Frontline‘s authoritative baritone, that uber-narrator Will Lyman, is one of Rolling Stone magazine’s “Best Characters and Most Memorable Scene-Stealers” for the fall TV season. Rolling Stone dubbed him “The Voice.” As Frontline Executive Producer David Fanning told the mag, “Will Lyman could read the phone book and make it feel like it’s important to the country.” Other honorees include Leopold “Butters” Scotch from South Park and the awkward teenage vampire Jessica on True Blood.

Kentucky Educational Television last week (Sept. 9) laid off 13 employees, the Lexington Herald-Leader is reporting. Network spokesperson Tim Bischoff declined to identify the employees. The paper said KET’s full-time staff is now 152, down from 223 during fiscal 2008. “That’s clearly left some voids in very critical positions,” he said. Bischoff noted that KET operating revenue has declined from from $27.8 million in fiscal 2008 to a projected $23 million for fiscal 2011. In that same time, state general funds to KET have fallen from $15 million to $12 million.

Legendary film critic Roger Ebert returns to Chicago’s WTTW, original home of the pubcasting fave At the Movies, in January 2011 with Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. This time around, Ebert is producing. Co-hosting will be Christy Lemire, film critic of The Associated Press, and Elvis Mitchell of KCRW’s The Treatment. In addition to reviewing new releases, the two will comment on new media, classics, on-demand viewing and genres, and there’ll be more on the show’s website. The program will use the famous (and copyrighted) “Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down” format invented by Ebert and his longtime collaborator, Gene Siskel, who died in 1999.

Bill Kling will retire from Minnesota Public Radio and the American Public Media Group, the public radio network and national production company that he founded, built and ran for more than 40 years, APM announced today. Kling, whose commitment to improving public radio service for listeners extended beyond Minnesota and encompassed both news and music formats, plans to leave APM in June 2011 to develop a new initiative aimed at building public media’s regional news services. “Most c.e.o.s count their years in office on the fingers of one hand,” said Randall Hogan, MPR and APM board chair and c.e.o. of Minnesota-based Pentair, Inc.

Take a gander at a few of the best web sites in pubTV, as per pubmedia blogger Chris Beer, who’s also a developer with WGBH Interactive. Sites Beer liked the most had “a mix of good design aesthetic, highlighted local content, and some element of current-ness.”

Made-for-Internet programming is covered for the first time under a new collective bargaining agreement unanimously approved by the Writers Guild of America for public TV writers. A guild statement Wednesday (Sept. 8) also said the contract preserves payments for digital reuse. WGA employees working at WGBH, WNET and KCET will receive rate increases of 2 percent in the second year and 2.75 percent in the third and fourth years of the four-year agreement. Writers at “numerous other, smaller production companies that produce content for PBS” are also covered, according to the statement.

PBS NewsHour has posted a new web page, PBS NewsHour Politics, with stories, video and analysis on daily political developments. There’s a morning blog, top 25 political Twitter feeds and interactive calendar of political events. The program’s David Chalian, Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff will also be there in a web-only Monday daybook previewing news of the week.

CPB Chief Operating Officer Vinnie Curren joined BBC Trust Chairman Michael Lyons, European Broadcasting Union Director General Ingrid Deltenre and NHK Japan Vice President Yoshinori Imai for a keynote session Wednesday (Sept. 8) to open the huge annual IBC media confab in Amsterdam. Indian Television reports that Curren spoke on the importance of localism to public service broadcasters, and cited Wisconsin Public Television’s LZ Lambeau (Current, June 7, 2010) as one good example. The IBC calls itself “the premier annual event for professionals engaged in the creation, management and delivery of entertainment and news content worldwide.” More than 45,000 participants from 140 countries attended last year’s meeting.

Judith Lewis has resigned as executive director of the Mississippi Authority for Educational Television, nine weeks after Mississippi Public Broadcasting abruptly dropped Fresh Air from its radio schedule July 8, citing “recurring inappropriate content” in the show. In the announcement of her departure, the Authority Board of Directors said it is in the process of filling the position. “Business as usual continues at MPB,” it added. The July 8 move was the the second time in nine months that MPB had yanked Gross’s cultural talk show from the air (Current, July 26, 2010). Also, an MPB reporter’s leak to a local alternative paper of the internal memo discussing the Fresh Air situation cost him his job.

In a statement issued yesterday, WAMU General Manager Caryn Mathes responded to the perceived conflicts of interested cited as examples of questionable journalistic ethics in Tuesday’s Washington Post. The Post pointed to personal and business relationships of Program Director Mark McDonald, who is married to Melinda Wittstock of Capitol News Connection, a D.C.-based news bureau that produces news segments airing on WAMU. He also operates Pundit Media Consulting, a media training service. McDonald disclosed the conflicts of interest in accordance with WAMU policy and is recused from all editorial and business decisions regarding Capitol News Connection, and his consulting practice is separate business from Pundit Productions, the parent company of CNC that Wittstock owns, Mathes said in the statement.

Freakonomics co-author Stephen J. Dubner, American Public Media and New York Public Radio are joining to present “Freakonomics Radio” this fall, according to a press release from American Public Media Group posted on the Romenesko journalism website. The statement said the show will include “radio, podcast, web and live event programming imbued with the best-selling book’s iconoclastic approach to everyday economics – an approach that has found new ways to catch terrorists (hint: they don’t buy life insurance), and found the answers to questions such as, ‘Which is more dangerous: A gun or a swimming pool?'” It will initially be offered biweekly, then weekly in early 2011.

Chicago Newsroom, a new weekly roundtable featuring a panel of local journalists and newsmakers, premieres Thursday (Sept. 9) on Chicago Access Network Television — in the wake of longtime Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s Tuesday (Sept. 7) announcement that he will not seek reelection. Heading up the new show is Ken Davis, former talk show host and program director of Chicago Public Media WBEZ-FM (91.5), who also spent seven years as director of the city’s Municipal Television system. Chicago Newsroom will also stream live here.

In his career in the media niche of instructional television, Mykalai Kontilai worked with several respected names in public broadcasting as well as parts of Scholastic Inc., one of the world’s largest producers of educational materials for children and classrooms. Two of these key relationships for Kontilai or Teacher’s Choice, the ITV sales company where he was a major marketing presence, fell apart abruptly and after a matter of months — those with a past education chief of NETA and a former CPB finance exec. Kontilai finally left the ITV field after Scholastic ended its business relationship in 2006 because, a spokesperson told Current, the company was “dissatisfied with Mr.

KABF, the Arkansas community radio station audited by CPB’s Office of the Inspector General last year after a whistleblower complaint, may be subject to financial penalties of nearly $53,000 for mishandling CPB grant monies and over-reporting underwriting income in fiscal 2007. KABF didn’t comply with requirements for open meetings and open financial records, for example, nor did it maintain an active community advisory board, according to the IG. It also failed to provide public information required by the Communications Act, such as Equal Employment Opportunity disclosures and donor lists. The Little Rock station, long controlled by the left-leaning, grassroots organizing group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), lacked internal controls to verify the accuracy of its financial records and track how CPB aid was spent during the fiscal year examined by auditors, according to an IG report that described KABF as “materially noncompliant” with CPB requirements.