Redlands, east of Los Angeles, lost jazz programming entirely when its licensee, the University of Redlands, took the occasion to drop its KKJZ simulcast and picked up Southern California Public Radio’s all-news service, repeated from KPCC in Pasadena, the Redlands Daily Facts said. SCPR plans to launch a news bureau at the Redlands site.

Like many newspaper commentators, Arizona Republic‘s Robert Robb found inspiration for a column in what he heard on NPR, or saw on its website, in this case: The painful-to-read profiles of the Virginia Tech victims. He wrote: “So many lives of promise. I was holding it together until I came to Henry Lee, a computer engineering freshman at Virginia Tech. Lee moved to the United States from China as a child and entered elementary school here not speaking English. He nevertheless became his high school salutatorian. He was, however, reluctant to speak at his graduation ceremony, but was talked into it.

Two public broadcasters active in southern California during the 1960s and 1970s, James Lee Mathes and Fred Burgess, retired to Kansas together in the 1980s. They died within seven months in 2007. James Lee Mathes James Lee Mathes, 73, a pioneer in public TV at KCET and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, died March 27 [2007] in his home state, Kansas. He had pancreatic cancer. Mathes worked on such KCET projects as Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series and an eight-nation simulcast, as well as fundraising and general administration. Before joining KCET in the late 1960s, Mathes produced and directed educational TV programs at USC.

Ernest James Wilson III, a CPB Board member, was named dean of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication on Thursday, the USC Daily Trojan reported. He is a visiting professor of public diplomacy at Annenberg and a faculty member at the University of Maryland. He succeeds Geoffrey Cowan, who was also a Democratic member of the CPB Board.

Register and vote by April 27 for the annual Webby People’s Voice Awards. Nominees connected with public TV and radio include: PBS Kids Sprout cable channel’s Sprout Diner in Family/Parenting; NPR.org in News and in Radio; the NPR Podcast Directory in Podcasts; Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly in Religion; NPR’s This I Believe in Religion; Nova scienceNow in Science; P.O.V. in Television; and Curious George in Youth. The public chooses the People’s Voice Awards, while the 500-plus members of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences choose the Webby Award winners in a parallel competition. Both sets will be announced in June.

Ken Burns and PBS executives met yesterday with leaders of the “Defend the Honor” campaign to discuss the filmmakers’ plans to collaborate with Hector Galan in producing new material for The War. Spokespeople for Burns and PBS are refuting the Washington Post‘s account of the meeting. The Post reported that Burns agreed to re-edit his series to incorporate the new segments. “Ken is not opening his film,” Burns’ spokesman Joseph DePlasco told Current. “Ken’s film is done.” During the meeting, Burns emphasized that the new material “needs to be added in a way that’s seen as part of the broadcast and doesn’t seem like an orphan or an appendage,” DePlasco said.

Ray Dilley, 67, manager of the Nebraska Radio Network, founding manager of Vermont Public Radio and developer of NPR Worldwide, died over the weekend of April 13-15.

Integrated Media Association has proposed that public radio’s web operations use Google Analytics as their standard system for measuring website usage. To establish the metrics for a pilot group of 50 stations by July 1, the IMA Board decided to invest up to $25,000 of the surplus from its February conference. It’s asking the CPB Radio Program Fund to put in $500,000.

Hector Galan, an Austin-based filmmaker and TV producer, will collaborate with Ken Burns in producing segments on Native and Hispanic American veterans’ World War II experiences, according to AP.

By bowing to pressure from Latino activists seeking changes to The War, PBS and filmmaker Ken Burns set a “lousy precedent,” writes Charlie McCullom, TV writer for the San Jose Mercury News.

The Copyright Royalty Board yesterday rejected all requests from webcasters that it reconsider the new fee structure for Internet radio it announced March 2. Webcasters have said the new rate structure, which raises the royalty rates and assesses fees on a per play basis, will cripple Internet radio. In addition, pubcasters that stream lots of hours would see their own rates rise dramatically. The new fee system goes into effect May 15; lawyers representing webcasters say the next step is likely an appeal to D.C.’s U.S. Court of Appeals. Coincidentally, a coalition of artists and webcasters yesterday announced “a national campaign to save Internet radio.”