Scott Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, is holding a free taping of a pilot episode for an experimental radio variety show, Scott Simon’s Wonderful Town. The taping will take place Feb. 26 at the bar Bell House in Brooklyn, N.Y., where NPR’s pub trivia program Ask Me Another is recorded, and will feature comedian Jim Gaffigan, musician Julian Velard and other guests. Tickets are already sold out. NPR spokesperson Emerson Brown told Current the taping is “an experiment,” and that while Simon and the network’s programming staff are likely to tape one more event based on feedback from the Feb.

Andrew Russell, a veteran pubcasting executive with more than 18 years’ experience at both PBS and CPB, is moving to PBS SoCal in Orange County, Calif., as chief operating officer. “Andy brings vast experience in strategic programming content, new business development, and digital, interactive media for public TV and radio, making him the perfect person to help drive our growth and guide our strategic direction,” said PBS SoCal President Mel Rogers said in the announcement. Russell is currently PBS’s senior vice president for strategy and research. He manages audience and content research and strategy for national programming, as well as corporate strategy.

Up against the ratings powerhouse that was Super Bowl XLVII — PBS’s Downton Abbey not only held its own, but came in second place for the night. PBS and WGBH cited Nielsen Overnight data in reporting that Downton drew a 4.4 household rating Feb. 3.  Average audience ratings for the first five episodes of Season 3 of the Masterpiece Classic miniseries have been 72 percent larger than the viewership of the first five episodes of Season 2, which aired last winter. Nielsen said the Super Bowl, which the Baltimore Ravens won over the San Francisco 49ers, was viewed by an estimated 108.4 million people, making it the third most-watched program in U.S.

PBS “struck social media gold” Sunday night when it tweeted during the Super Bowl’s half-hour power outage that viewers should switch to Downton Abbey instead, reports Paid Content, a site that covers online business models. The tweet read: “This might be a good time think about alternative programming. #SuperBowlBlackOut #WeHaveDowntonPBS.” Kevin Dando, PBS’s director of digital marketing and communications, told the site that the timing was perfect, because the weekly online Downton discussion was taking place. As soon as Dando tweeted the suggestion, “within seconds, we saw hundreds, then thousands, of retweets.” It quickly became one of PBS’s top two re-tweeted posts.

This post was updated at 4:50 p.m. on Feb. 4 Marketplace Senior Business Correspondent Bob Moon is leaving the American Public Media show after his position was eliminated in a budget-cutting move, according to a memo released to Current. Moon, a 12-year veteran with the public radio series covering business and finance news, has served as an occasional fill-in host for Marketplace, Marketplace Morning Report and Marketplace Money. Before joining the Los Angeles-based production in 2000, Moon covered international news for The Associated Press for 20 years; he also served as White House correspondent for the wire service’s broadcast division.

Royal Aills, a former station manager of Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA), is the new general manager of KRSC-TV at Rogers State University in Claremore, Okla. He begins work Feb. 18. He replaces Dan Schiedel, who is now executive director of OETA. Aills spent seven years at OETA, from 1988 through 2005. Since then, he’s worked as general manager of KWBH-TV and the Faith Channel, both Tulsa religious broadcasters. Most recently he was a sales executive with Cox Communications. Branded as RSU-TV, it is one of only six non-PBS member public TV stations nationwide that receive CPB funding, and is the only full-powered pubTV station licensed to a public university in Oklahoma.

Public broadcasting stations are getting into the action with musical and tasty bets on Sunday’s Superbowl XLVII, which pits the Baltimore Ravens against the San Francisco 49ers. WTMD-FM in Towson, Md., has “thrown down the pigskin” to KALW-FM in San Francisco, in what GM Steve Yasko is calling “the biggest musical bet in football history!” If the Ravens win, KALW promises to play Baltimore bands at the end of local news programming for a week. If the 49ers are victorious, WTMD will air bands from the City by the Bay during its Live Lunch for one week. “Not only do we have the better football team,” Yasko brags, “we got the bigger, better Bay.”

Amazon announced today it has struck a deal with PBS to make its online video streaming service, Prime Instant Video, the exclusive subscription streaming outlet for Downton Abbey. Beginning June 18, Prime Instant Video will be the only subscription streaming service where viewers will be able to watch Season 3 of the smash Masterpiece Classic program. The first and second seasons of the show are currently available on Amazon as well as on rival subscription streaming services like Netflix and Hulu Plus, but will migrate exclusively to Prime on an unspecified date “later this year,” according to a press release from Amazon.

The former executive director of Oregon’s Jefferson Public Radio has filed a lawsuit against Southern Oregon University and the Oregon University System alleging blacklisting and breach of contract in his March 2012 dismissal, among other claims. SOU dismissed longtime JPR chief Ron Kramer after a university audit found a conflict of interest between his roles as both head of JPR and as executive director of the JPR Foundation, a related nonprofit that had undertaken restoration of historic properties. Yet the university had previously approved of Kramer’s dual role, the lawsuit claims. According to the lawsuit, SOU first proposed in February 2012 that Kramer should resign as executive director of the Foundation.

PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler is weighing in on the controversy over an underwriter on Nova’s recent program, Rise of the Drones. Earlier this week, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) complained that the report was sponsored in part by Lockheed Martin, which manufactures the unmanned aircraft. In response, WGBH said it “fully adheres” to funding guidelines. Getler writes in his latest column that he’s received around 700 comments generated by the FAIR “Action Alert.” “In cases such as this one,” he writes, “it always seems to me that it is journalistically proper, and much less costly in the long run, to give transparency the benefit of the doubt — when common sense tells you there might be the perception of a conflict or question — than not to do so.”

Michael Sullivan, a television producer whose name has run near the top of credit rolls of Frontline almost continuously since 1987, has exited the PBS investigative documentary series. His position as executive producer for special projects has been phased out due to a funding shortfall that the series’ top executives describe as temporary. The veteran producer oversaw high-profile titles produced by filmmaker David Sutherland, including The Farmer’s Wife, the 1998 epic documentary series chronicling the struggles of a Nebraska farming family, and Country Boys, the 2006 series following two teenagers growing up in West Virginia. Sullivan also spearheaded work on Sutherland’s latest film, Kind Hearted Woman, to be  co-presented on PBS by Frontline and Independent Lens April 1 and 2.

John Howe, senior producer of the Salt Lake City–based station operated by the University of Utah, won four of KUED’s Emmys: three for Five Rivers Five Voices (environment program/special, photographer and writer) and one for Horses of the West: America’s Love Story (director). Nancy Green, Joe Prokop and Cheryl Niederhauser were honored in the historical documentary category for Utah’s Freedom Riders, while producer Carol Dalrymple won for Climb for Life: A Legacy in the public/current/community affairs program/special category. William Montoya, Bill Gordon and Kevin Sweet received Emmys for audio for Utah Vietnam War Stories: Escalation, while Navigating Freedom, produced for KUED by students from Spy Hop, was tops in the student long form category.