The Los Angeles Business Journal (no link available) is reporting that KOCE soon will begin programming for Los Angeles audiences, taking on KCET, which went independent from PBS in January. “We need to convince people in L.A. and surrounding regions that we’re not just concerned about Orange County,” PBS SoCal/KOCE President Mel Rogers told the publication. The station is renaming its public affairs show Inside OC as SoCal Insider for the new season in January. “The move will allow KOCE to grow its audience without incurring the production costs of an entirely new program,” the Journal notes.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Dick Meyer downplayed the management turmoil at NPR this year as a factor in his decision to leave his job as executive news editor. The offer to lead U.S. news operations for the BBC was too good to turn down, he explains. “I couldn’t ever think of saying no to an opportunity like this,” Meyer told the Post‘s Paul Farhi. “The BBC is the world’s dominant news organization. It has the same news values as NPR and a global footprint. . . . It might be the only news organization I would leave NPR for.”

Six films funded by the Independent Television Service (ITVS) have been selected to screen at the  Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 19-29, 2012, in Park City, Utah. ITVS domestic co-productions claimed four of the 16 spots in the U.S. Documentary competition and two of the 12 spots in the World Documentary competition. The films are: DETROPIA by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, The House I Live In by Eugene Jarecki, The Invisible War by Kirby Dick, Love Free or Die: How the Bishop of New Hampshire is Changing the World by Macky Alston, 5 Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, and Putin’s Kiss by Lise Birk Pedersen.

Penn State Public Broadcasting is producing and broadcasting a live Town Hall Forum at 6 p.m. Eastern tonight (Nov. 30) for students and university administration to discuss the ramifications of the sexual abuse allegations surrounding former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.  The Town Hall will air on WPSU’s World multichannel with additional feeds provided by WPSU to the Pennsylvania Cable Network and the Campus Cable Network as well as online.

PBS President Paula Kerger spent an hour on KQED’s Forum program Wednesday (Nov. 30), taking listener questions on public broadcasting and its future. She revealed that to raise revenues, PBS is considering a “subscription model” that would enable paying subscribers to have access to “a larger library” of archived material, reports Adam Powell of the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. Kerger said some new PBS programs might be available “for a fee,” which she compared to PBS selling DVDs of shows. Listen to the audio here.

Dick Meyer, executive news editor at NPR, has accepted a new position as executive producer for BBC News, America. His last day at NPR is Dec. 9. A memo from Kinsey Wilson, NPR’s senior v.p. and g.m. of digital media. and Margaret Low Smith, its acting senior v.p. for news, said Meyer was “instrumental in establishing NPR.org as a serious force in digital journalism.” Meyer joined NPR in March 2008 from CBSNews.com. He also produced political and investigative reports for the CBS Evening News, and is author of the book Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium. 

Four public broadcasting stations will participate in a Mobile Emergency Alert System (M-EAS) pilot project funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and LG Electronics to assess the potential of sharing crisis information via Mobile Digital TV services. WGBH in Boston, Vegas PBS and two Alabama Public Television stations (WBIQ in Birmingham and WAIQ in Montgomery) will serve as test markets. “By using terrestrial over-the-air TV broadcasting, rather than cellular network connectivity, M-EAS is expected to meet critical needs for emergency alerts,” a PBS announcement said. The goal is to prove the viability of M-EAS using existing standards, and to create a template for use by all broadcasters, public or commercial.

Gary Knell, former head of Sesame Workshop and incoming NPR c.e.o., will be chatting live on Twitter from 3 to 3:30 p.m. Eastern Thursday (Dec. 1), his first day of work. Hashtag: #nprceo

Veteran pubcasting exec Mark Vogelzang has been appointed president and c.e.o. of the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, operator of statewide public television and radio networks with a budget of about $10 million. He succeeds Jim Dowe, MPBN president since 2006, who is retiring next month. The appointment, announced Nov. 29, comes as Vogelzang completes an interim appointment as g.m. of WBFO-FM, the university-owned NPR News station in Buffalo that’s being sold to WNED, a community-licensed pubcasting operation that serves radio and TV audiences in Buffalo and Canada. The proposed $4 million sale has gained approval from New York state policy makers — including Attorney General Eric Schneiderman — and is now pending before the FCC.

WPSU-FM and WPSU-TV at Penn State University have been tangentially drawn into the ongoing child sex abuse case against former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. Last week, Pennsylvania court administrators who assigned Senior Judge John M. Cleland to handle the charges announced that Cleland had no known connections to the university — but his wife served for 15 years on the Penn State Public Broadcasting Board of Representatives, a volunteer panel advising the university on the operation of the stations, reports The Citizens’ Voice newspaper in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Julie Cleland was on the board from 1995 through 2009, including as chairman and vice-chairman.

Phyllis Campbell, known to public radio listeners in southwestern Ohio as “Mama Jazz,” has died at the age of 89, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. She hosted jazz programming on WMUB in Miami from 1979 to 2006 and became one of the station’s most popular and distinctive personalities during 27 years on the air. “She was feisty as all get-out, passionately devoted to jazz, and unabashedly loyal to her legions of fans,” Cleve Callison, former WMUB g.m., told the Enquirer.

Arizona Public Media is launching a local version of the Create multicast lifestyle channel, to be called Ready TV, starting Dec. 1, reports the Green Valley News & Sun. “Ready TV is very similar to Create but it is programmed locally to accommodate the local Southern Arizona time zone,” said Sue DeBenedette, marketing manager for AZPM. “With Create, it was programmed and scheduled on the East Coast, so that primetime shows did not air in primetime here in Southern Arizona. Scheduling it locally gives AZPM the freedom to program those shows that resonate strongly here in this market rather than being dictated to by a national feed.”

American Public Media has acquired community news funding website Spot.Us, and will incorporate it into the Public Insight Network (PIN), APM announced today (Nov. 29). Spot.Us and PIN each “believe in the power of the independent voice in journalism,” said Joaquin Alvarado, senior vice president of digital innovation at APM. Spot.Us, founded in 2008 with a seed grant from the Knight Foundation’s Knight News Challenge, lets the public fund journalism that is then distributed by newsrooms nationwide; PIN provides journalists with more than 130,000 self-identified news sources through its unique database.

House Republicans today (Nov. 29) released their spectrum incentive auction bill, reports Broadcasting & Cable. It was introduced by Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and is set to be marked up and voted on in the committee Thursday. It would authorize the Federal Communications Commission to reclaim spectrum from broadcasters for auction and compensate them from the proceeds. It also would compensate broadcasters not giving up spectrum for the costs of moving to another channel or sharing channels with another broadcaster, as well as the cost to cable operators of carrying the new signals. A Senate version of a spectrum auction bill has already passed out of the Commerce Committee.

Carmen DiRienzo, founding president and c.e.o. of the Spanish-language public TV channel V-me, has resigned her posts, effective Dec. 31, the network announced today (Nov. 28). She will continue to serve on its Board of Directors. Alvaro Garnica will assume the new position of general manager, with overall responsibility for daily operations. He is g.m. of Plural Entertainment, which V-me describes as its “sister company and primary production partner.” Garnica also spent nine years in programming at Grupo Prisa, a Spanish-language media conglomerate that purchased a significant stake in V-me Media Inc. in October 2009. In today’s announcement, DiRienzo said: “I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to lead a creative, dedicated team of professionals in such a worthwhile venture.