NPR is teaming up with New York’s WNYC to make its trivia and quiz show Ask Me Another into a weekly offering, starting in January. The show’s 13-episode pilot season has aired on 150 stations since its launch in May. As a new co-producer, WNYC will contribute to shaping the show’s creative direction. Taping of 25 new episodes will start in November at the Bell House in Brooklyn, where the first season was recorded in front of sold-out audiences. Ask Me Another will also travel to five cities yet to be determined for additional tapings. The show will be free to stations.

Twenty local news projects backed by foundations were awarded $3.67 million in matching funds today (Sept. 5) as winners of the Knight Community Information Challenge. Initiatives include the New Jersey News Collaborative, with partners Montclair State University and New Jersey Public Radio, backed by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation; New Orleans pubradio station WWNO and the Greater New Orleans Foundation; and TheNewsOutlet.org, a multimedia investigative journalism site run by college students and professional editors supported by the Raymond John Wean Foundation. “These foundations join the 80-plus community and place-based foundations who are leading by informing and engaging the public on issues they care about,” said Trabian Shorters, vice president/communities for Knight Foundation.

Israel “Izzi” Smith will be the new director of programming at NPR, starting in November. He replaces Eric Nuzum, now vice president of programming, who announced the hire in a memo to NPR staffers today (Sept. 5). Smith has worked as a pubmedia consultant for almost 15 years, helping to introduce and manage projects including Radiolab, PRX’s The Moth Radio Hour, State of the Re:Union with Al Letson, and the Public Radio Talent Quest with PRX and CPB. “Izzi is a true ‘connector,’ always trying to link good ideas, people, and stations to serve audiences in bigger, more inclusive ways,” Nuzum said.

The St. Joseph County (Ind.) Board of Commissioners has approved financing a public access television station, to be operated and managed by local public TV station WNIT, reports the South Bend Tribune. The board authorized spending $155,000, or about 30 percent of the total necessary, over the next five years on the project. South Bend will provide $280,000 and Mishawaka, $75,000. The station will broadcast public meetings and other content related to government and education on channel 99. Angel Hernandez, WNIT vice president of production, is setting up the station, which includes creating a community advisory council. Hernandez anticipates an October launch date.

Steve Edwards is leaving WBEZ-FM in Chicago after 14 years to become deputy director, programming, at the University of Chicago’s new nonpartisan Institute of Politics, an organization for students interested in public-service careers that is led by Democratic political consultant David Axelrod. Edwards’s last day is Sept. 21, reports Time Out Chicago media critic Robert Feder, noting that with Edwards’s resignation, “Chicago radio lost one of its most brilliant and talented stars.” Last February Edwards premiered The Afternoon Shift, a live, two-hour weekday call-in program. Previously he had anchored the Eight Forty-Eight weekday news show, as well as served as director of content development and program director.

WNET in New York City is offering an arts and culture content management sharing system for video and web content, mainly among Major Market Group (MMG) stations. The first package of programming is being delivered to stations today (Sept. 4). Content will cover performing and visual arts and feature interviews with a geographically diverse and creatively broad group of artists, writers, composers and performers, “allowing local arts and culture institutions and local funders to get their stories out to a national audience,” the station said in an Aug. 27 announcement. Each half-hour broadcast package will include a line-up, script, video segments, credit roll, music and graphics, sent three weeks prior to air.

In his latest column, PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler considers a recent flap involving PBS NewsHour correspondent Gwen Ifill, who on Wednesday tweeted in support of fired journalist David Chalian. Chalian, the Washington bureau chief for Yahoo News, was fired after he said that Mitt Romney was “happy to have a party with black people drowning,” referring to the Republican National Convention starting as Hurricane Isaac approached New Orleans. Chalian was unaware that his microphone was on, and the comment was broadcast. Before joining Yahoo, Chalian had worked as the NewsHour’s political editor. “I can understand Ifill’s wanting to go to bat for a friend and colleague,” Getler wrote, “but my personal view is that this was a big mistake on her part, feeding, unnecessarily, a conviction among many critics and reflecting poorly on PBS.

Utah Education Network, the only public TV licensee to receive a federal broadband grant and to join the national US Ignite project to develop broadband apps, has appointed a Utah school superintendent, Ray Timothy, as its c.e.o. and executive director, effective Oct. 1. Timothy is superintendent of the Park City School District, former super of the rural Millard County district and a former deputy super of the state Office of Education. He succeeds Mike Petersen, who took a faculty position with Utah State University. Since Petersen left in January, the network’s interim chief has been Eric Denna,  co-chair of the UEN Board and chief information officer of the Utah System of Higher Education and the University of Utah.

This month Philadelphia’s WXPN launched the Mississippi Blues Project, a concert series and website featuring eight musicians who have had limited exposure outside of their home state. “We wanted to bring awareness to a somewhat obscure form of blues from Mississippi,” said WXPN’s Bruce Warren, executive producer of the project and assistant station manager, in a Philadelphia Inquirer article. “The Delta blues is always the foundation of the blues. We wanted to focus on … dozens and dozens of incredible blues guys and women who rarely play outside of juke joints and areas of rural Mississippi.” The concert series kicked off Aug.

The man behind the voice of Sesame Street‘s Count von Count is gone. Jerry Nelson, who worked with Muppets creator Jim Henson early in his career, died Thursday at age 78. Nelson also played Gobo Fraggle on the 1980s Henson TV series Fraggle Rock. Jim Henson Co. C.E.O. Lisa Henson said in a statement that Nelson “imbued all his characters with the same gentle, sweet whimsy and kindness that were a part of his own personality. He joined the Jim Henson Co. in the earliest years, and his unique contributions to the worlds of Fraggles, Muppets, Sesame Street and so many others are, and will continue to be, unforgettable.”

WNYC in New York will launch Gabfest Radio, a one-hour program combining edited versions of two popular podcasts led by editors of online magazine Slate, with two weekend broadcasts. The move is a fast turnaround for WNYC, which first announced the program and collaboration with Slate in a Tuesday press release. Slate‘s Political Gabfest, which began in 2005, is hosted by website editor David Plotz,  chief political correspondent John Dickerson and senior editor and legal correspondent Emily Bazelon. Its Culture Gabfest, which originated in 2008, is hosted by deputy editor Julia Turner,  movie critic Dana Stevens and culture critic at large, Stephen Metcalf.

First came WYPR’s pledgecats. Then, WBEZ’s cats posing as pubradio personalities. Now, cute kitties have invaded the KCRW studios for its latest pledge pitch. There’s an appearance by on-air personalities at the Santa Monica, Calif., station, including Steve Chiotakis, afternoon news anchor, as well as a cameo by a very famous author (we won’t spoil it for you). But the real, multiple stars are the oodles of cute, adoptable kittens from the Best Friends Animal Society in Los Angeles. Cuteness abounds.

After a delay earlier this month, KUT-FM in Austin, Texas, has purchased KXBT, a commercial station now broadcasting classic rock at 98.9 FM. The $6 million deal was approved by the University of Texas System Board of Regents today (Aug. 23). The new KUTX will operate as a noncom music station, with KUT switching to all news. The new formats will begin sometime this fall, following FCC approval of the deal. “Music is part of Austin’s DNA,” the station said in an FAQ on its website. “We see an opportunity to deliver an all-music service focused on the Austin Music Experience.