Motorola announced yesterday that it will offer programs from NPR, Public Radio International and American Public Media to mobile phones via its iRadio service.

The California State Long Beach Foundation has chosen Mt. Wilson FM Broadcasters Inc. as the prospective operator of KKJZ-FM (PDF). The foundation’s Board of Directors heard recommendations tonight from an evaluation committee. Also bidding were Pacific Public Radio, the nonprofit that has run the station since 1987; Southern California Public Radio, the L.A. sibling of Minnesota Public Radio; and the Jazz Institute of Los Angeles. Mt. Wilson already operates two commercial outlets: K-Mozart, an FM classical station, and KKGO-AM, which airs adult standards. (More coverage in the Long Beach Press-Telegram.)

Adams County in Ohio stands to lose its sole NPR station with the sale of WVXW-FM to a Christian broadcaster, reports the (West Union) People’s Defender. Cincinnati Public Radio is selling the station after acquiring it from Xavier University last year. The county’s Chamber of Commerce is urging residents to ask the FCC to block the sale.

In a ballot mailing to 190,000 local supporters, KQED asks its members to waive their rights to vote on major corporate decisions and elections of the board of directors. “This is about money and this is about responsiveness,” Board Chair Nick Donatiello told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s up to the members if they want to spend this money on elections. It could buy a lot of programming.”

A devoted fan of This American Life takes issue with Chicago Public Radio’s approach to offering the show’s audio online: “They could save money by encouraging filesharing of their shows instead of wasting money fighting it.”

Martin Smith answered online questions about “Return of the Taliban,” his Frontline documentary that debuted on PBS last night.

The g.m. of a public radio station in Shreveport, La., was arrested Monday for soliciting sex from a minor over the Internet, reports the Shreveport Times. The minor was in fact an undercover officer.

Doc Searls shares six pieces of advice for public radio as it adapts to changes in media. (Via Jake Shapiro.)

In a study released yesterday, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting tracked the guests appearing on PBS’s NewsHour and found that Republican males were over-represented as news sources, according to this AP wire story.

“We’ll do everything we have to do to try and retain the license,” KOCE President Mel Rogers tells the Los Angeles Times, reacting to Gov. Schwarzenegger’s veto of a bill designed to end the legal wrangling for control of the station.

When her preschooler began humming the jingle from a McDonald’s commercial, Cleveland pediatrician Susan Connor decided to analyze the sponsorship spots that surround TV shows for tots. She found that fast-food companies are the predominant sponsors of preschool fare on PBS Kids and the Disney Channel, both of which “promote themselves as ad-free,” reports the Associated Press. The study, published this month in the medical journal Pediatrics, concluded that the ads targeting preschoolers on Nickelodeon and sponsorship messages on PBS and Disney “took similar approaches and used similar appeals, seeming to promote the equation that food equals fun and happiness.”

John Whiting reviews Uneasy Listening, Matthew Lasar’s latest chronicle of the battles within Pacifica Radio. “As the backroom plots continually recycle, the story begins to read like an endless reality-TV pirate game in which the protagonists are made to walk the plank and then try to get voted back on board,” he writes.

The Los Angeles Times profiles Tavis Smiley: “In an era where Jay Leno and David Letterman use guests as comedy fodder and Charlie Rose has become a courtier to the barons of the Eastern media elite, Smiley is a reminder of the days when talk show hosts were conversationalists, not sycophants or joke meters.”

National Review Online blogger Stephen Spruiell comes to Kenneth Tomlinson’s defense, urging fellow conservatives not to “stay silent while Democrats tear down Tomlinson’s reputation just because he’s a conservative.”

The Washington Post‘s Marc Fisher profiles NPR’s Radio Lab, which enters its second season this fall. “. . . [T]here is a music to these nonfiction stories, a beat and a rhythm that feel fresh, and that’s something that good old public radio dearly needs,” he writes.