Susie Hernandez, a past president of the Public Television Programmers Association, has accepted a newly created position at KQED in San Francisco as associate program director. Hernandez will work under veteran pubTV programmer Scott Dwyer. Most recently she was television program director at Arizona Public Media in Tucson, and previously worked at Independent Television Service in San Francisco in several capacities, including as director of broadcast for more than a decade. Hernandez begins work May 1.

TED, the nonprofit behind the high-profile conferences about ideas in technology, entertainment and design (as well as NPR’s new weekend series), and WNET will co-produce TED’s first original television show this spring. TED Talks Education will tape before a live audience Thursday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The New York City station is partnering with PBS and CPB for the hourlong program of short talks by education advocates on the theme of teaching and learning. TED Talks Education will air nationally May 7 on PBS as part of CPB’s American Graduate high-school dropout initiative. Musician John Legend will host.

Peter Sagal, host of NPR's Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me! and PBS's upcoming Constitution USA, makes an appearance on the latest episode of comedian Marc Maron's WTF interview podcast, posted April 3.

This item has been updated and reposted with additional information. Jane Henson, widow of Muppets creator Jim Henson, died today at age 78 after a long battle with cancer, according to the Jim Henson Co., which posted a tribute page celebrating her life. Jane Nebel first met Henson in a puppetry class at the University of Maryland, where she was studying fine arts education. In 1954, while still an undergraduate, Henson was offered a job on WRC, the local NBC affiliate in nearby Washington, D.C., and he asked Nebel to join him in creating and performing puppets for the show, Sam and Friends.

Startup tech company Aereo Inc. won another legal battle against broadcasters Monday after a federal appeals court upheld an earlier ruling that denied a request for an injunction against the company before trial. In a pair of lawsuits, broadcasters, including PBS and New York’s WNET, and commercial broadcasters including ABC, CBS and NBC claimed Aereo is violating the U.S. Copyright Act. The broadcasters had asked for an injunction against the company before the cases went to trial. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled earlier that an injunction would put Aereo out of business and that the broadcasters were likely to prevail.

The Public Radio Program Directors Association will expand its training programs for stations this year and continue its Sense of Place studies of local audiences, with funding from NPR and the Millstream Fund. PRPD will offer three workshops based on the Morning Edition Grad School classes that it has offered in recent years. “New MEGS” will extend training to all newsmagazines, including All Things Considered and Weekend Edition, and is designed for hosts, news directors and program directors. The first workshop will be offered May 18 in Charlotte, N.C. “JMEGS” (MEGS for Journalists) applies MEGS principles to journalism, focusing on selecting stories, interviewing, writing, planning newscasts and promoting news reports.

You can take a photographic stroll around the Washington, D.C., rowhouse of Jennifer Lawson, CPB’s s.v.p., television and digital video content, thanks to Thursday’s Washington Post. The Real Estate section features a peek inside the 1909 architectural gem that Lawson and her husband Tony Gittens, founder and director of Film Fest DC, had modernized for their empty-nest years. The Post noted that the kitchen and adjacent seating area hold two of six televisions in the home. “I actually need to watch Downton Abbey — it’s my professional responsibility,” Lawson quips.

This item has been updated and reposted with additional information. After more than two decades on the air, NPR’s Talk of the Nation will come to an end in June to make way for the newsmag Here & Now, which will be revamped under a new partnership between NPR and Boston’s WBUR-FM. Talk of the Nation will air its last episode June 28, ending a 21-year-long run. The call-in talk show has helped launch big names in public media, including original host John Hockenberry, This American Life’s Ira Glass and PBS NewsHour’s Ray Suarez. NPR Chief Content Officer Kinsey Wilson said the network decided to end Talk of the Nation because a newsmagazine might pull a bigger audience in midday.

Patrick Butler, president of the Association of Public Television Stations, will be the featured guest on C-SPAN’s The Communicators at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Saturday, with a repeat at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Eastern April 1. He’ll discuss the future of public broadcasting with Communications Daily reporter Kamala Lane, and Communicators host Peter Slen.

Bret Marcus, executive producer of SoCal Connected on KCETLink in Los Angeles, addressed the award-winning investigative program’s future in a statement today. “SoCal Connected is going on hiatus as Season 5 ends this week, although we will continue to be on the air twice a week with some original programming and the best of the season,” said Marcus, s.v.p., news and factual programming. “As happens every year, there are questions about the show’s future. And the answer is always the same. SoCal Connected depends on public funding and we don’t know at this time what that funding will be. We are very proud of what we have accomplished this year, and hope SoCal Connected will be back for Season 6.”

Blue Ridge PBS in Roanoke, Va., is shutting down two transmitters due to state funding and federal sequestration, according to the Roanoke Times. Households in the Tri-Cities region of Bristol, Va./Tenn. and Kingsport and Johnson City, Tenn., and far southwest Virginia, will lose the station’s over-the-air digital signal. About 15 percent of viewers in that area receive its programming through digital antennas or converters. The state cut all funding for pubcasting last year, which meant a drop of about $1 million for Blue Ridge PBS, nearly a third of its operating budget. Sequestration shaved another 5 percent this month.