CPB today announced funding for new statewide Ready to Learn projects. Six pubTV stations will work with state education agencies to provide early childhood education resources and services, according to a CPB statement. Funds will foster those partnerships to integrate RTL digital media resources into pre-K through second grade classrooms and other learning environments, such as child-care settings and after-school programs. Efforts will especially target children from low-income families. Included are KQED, San Francisco; Georgia Public Broadcasting; Iowa Public Television; KTWU, Topeka, Kan.; Maryland Public Television; and WMHT, Troy, N.Y.

John Boland, PBS’s first chief content officer (Current, June 26, 2006), will leave the network after three years to return to California at the end of the year. PBS head Paula Kerger made the announcement to the system yesterday. She said in a letter to g.m.’s that Boland told her of his plans to return to California several months ago. PBS has retained executive search firm Spencer Stuart “to work closely with [COO] Michael Jones and me to identify an individual who can help us build” on Boland’s work; no word as to whether the title and responsibilities will remain the same.

WGBH’s One Guest Street studios have hosted celebs from cellist Yo-Yo Ma to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson to ’80s rockers Duran Duran. But this was a first: On July 17 the studio was the backdrop for a wedding photo shoot. Photographer and WGBH member Rachel Hadiashar chose the locale because she’s “quite taken with the colorful design of the building,” she said. That’s her photo above. Wouter (the groom, completing his doctorate in Theoretical Physics at MIT) and Eileen (the bride, who teaches English as a Second Language in Boston) said they were were delighted with the building, as their wedding followed a blue theme.

News that Omaha’s KVNO, a full-time classical music station, will begin airing live sports coverage in August has prompted a backlash among listeners of the public radio station licensed to the University of Nebraska at Omaha. “There were audible gasps in the hall” during a recent chamber music concert when Oboist Darci Griffith announced that sports broadcasts were coming to KVNO, the Omaha World-Herald reports. “Those people were KVNO fans, and no one had bothered to tell them,” Griffith said. The schedule change will provide a new source of income for the station because UNO’s athletic department will pay the station to carry its football, hockey and basketball games.

Gary Knell, president of Sesame Workshop, will testify before the Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday at a hearing examining the Children’s TV Act, reports Broadcasting & Cable. The 1990 Act established a three-hour weekly minimum of educational and information children’s programming, and addressed advertising limits in the shows. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will head the proceedings in his first appearance on the Hill in his new post.

Young@Heart, the award-winning 2007 documentary about a spunky chorus of hip senior citizens, will have its television premiere during the fall/winter 2009 season of Independent Lens on PBS. The critically acclaimed film takes viewers inside seven weeks of rehearsals with the members of the Young@Heart Chorus of retirees as they prepare for a concert in their hometown of Northampton, Mass.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard professor and longtime PBS doc producer, was arrested last Thursday trying to force open the locked front door of his home, according to The Associated Press. Cambridge, Mass., police were called that afternoon after a woman reported seeing a man trying to pry the door open. The police report states an officer asked Gates to identify himself and Gates refused, called the officer a racist and said repeatedly, “This is what happens to black men in America.” According to the police report, the 58-year-old professor told officers, “You don’t know who you’re messing with.” An Associated Press followup, which includes Gates’ booking mugshot, added details of allegations that the arrest is part of a pattern of racial profiling in the city.

PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler’s column today focuses on journalistic credibility, citing both the Washington Post’s recent lapse on “pay for access” salons, as well as a recent Bill Moyers Journal episode on health care. One guest on that show was Wendell Potter, senior fellow with the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). Moyers is president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, which had funded CMD as recently as 2006. The column includes two lengthy replies from Moyers.

From 2001 to 2005, newsman Walter Cronkite, who died last week, contributed occasional essays to NPR. Now listeners can hear those once again on an NPR tribute page featuring the pieces.

American Public Media’s Marketplace should dump Monsanto sponsorship, writes blogger Delores M. Bernal on News Junkie Post. Bernal contends the firm produces and sells “dangerous poisonous chemicals” and allowing Monsanto to underwrite the popular news show “is irresponsible and it goes totally against what the purpose of listener-supported radio is all about!” She’s calling on listeners to contact APM to demand it “put the interest of readers first.”

With backing from CPB, Radio Bilingüe is beginning to develop and test programming for a new multiplatform public media outlet to launch in Los Angeles next year, though the project still has not nailed down a radio frequency.

WHRO, a dual-licensee in Norfolk, Va., covering the Hampton Roads area, is opening a satellite studio in Williamsburg. The studio, in operation on Aug. 3, will cost more than $1 million for equipment, licensing fees and repeaters. The two-story building has a small studio, a conference room for community groups, and office space.

Austin City Limits is a hot commodity based on a cool brand built over 33 years on PBS. In two years it moves its entire production site downtown in the Texas capital city to a cornerstone 2,500-seat theater in a $300 million redevelopment.

NPR is working on three or four web audio players for different brands of smartphones. And the company behind the Public Radio Bookmark gadget is positioning its new iPhone player as the one that puts stations first.

Jim Lehrer will interview President Barack Obama Monday afternoon at the White House, according to NewsHour. Their conversation, touching on healthcare reform, the economy and the war in Afghanistan, will be seen on that evening’s show.