Children now have their own “augmented reality” educational mobile app from PBS Kids. The Fetch! Lunch Rush App was created by WGBH in Boston and is based on its PBS Kids Go! series, Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman. “Augmented reality is becoming a popular marketing tool and a compelling feature for gamers, but no one has fully explored what this could mean for educating children,” said Jason Seiken, PBS’s s.v.p., interactive, product development and innovation, in a statement. Augmented reality blends a physical, real-world view with computer-generated sensory input including sounds, video or electronic graphics. In the app, star Ruff Ruffman takes the lunch order for his studio crew.

Texas Public Radio’s KSTX/89.1 FM reports that Jim Leonard, an on-air host for 17 years, died Nov. 10 of complications from a heart transplant he received in September. Leonard was 61, and had battled heart disease for decades, the station said in a statement on its website. “First and foremost, Jim Leonard was one of our best voices on KSTX,” said Texas Public Radio’s Nathan Cone, director of classical programming, who worked with Leonard for more than a decade. “He was sharp at writing copy for air, and adept at handling the pressure of hosting our local broadcasts of All Things Considered and Morning Edition.

To the Point host Warren Olney is under fire for his Nov. 11 talk show linking the child sex abuse scandal at Pennsylvania State University to barriers that prevent same-sex couples from becoming adoptive or foster parents. “This entire broadcast was utterly worthless, embarrassing, and completely unacceptable,” wrote Gawker’s Seth Abramovitch in a scathing critique posted on Friday. After the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to objected to the program, Olney apologized for the misunderstanding and promised further discussion of the topic today. GLAAD has also requested that producing station KCRW and distributor Public Radio International remove the Nov.

PBS is a signatory to an international joint declaration, announced at 11 a.m. local time today (11/11) at the Future of Broadcast Television summit in Shanghai, calling for worldwide cooperation among over-the-air (OTA) television broadcasters to define requirements, unify standards and promote technology sharing, in order to benefit both developed and underdeveloped countries and conserve resources. According to Advanced Television, a European media news site, the declaration stated in part, “We need to explore new ways of cooperation, seek the progressive unification of standards, and realize technology sharing so that the efficiency and convenience enabled by digitization will be realized — not reduced by system fragmentation.

Joaquin Alvarado, senior vice president for digital innovation at American Public Media, is one of two new members on the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Board of Directors, the nation’s oldest independent nonprofit investigative reporting organization announced Thursday (Nov. 10) on its California Watch website. Alvarado and Gabriel Stricker, director of global communications and public affairs at Google, join the board “at a critical time,” the organization said. Over the past three years CIR has grown from a staff of seven and budget of $1.7 million to a staff of 32 and budget of nearly $5 million. Its editorial output during that time has included more than 40 major investigations (most developed for multiple formats and published or broadcast in more than 300 outlets) and more than 1,400 blog entries and Daily Reports.

The New York Times is reporting that longtime public broadcasting talk-show host Charlie Rose will co-host a new version of CBS’s The Early Show. The new two-hour show, expected to be announced next Tuesday, “will defy the gauzy conventions of morning television,” the newspaper predicted, emphasizing a hard-news and conversational approach like Morning Joe on MSNBC and The View on ABC. Rose will join another new co-host, Gayle King, who hosts a talk show on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network, and current hosts Erica Hill and Jeff Glor. CBS declined to comment on the record about the changes. Rose declined to comment for the latest story but previously said he would “not under any circumstances” end his PBS show because of added Early Show duties.

In Washington, D.C., Jennifer Lawson’s successor as g.m. of Howard University’s WHUT-TV is Jefferi K. Lee, a 30-year TV veteran with 17 years at the D.C.-based cable network Black Entertainment Television. Lawson, who was the top program exec at CPB and PBS in the 1980s and ’90s, returned to CPB as program chief early this year. Lee served as BET’s executive v.p. of network operations and programming and in other roles while the cable network expanded to 24 hours, added new channels, built a corporate campus in D.C., and went public on the stock market. Since leaving BET more than a dozen years ago, Lee headed his communications consulting firm, Lee Productions, and, during the homeland security rush, served as chief exec of Bio-Defense Research Group Inc.,

I can’t tell you how glad I am to be here.  Or maybe I can.  Last Friday, after filming in Washington for our new series, I was waiting at Union Station for the train back to New York when a woman about my age approached me with a quizzical look on her face. She asked: “Weren’t you Bill Moyers?” “Once upon a time,” I answered. She said, “I’ll be darned . . . I didn’t think you were still with us.” “Well, I think I am,” I answered.  I guessed that she was a news junkie, so I said: “Maybe you have me confused with other on-air journalists, old-timers like David Brinkley.

