A new study for NPR identifies a much bigger potential news audience for public radio if producers craft shows to be more lively and conversational.

While our audience stereotypes may be better informed than they were 40 years ago, they can blind us to our potential for growth and change, with equally dangerous consequences. Today there are many indicators that we have room for audience growth on radio if only we expand our view of the potential.

The U.S. Senate on Thursday (Sept. 16) confirmed Dick Lobo, former c.e.o. of WEDU in Tampa, Fla., as director of the International Broadcasting Bureau, reports the St. Petersburg Times. He’ll oversee Voice of America and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which includes Radio and TV Marti; he ran the Cuba office in 1994 and ’95 under President Bill Clinton. The International Broadcasting Bureau is part of the larger Broadcasting Board of Governors, which distributes programs in 59 languages (check out Alhurra Television, serving 22 countries in the Middle East). “We’re trying to get out unfettered news and information about what our country’s role in the world is,” the 73-year-old Lobo said.

In a five-page letter Thursday (Sept. 16), outgoing Minnesota Public Radio and American Public Media founder Bill Kling advises the FCC to ensure a “reasonable cost structure” and redirect Universal Service Funds (currently subsidizing phone access) “toward investment and innovation” for public broadband, reports MinnPost.com’s David Brauer. Kling, who announced his retirement Sept. 10, predicts that “public media’s largest audiences in 10 years will be in automobiles with mobile Internet ‘radios.’ … As the 2011 model cars emerge with mobile Internet ‘radios,’ ISPs and device manufacturers are moving demand from broadcast to wireless broadband.” Kling also suggests that the FCC require ISPs that develop private broadband networks “carry all relevant applications and programming from Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) qualified public service media organizations at no cost to the content producer.”

Remember Kachingle (Current, Nov. 23, 2009)? Seven months ago when the online micropayment service launched it was touted as a potential savior for cash-hungry online news entities. But Columbia Journalism Review checks in and doesn’t find a lot of money Kachingling around. The Kachingle medallions are on about 300 sites but none are major news organizations. The nonprof local news site Chicagotalks has received about $50 total from its 15 “Kachinglers.” The multimedia producer Common Language Project has received $66.70 from 16 supporters. Current checked back with a couple sources from our November 2009 story. “We think Kachingle has a lot of potential, and we have discussed with them how we might implement the service on MinnPost.com.

Hearings continue on the fate of the New Jersey Network. A 10-member panel heard testimony Thursday (Sept. 16) at Stockton College in Pomona on a proposal to cut all state funding to the New Jersey Network’s public radio and television and spin it off as an independent entity. “But after the second of three hearings, it was clear that neither lawmakers nor NJN executives had a solid strategy about turning the broadcaster into a money-maker,” writes the the Press of Atlantic City. At the meeting, Janice Selinger, acting exec director of NJN, said the network assumed that the legislature and governor would come up with a plan.

Where’s the quality American dramas and comedies on PBS? That’s what writer David Pierotti is wondering in the latest Independent online mag of indie production. He admits there is indeed fiction on PBS, but “it all comes with an accent. Every show references ‘queues,’ ‘lorries,’ ‘bobbies,’ ‘bangers,’ ‘blokes” and ‘bollocks.'” Why, he asks, “must the public station of the United States of America rely upon Britain’s hand-me-downs like some destitute street urchin?” He also has a few suggestions, including PBS creating, say, a Law & Order: Pittsburgh. “Why can’t a community entertain its audience while supporting, encouraging and facilitating the development of local talent?”

A competition co-sponsored by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop was announced by President Obama today (Sept. 16) at the White House, according to a press release from the center. The National STEM Video Game Challenge is part of the administration’s “Educate to Innovate” campaign. The contest aims to motivate interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) via students’ passion for playing and making video games. “I applaud partners in the National STEM Video Game Challenge for lending their resources, expertise, and their enthusiasm to the task of strengthening America’s leadership in the 21st century by improving education in science, technology, engineering and math,” the president said.

