Frontline is spending $1.5 million to bolster its ability to manage its news collaborations, which are growing in number as well as importance. Raney Aronson, deputy executive producer, said the investigative showcase will establish a four-person collaboration desk through a three-year, $750,000 grant from the Philadelphia-based Wyncote Foundation. She tapped Frontline’s series budget for matching funds for the desk, which will also concentrate on transmedia efforts. “The way we do journalism has changed,” Aronson told Current. “Frontline is no longer simply a documentary series on a Tuesday night.” More than half of the films and online reports produced by Frontline are done in collaboration with kindred organizations such as the New York Times, NPR, the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica and, more recently, Spanish-language network Univision.

In anticipation of PBS’s appearance this week at the annual Television Critics Association Press Tour in Beverly Hills, Calif., The Associated Press distributed a July 29 story looking at PBS Chief Programmer Beth Hoppe’s ongoing work to cast it as network instead of a public service. As writer David Bauder notes, “There’s a difference between waiting to see what work producers will offer you and actively going out with some of your own ideas.” Hoppe has done that, as well as “tried to make PBS more topical,” with an examination of guns in America that ran a month after the Newtown, Conn.,

Alabama Public Radio will eliminate Public Radio International shows from its schedule, dropping This American Life and The World, reports Tuscaloosanews.com. Director Elizabeth Brock said the decision was based in part on budget concerns. APR will fill the gaps left in its schedule by adding Radiolab and an additional hour of All Things Considered.

The Truth, a podcast of fictional stories whose segments have aired on national pubradio programs, met its fundraising goal for a second 10-episode season.

Michelle Obama is kicking off a special event hosted by Wisconsin Public Television this morning. Appearing in a pre-recorded video, the first lady is welcoming children and parents to the network’s 15th annual PBS Kids Get Up and Go! Day. The event promotes family-friendly ideas on how to stay active, healthy and enjoy the outdoors. “Hi everyone! I’m so proud of all of you young people for joining in with Wisconsin PBS to get up and go,” Obama says in the 30-second greeting. Her own “Let’s Move!” initiative also encourages kids to be more physically active and eat healthy foods.

President Obama's five nominees to the CPB Board were approved Thursday night by the U.S. Senate.

WLAE in New Orleans dropped PBS programming as of Aug. 1. General Manager Ron Yager told Current that the decision to forego PBS membership saves the station around $130,000 annually, allowing it to invest in local productions. As an overlap station, WLAE’s lineup of network fare had been limited by its use of the PBS Program Differentiation Plan (PDP). The primary PBS station in the market, community-licensed WYES, continues to air the full national schedule, although for the next month fans of the PBS NewsHour may have trouble finding the weeknightly broadcast. WLAE and its board first considered dropping PBS affiliation three years ago, when the station lost $270,000 in annual state funding.

American Public Media’s Marketplace introduced a new brand identity aimed at building awareness of its programs among audiences across broadcast and digital platforms. The July 29 roll-out coincided with relaunch of Marketplace.org as a fully responsive, mobile-friendly website. A logo resembling both a stock chart and the letter “M” establishes a shared visual identity for all of Marketplace‘s program strands. The new tagline, “Between economics and life” is to be the centerpiece of a consumer-oriented advertising campaign aimed at readers of The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, LA Times and Fast Company. A second campaign will launch later this year.

Among the new reporters for Al Jazeera America’s 12 U.S. news bureaus are several with public media backgrounds. The New York City–based AJA announced the bureaus and personnel today in anticipation of the network’s Aug. 20 launch. Ash-har Quraishi will be AJA’s Chicago correspondent. Quraishi has reported for WTTW’s Chicago Tonight since 2011. Previously, he divided his reporting time between that program and the Chicago News Cooperative, the nonprofit newsroom that closed in February 2012. Quraishi won a regional Murrow Award for investigative journalism. Jennifer London will report for the network from Los Angeles. London was a correspondent on KCET’s SoCal Connected from September 2011 through March 2013.

Pacifica station WPFW in Washington, D.C., is in “a pretty critical financial situation,” according to Summer Reese, interim executive director of the network. Reese discussed the state of WPFW during a July 25 Pacifica board conference call. Responding to a board member’s question about a WPFW on-air fund drive planned for in September, she said: “The concern there is, frankly, that you don’t have enough money to get through until September.” WPFW has fallen into a “perpetual” state of on-air fund drives, Reese said. “It’s not giving listeners much of a break.” Reese told the board she was following up with WPFW staff about which of the station’s bills must be paid most urgently.

Ophira Eisenberg, host of NPR and WNYC's bar trivia game show Ask Me Another, is taking her saucy memoir to the movies.

American Public Media Group is selling off the for-profit arm of its business that publishes boutique magazines in order to concentrate on its public media offerings, the company announced today.

Northern California’s KQED-TV is revamping its Friday evening public affairs show by reviving a title from its distant past.

A recent PBS Research analysis found that donors who contribute the most money to public TV rarely if ever watch its programming.

Torey Malatia, longtime president and c.e.o. of Chicago Public Media, has resigned effective immediately.