PBS International announced today it has signed a multi-year broadcast and distribution agreement with China Educational Television (CETV) in Beijing, part of the country’s ministry of education that operates five TV channels and 11 IPTV channels. It will provide a weekday primetime slot for PBS-branded programming on CETV-3, a series titled Clear View produced and presented by Chinese anchor and producer Jim Fang that will premiere in January 2012. “This is, by far, the largest deal we have done in China,” Tom Koch, PBS International’s vice president, said in a statement. CETV’s distribution arm, Beijing Zhongxian Media, will be PBS International’s sales agent in China for its library of more than 500 hours of documentary, children’s and lifestyle programming.

Bill Moyers, speaking at the American Public Television Fall Marketplace going on this week (Nov. 9-12) in Memphis, today called for a “makeover” of the public broadcasting system, “a rebirth, yes, of vision, imagination, and creativity, but above all a structure and scheme for the 2lst century,” beginning with a weeklong brainstorming convention of station managers, programmers, producers, viewers and other interested parties. “We could even stream it live on every public station website in the country,” he said. Currently, public broadcasting in America is “just hanging on, leaking away, fraying at the margins; scrambling year by year to survive, hoping all the while for what in an era of trillion-dollar deficits and austerity will never be — more and more funding from Congress,” Moyers told the crowd.

The next International Wildlife Film Festival, May 2012 in Missoula, Mont., will honor Nature executive producer Fred Kaufman with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Media. Janet Rose, IWFF festival and executive director, told the Realscreen doc news website, “I cannot think of a more worthy recipient. Nature, the television series, and Fred Kaufman as its driving force and guide, have helped to expose millions of people worldwide to the brilliance and inspiration of nature.”

For the first time, NJTV, the new incarnation of the New Jersey Network, presented a live newscast on Monday (Nov. 7) and also aired live election coverage Tuesday, reports The Associated Press. NJTV general Manager John Servidio said the station has “done the best we can with what we have” and broke into programming to run live several times in the past month, including coverage of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s endorsement of 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and during the October snowstorm. “I think if you look at the first show we aired on July 1 until now, you’ll see a pretty big curve of growth,” Servidio said.

KCET in Los Angeles, the largest independent pubTV station in the country, has revealed the initial lineup of its new original series produced with a $50 million investment from Eyetronics Media & Studios in Encino, Calif. (Current, Aug. 16). All five shows, highlighting life in Southern California, are available for distribution both domestically and internationally. The programs are Ocean Alive with host Jean-Michel Cousteau, in a program that “combines the beauty of Southern California and the glamour of Hollywood with the powerful message of conservation”; Department of State, a public affairs show with a rotating group of global media correspondents; California Game Changers, profiling innovative industries, inventors and their products; Classic Cool Theatre, which draws on Eyetronics’ large library of vintage Hollywood films, beginning with the 1945 film noir classic Detour; and Retrostory, using Eyetronics’ library of historic newsreels for a bi-weekly documentary on social phenomena, influential political and entertainment figures and revolutionary technical advancements of the 1900s.

Four new American Indian radio stations are on the air across northern Minnesota, reports Minnesota Public Radio. The stations, in Callaway, Nett Lake, Cloquet and Cass Lake, all benefited from a new Federal Communications Commission policy that gives tribal entities priority for radio frequencies that cover tribal lands, MPR notes. Loris Ann Taylor, president of Native Public Media, said 90 percent of tribal members nationwide don’t have access to broadband Internet, and about one-third don’t even have basic phone service. The stations “come from different angles,” Taylor says. “There’s not one single template. All the stations will have different needs; it all depends on what’s happening locally and on the ground.”

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS today (Nov. 7) announced the 11 public television stations that will serve as demonstration sites to test math and literacy content developed through Ready To Learn’s Expanded Learning Through Transmedia Content initiative. The project features video, online games, mobile apps and off-line activities using PBS Kids characters. The stations: Detroit Public Television; Iowa Public Television; Eight, Arizona PBS;  KBTC in Tacoma, Wash.; Maryland Public Television; Montana PBS; Vegas PBS; WFSU, Tallahassee, Fla.; WGBY, Springfield, Mass.; WNET/Thirteen, New York City; and Cleveland’s WVIZ/PBS ideastream. The stations will introduce the new Ready To Learn content, funded by the U.S.