CPB, meeting with station leaders this week near Washington, announced extended funding for two pubTV stars, Ken Burns and Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates Jr. PBS joined CPB in announcing three new Gates series: for 2010, The Faces of America, a four-parter about the ancestry of famed Americans; for 2011, the eight-part Searching for Our Roots: The History of the African American People, and for 2012, African American Lives III: Reclaiming Our Past. They will be produced by WNET in New York, Kunhardt Productions and Inkwell Films. New Ken Burns projects under consideration for the next decade include a joint bio of Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt and a series on the Vietnam War, according to CPB, which announced a funding agreement with Burns that runs through 2017.

“In a moral sense or in a fair game sense, we who pledged on pledge drives and gave money to building the station deserve a chance to raise the money to buy it,” says Steve Denkers, a philanthropist whose family foundation has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Salt Lake City’s KCPW, in today’s Deseret Morning News. Denkers, a major contributor to public broadcasting outlets in Utah through the Stephen G. and Susan E. Denkers Family Foundation, was responding to recent news that KCPW licensee Community Wireless has demanded that Wasatch Public Media, a new local nonprofit, match the bid terms of California-based religious broadcasters.

Get My Vote, a new NPR website presenting user-generated content, launched in public beta yesterday. NPR’s Andy Carvin, who led development of the site, explains the ideas behind Get My Vote and its various elements here.

“NPR’s weakness is that is has too often undervalued the quality of radio-ness in building the organization,” writes Jeffrey Dvorkin, former NPR News exec and ombudsman, in a blog commentary about Ken Stern’s firing as NPR ceo. This was especially the case during the last decade with Stern at the helm, he writes, when NPR recruited “non-radio people” in false belief that “true journalistic legitimacy is found among the world of newspaper reporters and editors.” NPR succeeded in attracting bigger news audiences, but “clarity of purpose of the organization became more confused” and Stern’s vision for NPR diverged from that of stations.

It’s inertia that’s preventing the music labels and other rights holders from setting up a system to legally incorporate music into podcasts, according to David Oxenford of the Broadcast Law Blog. In a Q&A on Hear 2.0, Oxenford says it’s not a simple process to set up fee schedules and make songs easily available for podcasts and other on-demand uses. “There’s no question it should be done. Right now, you have to go through each and every record company and negotiate separately for every song, and for the small guy it makes it almost impossible.”

There’s a bidding war going on for KCPW-FM/AM in Salt Lake City. Current licensee Community Wireless has told former g.m. Ed Sweeney that he needs to match a $3.7 million offer from religious broadcasters if the station is to remain a locally controlled NPR news outlet, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. The Community Wireless board had given Sweeney until March 15 to mount a viable bid for the station. Last week, Wastach Public Media, a newly formed Utah non-profit established by Sweeney, offered to pay $2.4 million for KCPW-FM. “I feel betrayed,” Sweeney tells Tribune blogger Glen Warchol.

The FCC will process its backlog of mutually exclusive applications for noncommercial FM stations by identifying and working through groups of MXed applicants one at a time. First up are MX groups with four or fewer applicants, all 263 of whom are listed here. As of Friday, these applicants have 30 days to negotiate settlements. Afterwards, the commission will apply its point system before awarding licenses, according to this public notice. [Both links are PDF downloads.] The point system adopted by the FCC to evaluate MXed noncommercial applications is explained here and here.

Gravity Medium has compiled a list of news reports and blog commentary on Ken Stern’s exit as NPR ceo. Here’s one that’s missing: Bob Garfield of On the Media interviews Current‘s Karen Everhart on Stern’s troubled relationship with pubradio station managers.

“This is not a coup by Luddite station CEOs who want to stop or slow down effective responses to [the] very types of disruptive change we’ve been trying to strategically accommodate,” writes NPR interim CEO Dennis Haarsager, in a blog post attempting to explain why Ken Stern is no longer at the helm of National Public Radio. Haarsager is responding in part to Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine, who characterized Stern’s ouster as a protectionist takeover by “local yokel” stations that feared his digital distribution strategies. [Be sure to read the comments to both blog entries.] Responding to a request for the NPR Board to explain in more detail why Stern was forced out, Haarsager writes: “I cannot comment in detail on this personnel matter except to say that Mr.

Rocker Andrew W.K. has written a song for public radio’s Fair Game with lyrics based on the words of John McLaughlin, host of The McLaughlin Group. Listen to “McLaughlin Groove” here.

Dick Meyer, editorial director at CBSNews.com, announced yesterday in his online column that he is moving to NPR. Meyer didn’t specify which post he’ll assume, but PaidContent.org reports that Meyer will serve as editorial director for digital media.

Variety reports a change in the top job at Hit Entertainment. CEO Bruce Steinberg is stepping down, and Jeffrey Dunn, a former c.o.o. at Nickelodeon, is taking over. Dunn created Noggin with Sesame Workshop while at Nickelodeon, the mag reports. Hit, a partner with PBS in Sprout, owns Barney and Bob the Builder, among other shows.

The dismissal of talk show host Marc Steiner from WYPR-FM in Baltimore was related to internal disagreements, reports the Baltimore Business Journal. “It became obvious that attempts to resolve disagreements on a variety of matters had failed,” wrote board chair Barbara Bozzuto in an e-mail to WYPR members. “Declining ratings were emphasized as the reason for the show’s cancellation out of a desire to avoid any public discussion of complicated personnel issues.” Steiner tells the paper he was unaware of the issues cited. In the Baltimore Sun, a WYPR board member defends the decision. “Board members were aware that this decision would likely engender a vocal, negative reaction,” writes John Machen.

In a New York Times story on Ken Stern’s departure from NPR, board Chairman and interim CEO Dennis Haarsager downplays the notion that Stern’s undoing was his push to put NPR content on multiple digital media platforms. Haarsager agrees that Stern’s digital agenda didn’t have wide backing within pubradio, but says the digital issue was “not a source of tension” that led to his exit. “[T]here are about 20 different dimensions you evaluate leadership on,” Haarsager tells the Times. NPR has not conducted a national search for a top executive in 10 years and decided to do so “sooner rather than later.”

CEO Ken Stern is leaving NPR, the network’s board of directors announced today. The board did not explain why Stern was leaving, but several unnamed sources suggested reasons to NPR’s own Frank Langfitt. Dennis Haarsager, chair of NPR’s board, is taking over as interim CEO. Washington Post: “NPR Leader Out After Board Clash.” LA Observed has the memo from Haarsager.