Penn State Public Broadcasting’s interesting online series, “The Geospatial Revolution Project,” went online Wednesday (Sept. 15) to explore how geospatial information transforms lives. As the site says: “Geospatial information influences nearly everything. Seamless layers of satellites, surveillance, and location-based technologies create a worldwide geographic knowledge base vital to solving myriad social and environmental problems in the interconnected global community.” The first of the four episodes focuses on how the technology aided first responders during the Haitian earthquake relief efforts. The 13-minute video explains how it all works, gives a brief history of the evolution of mapping, and ends with the practical application of crisis mapping and crowdsourcing used after the earthquake.

Public Media Corps (PMC), the New Media Institute’s initiative to extend broadband adoption into underserved communities, has been plugging along since its launch in June in Washington, D.C., reports the MediaShift blog. The 15 fellows and their institutional partners are working in four neighborhoods of predominantly African American, Latino and immigrant communities. Part of the effort focuses on “Cool Spots,” or mobile Internet access hubs, said Jacquie Jones, executive director of the National Black Programming Consortium, which is overseeing the work. “The fellows set up [Cool Spots] at block parties, festivals and outdoor markets and events where the public uses netbooks onsite to complete online surveys and learn more about the PMC,” she said.

The HistoryMakers, the largest archive of African-American recorded interviews in the world — many airing as PBS specials — is celebrating its 10th anniversary by partnering with schools nationwide. Starting Friday (Sept. 17) dozens of personalities included in the interview archives will be visiting their former classrooms to discuss their lives and stress the importance of education. Participants include former U.S. Senator and Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun, returning to her Paul Robeson High School; former Ohio Congressman Louis Stokes, speaking at the former school that was renamed for him and his brother, Carl and Louis Stokes High School; and actress Marla Gibbs (“The Jeffersons”) going to Angela Mesa Elementary School in Los Angeles.

A new morning newsmagazine will debut on Pasadena’s KPCC on Monday (Sept. 20) —The Madeleine Brand Show, airing weekdays at 9 a.m. Brand, a former NPR correspondent and Day to Day co-host, will helm a one-hour program that covers news “using story-telling techniques familiar to radio listeners, but mixed together in a new way,” according to a news release. The show team includes Kristen Muller, who joined KPCC from CBS; Sanden Totten, previously a reporter and producer for Minnesota Public Radio’s In the Loop; and, Steve Proffitt, who was senior producer on Day to Day, one of two Los Angeles-based programs that NPR canceled last year.

The opening of a KAET gubernatorial debate earlier this month — in which current Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer repeatedly stumbles over her words and then simply stops speaking — is approaching 2 million hits on YouTube. KAET g.m. Kelly McCullough told Current that someone saw the debate, posted the minute-long portion on YouTube, local TV stations took note, then CNN, MSNBC and Fox followed. By that time the clip was the fourth most-watched on YouTube, and McCullough was hearing from folks as far away as London. “It’s a good example of the multimedia nature of the world,” as McCullough noted.

A PBS NewsHour producer has helped a Haitian amputee receive a prosthesis, says the TV Newser, a blog in the MediaBistro network. Dancer and choreographer George Exantus lost his right leg below the knee while trapped in rubble following January’s devastating earthquake in Haiti. After viewers saw his story on NewsHour, they wanted to assist. Producer Merrill Schwerin got Freedom Innovations to donate an artificial limb and now Exantus is dancing again.

Launch of Tampa’s new all-classical station WSMR has been delayed due to technical problems at its tower site, according to the Bradenton Herald. “We are very disappointed about this,” says Joanne Urofsky, general manager. WUSF Public Media, which acquired the license to broadcast on 89.1 MHz in Sarasota this summer, didn’t delay the format switch for its FM station in Tampa, which now devotes its daytime grids to news programs and nights to jazz. The classical service debuted today as an HD Radio channel of WUSF and as an Internet stream. Urofsky hopes that engineers will put WSMR-FM on the air within the next couple of days.