The FCC again blocked attempts by Central Wyoming College and the Idaho Board of Education to apply for licenses on spectrum to be auctioned off this week, according to Broadcasting & Cable magazine’s website. Both noncomms argued they were entitled to apply for the permits without participating in the auction.

Maryland Public TV announced lay-offs and salary cuts for top executives and rank-and-file employees. Lost underwriting revenue for the revamped Wall Street Week with Fortune contributed to the state network’s projected $2.1 million revenue shortfall.

Fast Company magazine sends a love letter to HBO and its new c.e.o., Chris Albrecht, for raising the standard of quality in original programming while making piles of money. Its profit last year, $725 million, was equal to nearly half of public TV’s total budget. The Sopranos is only the start. See the article by Polly LaBarre in the September issue.

Business 2.0 profiles Chris Mandra, who has molded NPR’s online presence in his four years at the network.

Julia Child’s kitchen has been moved from Cambridge and reconstructed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in D.C., the Washington Post reported. It will be on display for two years. [Smithsonian’s kitchen page.]

“For the conflicted soap fan longing for a simulacrum of realism,” the British import “EastEnders is an addictive slice of heaven,” says John Dougan, TV critic of the cultural webzine PopMatters.

Britain’s Prince Andrew has fallen for Cynthia Gouw, a reporter and producer for KQED’s Pacific Time, reports the San Francisco Examiner.

Whoops: Click and Clack have three million yogurt lids to unload.

Will Robedee, g.m. of Houston’s KTRU-FM, protests the new royalty rates for streaming music in Radio World.

The Boston Globe bids farewell to WGBH exec Peter McGhee, who resigns this month. The outgoing v.p. of national programming is leaving because he’s disappointed with the way things have been going at PBS, the profile reports.

Public radio’s Satellite Sisters has been pulled from orbit. You can read about it at their website.

“The best of American television can be traced to this one man,” said NovaExecutive Producer Paula Apsell, referring to her boss and the latest winner of CPB’s annual Ralph Lowell Award — Peter S. McGhee, who retires this month as v.p. of national production at WGBH, Boston. McGhee accepted the medal at the PBS Annual Meeting in June as recognition “of my work, and of your work, of all our work,” he said in acceptance remarks. He has overseen and in many cases launched some of public TV’s most ambitious documentaries as well as enduringly popular entertainments — no less than a third of the PBS schedule.He

Public radio’s This American Life and Warner Brothers have signed a first-look deal that gives the studio rights to many TAL episodes, reports the Los Angeles Times. More TAL talk: Ira Glass, disgruntled vegetarian, lunches with a Chicago Sun-Times columnist.

iBiquity Digital Corp. is now calling its IBOC (in-band, on-channel) technology HD Radio.

The live feed from an eagle nest in northern Wisconsin occupied Milwaukee PTV’s digital Channel 10-5 starting in April.