Pubradio producer Hillary Frank channeled her experiences during a difficult pregnancy into parenting podcast The Longest Shortest Time, which recently completed a successful Kickstarter campaign and landed a series of high-profile sponsors. Frank is a contributor to This American Life, Marketplace and other programs, and has written three novels for young adults. She began producing and self-distributing her podcast in 2010 while caring for her infant daughter, whose “sunny-side up” reversal in the womb rendered her mother unable to walk for months after giving birth. “I just felt like I couldn’t be the mom that I wanted to be,” she said of her convalescence and recovery.

After a combative online exchange with CPB Ombudsman Joel Kaplan over a perceived conflict of interest between his political aspirations and his role as president of an NPR-affiliated public station, Marshall Miles of WHDD-FM/AM in Sharon, Conn., temporarily resigned from his pubcasting job Oct. 15. Miles, who until last week ran the station that calls itself “Robin Hood Radio,” recently decided to run for a seat on the Region One Board of Education, which oversees a largely rural district in northwestern Connecticut. After local critics complained that Miles’s candidacy conflicted with his work as a pubcasting manager, Kaplan agreed with them in an online column published Oct.

Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Forest Whitaker are among the stars scheduled to appear on a series of hourlong entertainment roundtable interviews to air on PBS SoCal in December, co-produced by the station and The Hollywood Reporter. The upcoming Hollywood Reporter Roundtables, moderated by the publication’s Executive Editor Matthew Belloni and Features Editor Stephen Galloway, each feature six Oscar contenders. Actors kick off the series, followed by episodes with directors, writers and producers. The trade publication debuted the series online in 2005. Participants discuss their careers, personal lives, industry trends and pet projects. “PBS’s highly engaged audience is a perfect match for the quality, gravitas, fun and insight that the roundtables consistently deliver,” Hollywood Reporter Editorial Director Janice Min said in today’s announcement.

NPR plans to unveil tomorrow the name of the on-air talent who has been chosen to voice its underwriting credits as a successor to longtime announcer Frank Tavares. “The NPR Announcer will become the voice of all NPR national funding credits for broadcast and digital content,” wrote Eric Nuzum, v.p. of programming, in a Oct. 21 memo to public radio station leaders that was obtained by Current. “We think listeners — and sponsors — will find her engaging.” Though Nuzum wasn’t divulging the identity of the new announcer, he did reveal that the network has chosen a female. Listeners will begin hearing her announcements next month in NPR newscast and online credits, Nuzum wrote; she will take over voicing of all credits later.

Caryn Mathes, g.m. of WAMU-FM in Washington, D.C., will assume the same post at KUOW and Puget Sound Public Radio in Seattle on Jan. 2, 2014, licensee University of Washington announced today. Mathes replaces Wayne Roth, who announced his retirement in May. WAMU licensee American University also released a statement today, saying that under Mathes’s leadership, the station expanded to seven radio stations and four Internet streams and enhanced its news coverage and original programming. She inherited a $9 million operation in 2005 and grew it to $22 million. Mathes also led WDET in Detroit from 1984-2005, and served as assistant vice president of university communications at Wayne State University, also in Detroit, from 1989-91.

New York’s WFUV has expanded its music mix and dropped NPR newscasts, with a goal of enticing more listeners to become members. Starting this month, the Triple A station broadened its playlists and added more local music to its lineup. Listeners might now hear musicians such as Prince, the Clash and Arcade Fire in close proximity, while classic artists such as Aretha Franklin, Queen, and Hall and Oates are still represented. WFUV is also featuring more new music as it aims to buttress its reputation for introducing listeners to up-and-coming artists. Program Director Rita Houston and her colleagues were happy with recent growth in WFUV’s audience, from an average–quarter-hour share of 0.2 in spring 2012 to 0.4 a year later.

The FCC has set a new deadline for applicants seeking licenses for low-power FM stations, agreeing to keep its filing window open until 6 p.m. Nov. 14. After the federal government resumed operations last week, several organizations that assist low-power FM radio stations appealed to the commission to extend its window for accepting LPFM applications. They sought to adjust the time frame to accommodate aspiring licensees who had been hindered in preparing their applications by the government shutdown. The FCC initially planned to accept LPFM applications Oct. 15–29, but the shutdown postponed the window’s opening until Oct. 17. An extension would provide time “for advocates and volunteers to communicate the new deadline to the public,” wrote the low-power radio advocates in their Oct.

Programs produced by Chicago’s WBEZ, New York’s WNYC and Miami’s WLRN won awards from the Third Coast International Audio Festival, handed out Oct. 20 at the organization’s Filmless Festival in Chicago.

Local USA, a 13-part documentary series focusing on “story, character, region and place,” premieres today on the World Channel. The half-hour series, a co-production of WTTW in Chicago and World Channel, showcases stories from pubTV stations nationwide, as well as independent productions. Each episode may contain multiple short segments, or just one or two films. One episode, “Death and Dying,” profiles a respectful embalmer in Toledo, Ohio; a dying woman in Brooklyn who is planning her final dinner party; and an urban philosopher in Memphis. The stories “build on one another to provide not only a better understanding of the overall topic, but also of what unites the U.S.

Online-news nonprofits and public broadcasters took home multiple awards from the annual Online News Association conference, held Oct. 17–19 in Atlanta.

WESA-FM in Pittsburgh is marking the 75th anniversary of the infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast with a live performance of the H.G. Wells story — this time, set in its own city. The pubcaster is partnering with local theater troupe Bricolage for the event, at 9 p.m. Oct. 30. On that date in 1938, an episode of the CBS Radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air, directed and narrated by Orson Welles, created panic among listeners who believed the U.S. was under really attack by Martian invaders. The Bricolage performance will feature WESA’s Paul Guggenheimer, host of the newsmag Essential Pittsburgh.

Following legal pressure from another public media outlet, Twin Cities Public Television is rebranding its younger-viewer outreach initiative five months after its initial launch. Andi McDaniel, manager of TPT’s Open Air project, announced Oct. 15 on the project blog that the network would be changing the name, citing “the fact that there are other public media brethren entities using the name” as one of the reasons behind the change. In July, Colorado Public Radio filed a trademark infringement and violation suit against TPT in federal court over use of “Open Air,” which is also the name of a Denver-area Triple-A music station that CPR has operated since 2011.