WNET’s new president Neal Shapiro, who came from NBC News, “hasn’t been shy about putting his at times unorthodox stamp on WNET and his own team in place,” write Elizabeth Jensen in a New York Times article about his first year at the station. “Four of the station’s top executives have left,” and Shapiro says a coming restructuring of staff may lead to “change behind the scenes.” The story highlights his focus on local documentary, online video, and a new arts program with him as host. “Mr. Shapiro said he was reveling in no longer chasing Britney Spears interviews and in having an educational department to work with,” writes Jensen, “but he acknowledged that he found the pace at his new employer slow.

WTVP in Peoria, Ill., has struck a new deal with Bank of America to settle the station’s debt, writes station President Chet Tomczyk on the WTVP website. The bank accepted WTVP’s offer to settle the station’s debt at $5.2 million, due by February 28. See Current‘s story on the station’s debt problems here.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard professor and host of the PBS series African American Lives, is heading up The Root, a new online magazine launched this week by The Washington Post Company. The magazine, aimed at a black audience, covers politics and culture and features interactive tools for readers to track their ancestry.

PBS is now offering free multimedia educational content on iTunes U, the educational area of iTunes. Housed in the “Beyond Campus” section, the offerings–video, lectures, interviews, teacher guides–come from KQED, WETA, WNET and WGBH.

The channel swap planned for Colorado Public Radio’s KFCR News and KVOD Classical stations will cut off service to music lovers in Fort Collins and bring competition for news listeners now served by Greeley’s KUNC, reports the Coloradoan.

Rob Lippincott, PBS’s senior v.p., education, is urging stations to invite their states’ chief public school officers to a Council of Chief State School Officers executive summit about educational media (scroll down to third item) in New York March 6, preceding WNET’s Teaching & Learning Celebration. The third annual Celebration, March 7-8, will offer 90 workshops for teachers plus such events as a forum on future schooling, moderated by Judy Woodruff. For info on the summit: Scott Frein, CCSSO, 202-336-7015.

Images of a nude woman’s backside, broadcast in February 2003 before 10 p.m. on ABC stations in the Central and Mountain time zones, prompted the FCC to fine the network $1.43 million, the maximum allowed at the time. “We find that the programming at issue is within the scope of our indecency definition because it depicts sexual organs and excretory organs–specifically an adult woman’s buttocks,” the FCC wrote in a decision issued on Friday.

Electronics manufacturers and retailers will have digital-to-analog converter boxes on store shelves by Feb. 18, said Meredith Baker, acting head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The NTIA, which is running the federal converter box program, also announced plans for special consumer education projects, including a “application completion” week in September in which churches and other community organizations will help people apply for $40 coupons for the converters. As of Wednesday, consumers had applied for 3.7 million of the coupons, the NTIA said. A recent APTS survey found that 40 percent of over-the-air households would rather get their digital TV via converters, as opposed to 12 percent who said they’d subscribe to cable or satellite.

Jay Kernis will leave NPR to become managing editor at CNN, according to the New York Times‘ TV Decoder blog. NPR announced Kernis’s departure internally Jan. 23. Kernis has served as NPR’s senior v.p. for programming for seven years.

Maine’s Humble Farmer, booted from the state’s public radio network after refusing to tone down his political rants, is mounting a return to broadcasting via public-access TV, reports the Kennebec Journal. The Farmer, whose real name is Robert Skoglund, has said that 28 stations plan to air his show or consider it. “I see public access TV as one of the last bastions of free speech, and I really disagree with what happened to him,” said a manager at one station.

Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, which aired as part of PBS’s America at a Crossroads series, has received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature. The Documentary Group production dramatized writings by veterans of the Iraq War in a variety of styles and featured vets from previous wars talking about their experiences. Operation stirred up less controversy than the other Crossroads films (previous coverage in Current) but earned positive attention from critics.

WTVP in Peoria, Ill., is $1.5 million closer to staying in business, reports the (Bloomington) Pantagraph. Several major donors contributed the sum, bringing the station’s outstanding debt to $500,000. As Current has reported, WTVP hit financial trouble after borrowing to build new facilities and failing to reach the fundraising levels agreed on by its creditors.

The steep price of Public Radio International programming has prompted Boston’s WUMB to consider dropping Mountain Stage and Afropop Worldwide, according to the Boston Globe. General Manager Pat Monteith has approached producers of both shows about her dilemma, but they can’t help her. “Their contract won’t allow them to negotiate with us independently and PRI won’t give us a price that’s affordable,” she said. WUMB has been reevaluating its program schedule and branding as part of CPB’s Station Renewal Project.

Frontline producers Rachel Dretzin and John Maggio chatted with Washington Post readers about “Growing Up Online,” their investigation into how social networks, cyberbullying and other Web-native phenomena are transforming childhood.

A partnership to be announced today by the BBC and MySpace will bring BBC content to 23 regional MySpace sites around the world, according to the New York Times.