The Independent Television Service today announced grants to eight documentaries from its Diversity Development Fund. The annual call for submissions resulted in 114 applications to the initiative, which provides research and development funding to producers of color to develop single documentary programs for public television. Selections include “The G-Force” by Pamela Sherrod Anderson, about grandparents raising grandchildren; “Africa Town” by Kathy Huang, on the migration of Africans into China; and “Metal Road” by Sarah Del Seronde, exploring the historical links between Navajos, traders and the railroads. A full list of films is here.

Joyce Slocum, chief administrative officer at NPR, takes over as president and c.e.o. of Texas Public Radio Jan. 6, the San Antonio-based station announced today. Slocum, a Dallas native, will be only the third leader in the station’s 30-year history. During her five years at NPR headquarters, Slocum also served as general counsel and, for nine months in 2011, as interim president and c.e.o. “We will certainly miss her at NPR,” said Paul Haaga, NPR acting president, “but are thrilled she is staying in the public radio family.” Prior to joining NPR, Slocum served as general counsel at HIT Entertainment, a producer of children’s television programming, and as supervising attorney at Dallas-based 7-Eleven.

Like many Americans of a certain age, WBUR producer Alex Ashlock remembers key details of Nov. 22, 1963, the day when President John F. Kennedy was shot. As an eight-year old boy growing up in Durham, N.C., he recalls being glued to television news coverage of the assassination. “I’m old enough to remember what happened on Nov. 22, 1963,” Ashlock said. “I followed the coverage all weekend long.” Now, 50 years later, Ashlock is planning a special broadcast of WBUR’s Here & Now that will incorporate “close to real time” coverage of the assassination. Since the midday show is produced live during the same window in which the shooting occurred, the Nov.

Nine Network in St. Louis is partnering with the local Feast Magazine on Feast TV, a unique culinary show. Filmed in Producer Catherine Neville’s home kitchen, each program links segments on regional food news with a cooking demonstration that progresses through the half-hour magazine. “This medium lets viewers meet the farmers, the chefs, the brewers and winemakers who make up our culinary industry,” said Neville, also Feast Magazine publisher. Feast TV had been airing on the local Fox affiliate, said Terri Gates, Nine Network spokesperson. “Because it fits in with two of our focus areas — community life and lifestyle and entertainment — we invited the Feast team to move the series to Nine Network.”

WQED and the Allegheny County Airport Authority today announced a partnership to re-launch classical music programming by local artists for the Pittsburgh International Airport and Port Authority subway stations. Content on “Q the Music: Pittsburgh Classical Network” will be provided digitally from WQED’s Oakland studios. It’s an update of the former “Classics on the Move” music programming, which had been funded by PPG Industries through 2010. The Airport Authority will sponsor content for one year, with WQED working to secure additional underwriting later. Similar music programs are rare among airports nationwide, the announcement noted, due to broadcasting rights and other issues.

Foundation support for media-related activities increased 21 percent between 2009 and 2011, according to a study that examined how private philanthropies responded to the increased fragmentation of the media landscape. Grants for traditional public media organizations grew at a slightly slower rate than other categories of media grantmaking, from $100 million in 2009 to $118 million in 2011, an increase of 18 percent. Yet major stations such as New York’s WNET and Minnesota Public Radio are among the top recipients of philanthropic aid. “Growth in Foundation Support for Media in the United States,” released Nov. 12 by the Foundation Center, is a comprehensive look at the scope and size of foundations’ investments in media.

Pop Up Archive, an online sound library backed by a 2012 Knight News Challenge funding, launches this week. Co-founders Anne Wootton and Bailey Smith write in a Knight blog post that their original goal “seemed simple: to help audio producers organize their archives and create searchable sound. As we launch Pop Up Archive publicly, our goal has grown much bigger. We want to make it easy for all storytellers to find and reuse recorded sound.” Partnering with Public Radio Exchange, they’ve made thousands of hours of sound searchable through auto-transcription, auto-tagging and sound management tools. Content comes from “collections big and small,” such as Pacifica Radio Archives, Illinois Public Media and writer Studs Terkel.

Five pubcasting stations are receiving a total of $1 million in grants from CPB to expand emergency alert and communications services. CPB announced the grants today to WSKG in Binghamton, N.Y.; Maine Public Broadcasting Network; Vegas PBS in Nevada; WGBH in Boston; and Twin Cities Public Television in St. Paul, Minn. Each will work with community partners and other pubmedia entities to acquire or develop digital wireless technology to assist first responders, emergency-management agencies and the public during disasters. Using pubmedia digital broadcasting technology, officials can send emergency information through text, audio and video. CPB is requiring participating stations to share what they learn with the entire pubcasting system to increase the initiative’s impact.

Together, WGBH and the LOC will digitize and store more than 40,000 hours of content.

Boston’s WBUR announced today that Christopher Lydon will rejoin the station to host and produce a weekly hourlong show, Open Source with Christopher Lydon. Bostonians last heard Lydon on WBUR when he hosted The Connection, a nationally syndicated interview show, from 1994 to 2001. He and much of his staff left WBUR in a bitter public dispute over ownership of their show, and Dick Gordon replaced him in the host’s chair. Lydon returned to the airwaves in Boston earlier this year as a contributor on WGBH. The new WBUR program will launch in January, airing Thursdays at 9 p.m.

MetLife Foundation has pledged $20 million over the next five years to Sesame Workshop, the two announced today, to create financial educational content for low- and moderate-income families with young children around the world through digital media, broadcast, community outreach local events and seminars. World Bank research shows that more than 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day, most lacking access to basic financial services that could be the key to a more hopeful future. The two organizations will build a coalition of local partnerships worldwide to help deliver the content. The new initiative is planned to reach up to 10 countries and is expected to launch in 2014 in Brazil, China, India and Mexico, expanding later to Europe and the Middle East.