Garrison Keillor tells the Seattle Times his worst-ever show was in Reno, Nev.: “Every time I turned around in Reno, I just saw pathological behavior.” In the Minneapolis Star-Tribune he offers a dispatch from a cruise ship: “Were I a resident of paradise, I’d defend it to the skies, but I’m a northerner and we believe that adversity and the struggle for truth and honor are the key to the good life, not the 77-degree swimming pool.”

Clear Channel is donating $25,000 to KBEM-FM, a financially troubled noncom in Minneapolis, reports the Star-Tribune. (Reg. req.)

The profile of KCRW-FM in Santa Monica, Calif., is growing nationally among offbeat bands, “the smaller record labels that promote them and the music consumers who want to be surprised,” reports the New York Times.

Michael Powell announced today that he will step down as chairman of the FCC effective in March, reports the Washington Post, among others (official statement here). Powell said it was time for a change after “completing a bold and aggressive agenda,” referring to his work to increase consumer access to broadband and new technologies like Internet phone service. But he’ll likely be remembered for his bold, but largely thwarted, attempts to deregulate media ownership and his aggressive campaign against perceived broadcast naughtiness. Powell also told Reuters that he planned to “tie up some loose ends on the transition to digital television” before he left the commission.

We’ve added a list of podcasting pubcasters to our streaming links page. Let us know if you belong in the list, too.

“Island at War,” a “gripping, poetic” five-part mini-series that begins Sunday on Masterpiece Theater, gets a thumbs-up from New York Times critic Anita Gates.

The Washington Times pegs this mini-profile of NPR head Kevin Klose to Tavis Smiley’s recent departure.

Public radio’s Marketplace is opening a bureau at WUNC-FM in Chapel Hill, N.C., reports the Associated Press.

PBS will edit a scene of a nude woman being scrubbed down after a fictional chemical attack from the HBO-produced “Dirty War,” scheduled for broadcast on the network Feb. 23. Co-chief programming exec Jacoba Atlas tells the AP that she’s afraid the scene could deter stations from airing an important film. “You want to pick your battles,” she says. (from the Miami Herald via mediabistro.com)

Public radio humor in Sunday’s Get Fuzzy.

What came between NPR and Tavis Smiley? Howard Kurtz reports in the Washington Post that a letter from Smiley’s agent demanded that the network commit $3 million to promote the weekday talk show. Smiley quit in December, hurling accusations of racism. The host also wanted to own the program and tape it a day before broadcast, NPR reportedly told Kurtz.

Three public radio operations will merge to create a new Iowa Public Radio network, the state’s Board of Regents has confirmed. The net will include stations at three universities overseen by the regents: WOI-AM/FM at Iowa State University in Ames, KUNI and KHKE at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, and WSUI and KSUI at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Regents expect the merger will lower administrative costs and improve programming, with management of the stations centralized under an executive director and news reports and other programming shared throughout the network. Managers of the stations share that optimism but worry about lost jobs and the future of their local programs.

Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman are among new commentators on PBS’s Now series, the producers announced. Also civil rights attorney Constance Rice and former Maine Gov. Angus King.

Martin Scorsese, producer of a four-hour portrait of Bob Dylan to air in the PBS series American Masters in July, never met the guy, he told the Toronto Sun.

NPR reporter Jason Beaubien tells the Poynter Institute’s Jill Geisler about covering the tsunami. “It taxes you as a radio reporter to get across the essence of this story . . . which is that this isn’t just about a tragic event,” he says. “It’s about a tragic event times one million . . .”