Wayne Roth, longtime station chief at Seattle’s KUOW-FM and a past recipient of CPB’s Murrow Award honoring outstanding contributions to public radio, plans to retire in September. Roth’s influential pubradio career spans 45 years. During nine years on the NPR Board in the 1980s,  Roth “played a critical role in reinventing NPR, moving it from reliance on federal funding and directing those funds to the stations instead,” according the announcement released by the University of Washington, KUOW’s licensee.  His long service on the NPR board included two years as chair from 1988-90. Roth joined KUOW in 1983. During his tenure, the station — which serves Puget Sound, western Washington and Southern British Columbia — has become a pubradio powerhouse.

The competition for midday timeslots on public radio stations is heating up, as Public Radio International and producers of its news programs unveiled plans to experiment with new approaches for combining national and local content to give stations more control over what their local listeners hear during the middle of each weekday.

Is Tom Wheeler, President Obama’s nominee to head the FCC, “a wireless guy” who looks down on over-the-air broadcasting? TVNewsCheck perused Wheeler’s blog, titled Mobile Musings, and found some evidence to that effect. Wheeler, a former lay member of the PBS Board, is the president’s nominee to replace outgoing FCC Chair Julius Genachowski. In one blog entry, Wheeler writes: “When only 10% of households rely exclusively on over-the-air signals (for TV reception) and digital technology can cram most market’s existing signals into a single license allocation, the question gets asked whether there might be a higher and better use for those airwaves.”

Mark Leonard, g.m. for Illinois Public Media in Urbana, takes over as g.m. and c.e.o. of NET in Lincoln, Neb., Aug. 1. He will step into the spot vacated by current G.M. Rod Bates, who is retiring June 30 after 30 years in pubcasting and 18 years of leadership at the station. Leonard’s appointment was announced today by Ken Bird, chair of the Nebraska Educational Telecommunications Commission, who said Leonard “is the right fit for Nebraska and NET.” Leonard has worked at six pubcasting stations over 32 years. In addition to IPM, he was chief administrative officer at KCTS, Seattle; g.m.

In a dispute over an open records request, the University of Kentucky filed a lawsuit against Brenna Angel, a reporter for its own public radio station, WUKY-FM. Angel has been covering problems in the pediatric cardiothoracic surgery program at Kentucky Children’s Hospital, which is operated by the university. The university filed the lawsuit in Fayette County Circuit Court against Angel last week. Angel had requested records related to pediatric cardiothoracic surgery at a university-owned hospital. WUKY is not named in the lawsuit. The school took the legal route after the Kentucky Attorney General’s office issued a ruling that supported Angel’s request for the records.

President Obama has nominated cable and wireless lobbyist Tom Wheeler, a former member of the PBS Board, to chair the Federal Communications Commission.

Audiences of WGBH’s High School Quiz Show can now play against Massachusetts whiz kids through an online game that launched early this month. The Boston station’s digital team developed a browser-based game allowing viewers to play along during broadcasts of High School Quiz Show. The game is based on a technology that has become popular among quiz shows in England. The High School Quiz Show live game is running in its beta version, and will be available through the season’s championship episode, to be broadcast May 19. WGBH developers are testing the game on a total of eight shows this season, according to Hillary Wells, e.p.

NPR launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign backing a special investigative project by Planet Money, its reporting unit that produces multi-platform economics coverage.

The New York Times reveals how PBS is figuring into the series finale of the hit NBC sitcom The Office. (Warning: Spoiler ahead.) The final episode is actually a reunion of the Dunder-Mifflin employees whose lives had been captured by a (fictional) film crew from local PBS member station WVIA. The Times asked Creator Greg Daniels why he chose PBS as the producer of the documentary within the show. “I tried to think what outlet would shoot something like this and take nine years to do it,” Daniels replied.    

Marketing consultant John Sutton has been forecasting what public radio will look like in 2018, and his predictions, published on his blog RadioSutton since February, have been provocative. Sutton is among the pubradio analysts who believe that federal funding “will be sharply reduced or gone in five years.” He also believes that digital listening will fragment the audience enough that eventually NPR will have to raise money directly from listeners or the current public radio economic model will collapse. Below, he lays out a proposal for overhauling public radio fundraising and how it makes both dollars and sense. Imagine a future in which listeners donate 26 percent more money to public radio at half the cost.

Gareth Neame, Downton Abbey e.p., told CNBC that the hit Edwardian drama on Masterpiece Classic will offer a new line of merchandise this year. “We’ll be working across an entire range of products coming out this year,” he said. “From fashion, apparel and homeware and furniture to wallpapers, beauty products and stationary.” Neame said the show has been “extremely cautious” about developing and selling such items. “In retail terms, the first series launched the program and the brand, the second year ratified it and the show didn’t even hit its high point in the U.S. until this year when series three ended in the U.S.,”

Mary Mitchelson, deputy inspector general at the Department of Education Office of Inspector General, will take over as CPB inspector general June 3. She replaces retiring CPB IG Kenneth Konz. The CPB Board selected Mitchelson for the position, which is responsible for promoting economy, efficiency, and effectiveness; preventing fraud, waste and mismanagement in CPB programs and operations; and independently auditing CPB’s internal operations and external grantees. CPB Board Chair Patty Cahill said in Monday’s announcement that Mitchelson “brings a high level of integrity and extensive managerial skills” to the post. Mitchelson has been with the Department of Education’s IG office since 2000.