Greg Schnirring, vice president for radio at CPB, is a finalist for the executive director/general manager post at Iowa Public Television, the Des Moines Register reports. Also vying for the job is Molly Phillips, currently IPTV’s director of communications and community engagement. The IPTV Board will interview the candidates Friday, the report said. Dan Miller, e.d. and g.m. since July 2002, has been with the station for 37 years. He announced his retirement in December 2012 to focus on his health, after receiving a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, according to the Register.

Puppeteer Kevin Clash, who resigned his Sesame Street role as Elmo after multiple charges of sexual impropriety surfaced last year, is seeking to have the charges dropped, according to The Wrap, an entertainment news site. An attorney for Clash filed papers in U.S. District Court in New York on Friday. Clash contends the three lawsuits against him should be dropped because the statute of limitations on the allegations has expired.

The New York Times is quoting unnamed pubTV employees who say that PBS is close to a decision on adding weekend broadcasts of PBS NewsHour for the first time since the show began in 1975. The programs would be produced at WNET in New York City instead of longtime presenting station WETA in Arlington, Va., the report said. The NewsHour employees also told the Times that program producer MacNeil-Lehrer Productions is facing a shortfall of up to $7 million this fiscal year from what had been a $28 million budget. In the proposed deal, PBS would provide $3 million to WNET to produce the weekend shows.

CPB is losing 5 percent of its $445 million appropriation for 2013 due to the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration, according to a memo released by the White House on Friday. The corporation had received previous estimates of either 5.1 percent or 5.3 percent cuts, and is carefully considering how it handles Community Service Grant disbursements to stations. Last November, the Office of Management and Budget told CPB officials that sequestration would reduce its appropriation by 8.2 percent, so CPB tucked 10 percent into 90-day CDs in preparation for cutbacks.

Taking too long to confer 501(c)3 status to startup nonprofit news organizations not only undervalues journalism but also has stymied new approaches to community journalism when they are needed most, according to a report released today by the Nonprofit Working Group of the Council on Foundations. The group was created by the Council on Foundations with a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to study the impact of the IRS’s recent approach to granting nonprofit status to media organizations. The report cites the IRS’s “antiquated” methods of granting tax-exempt status as hobbling efforts to create new media outlets.

During a conference at the U.S. Institute of Peace Feb. 28, the makers of human rights documentaries discussed the techniques and challenges of using modern technology to gain a following for a cause.

The White House has sent two nominations to the Senate for confirmation for openings on the CPB Board, it announced Wednesday. President Barack Obama has nominated Maryland educator Jannette Lake Dates to replace former Board Chair Ernest Wilson, whose term expired in 2010; and put forth Los Angeles attorney Bruce Ramer for a second term. Ramer left the board in 2012.

The fourth season of the Minnesota Public Radio-produced St. Paul variety show Wits, which piloted as an MPR-only broadcast, will be the first debuting in national distribution. All MPR News stations carry the show, as well as “more than a dozen” other stations, according to MPR spokesperson Tara Schlosser. The season premiere, featuring Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me! panelist Paula Poundstone and rock musician Robyn Hitchcock, will tape March 15 at the Fitzgerald Theater — the regular home of Wits as well as A Prairie Home Companion — and be released for broadcast March 22.

George H. Rogers Jr., who worked as development and community relations director at WCET-TV in Cincinnati in the early years of the station, died Dec. 27 at his home in suburban Florence, Ky. His death at age 83 followed a three-year battle with lung cancer. Rogers started at the station, now branded as CET, almost 50 years ago. In 1972, CPB honored him for his work in promotion and development. His daughter Mary Clair Smoot, of Lexington, Ky., told the Cincinnati Enquirer that during her father’s years at WCET, “we eight kids were all enlisted to help ‘rubber stamp’ thousands of envelopes for mass mailings.”

In a new interview, former NPR C.E.O. Ken Stern tells Newsmax TV, a conservative media outlet, that public radio would be better off without federal support. Stern said that the small amount of governmental support the network receives “draws an enormous cost in terms of credibility, focus and the efforts they have to do to maintain that support.” “With that relatively modest funding,” he added, “they’d be smart to actually think carefully about going on their own with corporate, individual, institutional and foundation support.” Stern noted that his experience was in public radio, and he couldn’t address the specifics of PBS funding.

American Documentary, home to PBS’s independent film showcase POV, and StoryCorps, the oral history project heard on NPR, are each receiving $1 million as recipients of the latest round of MacArthur Foundation Awards for Creative and Effective Institutions, announced today. The grants help ensure the long-term sustainability of the winners, 13 organizations in five countries, according to the foundation. “The award is not only recognition for past leadership and success but also an investment in the future,” the Chicago-based foundation said in the announcement. “Organizations will use this support to build cash reserves and endowments, develop strategic plans and upgrade technology and physical infrastructure.”

Former radio host Christopher Lydon will return to the Boston airwaves as a weekly contributor to Boston Public Radio, a daily local news/talk show on WGBH-FM. Lydon will appear on the show Thursdays to discuss current events with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan, who debuted as hosts Monday. The duo formerly hosted a show on commercial talk station WTKK in Boston, which switched format last month. WGBH also announced that Emily Rooney, host of Greater Boston on WGBH’s TV channel, will be Friday’s featured guest. Rooney previously served as a Boston Public Radio co-host. “The re-formatted Boston Public Radio program reflects the continuing evolution of 89.7 and the growing WGBH News team, which draws significantly on the expertise of staff across radio, television and the web,” WGBH said in a press release.