Minnesota Public Radio programmers described their new format for their just-acquired third Twin Cities station as an “anti-format” for younger ears that will gather eclectic music and “take the work out of finding music and put the fun back in,” Deborah Rybak reported in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. MPR bought the channel, WCAL, from St. Olaf College over the objections of WCAL’s classical music fans. Some spoke against the station sale at an FCC hearing on media consolidation in St. Paul last week. With money from the sale, the college said it will endow five chairs and repair the organ in its chapel.

“Nothing is pushing me, but something is pulling me, and I don’t know what that is.” Bill Moyers, who delivers his last edition of Now tomorrow night, may have one more PBS series up his sleeve, reports the New York Daily News.

“In the rush to proclaim [Bernard] Kerik the next secretary of Homeland Security, NPR sounded as though it were reporting on behalf of the White House, not about the White House,” writes NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin in his latest online column.

Jim King, founder of the Cincinnati-based X-Star public radio network, will retire next year. “We’ve done what no one else said could be done,” he tells the Cincinnati Enquirer. “. . . We’ve bucked the trend and programmed a station the way we wanted to, changing the types of programming every three or four hours.”

The Boston Globe reports that Boston University officials and the attorney for Jane Christo, former g.m. of WBUR-FM, disagree over who wielded the most influence over the station’s operations.

“The real key is you want to get them up and moving but you don’t want them to turn their heads from the TV.” Newsday reports on kids’ shows that encourage tots to get off the couch.

WDUQ-FM in Pittsburgh is replacing its transmitter, going digital and expanding its signal eastward with repeaters, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gaztte.

Media reform advocate Jeff Chester challenges PBS’s panel on enhanced funding to consider whether public TV deserves the gift of auction spectrum revenues.

In the Village Voice, WFMU deejay Irwin Chusid discusses his championing of outsider musicians.

In the Life, the gay/lesbian pubTV show that raises much of its operating funding from viewers, has set a $350,000 goal for a capital campaign for a new studio in Manhattan. [Current profile of the show.]

“If I felt that I was getting the kind of commitment that I needed to grow the program, then I wouldn’t have resigned,” says Tavis Smiley in the Chicago Sun-Times about leaving his show.

… at the bluest of TV channels, public broadcasting’s WNET, in the bluest of cities, New York, you know this country has entered a new cultural twilight zone,” writes New York Times columnist Frank Rich. WNET’s decision to kill a spot on the feature film, Kinsey, is a harbinger of the battles ahead as “politicians and the media alike pander to that supposed 22 percent of ‘moral values’ voters.”

Zoom, the interactive children’s series from Boston’s WGBH, will shutter production after its 2005 season. Kids, and PBS, are “looking for the next new thing,” says producer Kate Taylor in the Boston Globe.

The Center for Social Media at American University published a study recommending ways to help independent filmmakers negotiate the increasingly difficult process of rights clearances. Additional background materials are available on the Center’s website.

“I believe the price of this very considerable change is the right price to pay to achieve the prize of a strong and independent, creative BBC,” said Director General Michael Thompson when announcing a 10 percent staff reduction, the largest in the corporation’s history. With savings from the massive reorganization, Thompson promised BBC would spend more on high quality drama, comedy, current affairs and children’s programs, according to the Guardian. Reports on the restructuring characterize it as a premptive move to protect BBC financing via television license fees, which comes up for renewal in 2007. In the Financial Times, Thompson said the plan made the case for a renewal of its royal charter more compelling and added: “The BBC has not been badgered or pressured by government to do any of this.