Connecticut Public Television this month kicks off a 24/7 sports channel running high school, college and other sporting events throughout the state. CPTV Sports will debut on Comcast and Cox cable systems, and expand to over-the-air and additional cable outlets early in 2012, the station said in an announcement (PDF). Coverage will include more than 40 schools and organizations, with mainstream sports (baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer) as well as auto racing, cheerleading championships, and Special Olympics. Future programming brings rugby, softball, cricket and roller derby, along with sports-related shows on topics such as sports medicine. Bob Yalen, formerly with ESPN and ABC Sports, is channel director.

Yahoo News is reporting that it has hired PBS NewsHour’s political editor, David Chalian, as its Washington bureau chief. Chalian came to NewsHour in July 2010 from ABC News, where he won an Emmy for his role in coverage of President Barack Obama’s inauguration. At NewsHour, he directed political coverage across  broadcast and digital platforms, as well as managing editorial content from the program’s congressional, White House, and Supreme Court beats. He also appeared in political webcasts on the Online NewsHour and developed additional digital political content. Chalian will start at Yahoo News on Nov. 14 and report to Will Tacy, executive editor.

Several pubcasting groups are part of the new Future of TV Coalition, just announced by the National Association of Broadcasters, which “unites organizations that have expressed concern that legislative and regulatory initiatives currently under discussion in Washington could jeopardize the future of over-the-air broadcasting.” Pubmedia members include the Center for Asian American Media, MHz Networks, Native American Public Telecommunications, Pacific Islanders in Communications and Vme Media. Vme’s founder and president, Carmen DiRienzo, spoke at the luncheon Tuesday (Nov. 1) announcing the initiative. “Digital television is a huge, free and important part of the digital future,” she said. “Its absence would diminish the amount, quality and diversity of voices, thought and experience that Vme and other networks like it provide.”

NPR announced today (Nov. 2) that Audie Cornish will spend one year as co-host of All Things Considered, as Michele Norris steps down while her husband works for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. Cornish will move from her Weekend Edition Sunday hosting gig to ATC in early January — a spot she recently took over from Liane Hansen, who retired in May. NPR is conducting an internal search for a one-year host for Weekend Edition Sunday. In a note to staff Nov. 1, acting Senior Vice President of News Margaret Low Smith said: “While it was a tough decision to move Audie (albeit temporarily) from a program she has quickly made her own, her skills and experience make her the ideal person to step in.

Bluegrass Underground, the unique public TV show recorded live 333 feet below ground at Cumberland Caverns in McMinnville, Tenn., has caught the attention of  The Associated Press (via Huffington Post). Radio broadcasts from the venue have aired since 2008 on Nashville’s country music stalwart WSM-AM. Now PBS is distributing concerts in HD video and Surround Sound, produced by a partnership of the production company Loblolly Ventures, PBS member station WCTE in Cookeville, Tenn., and Emmy-winning producer Todd Jarrell. The series is recorded in the Volcano Room, a 500-seat venue carved by water over the past 3.5 million years. The series strays somewhat from purist bluegrass, with Season 1 acts including Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, Darrell Scott, 18 South, Mike Farris and the McCrary Sisters, Cherryholmes, Justin Townes Earle, Mountain Heart, Will Hoge, John Cowan, Monte Montgomery and the Farewell Drifters.

As Chicago’s WBEZ works on plans to double its output of original local news programming, proposed scenarios for scaling up production have fueled speculation over the future of its local flagships Eight Forty-Eight and Worldview. Crain’s Chicago Business cited unnamed sources in reporting that Eight Forty-Eight will go on extended production hiatus as its format is reviewed, but WBEZ chief Torey Malatia says those decisions are weeks – and possibly months – down the road. “The idea here is to add hours — not to take away hours,” Malatia tells veteran Chicago media critic Robert Feder. “Over a period of time, we want to add hours and do more live, original talk during the day.

Funding for OETA — The Oklahoma Network is in a state lawmaker’s bulls-eye for elimination. Rep. Leslie Osborn (R-Tuttle) said she will introduce a bill next year to reduce state aid to the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority 20 percent annually over the next five years. She discussed the plan Tuesday (Nov. 1) before the state House Appropriations and Budget Subcommittee on Education, reports the Oklahoman newspaper. “As long as the public dollars are being put in there, there is no reason for the privates to step up,” Osborn said. “It’s not a matter that this is not a worthy agency, that this is not a worthy program.

Could transparency become as important as objectivity in public media newsgathering? That was part of the discussion last week when a group of public broadcasting leaders, academics and journalists met last week in Madison, Wisc., as part of ongoing work on the Editorial Integrity for Public Media initiative (background, Current, April 4, 2011), writes CPB Ombudsman Joel Kaplan. Among some of that working group’s recommendations are to post entire interviews when an interview is edited for broadcast; to webcast story meetings twice a year so that audiences can gain a sense of the station’s decision-making process; and to disclose all of the grant funding sources on its website.

President Obama has nominated Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel to serve on the Federal Communications Commission. “Filling one Republican vacancy and one Democratic vacancy-to-be won’t change the balance of the commission,” notes Broadcasting & Cable, “which will go from a 3-1 Democratic majority to a 3-2 majority.” Rosenworcel, Senate Commerce senior communications counsel, and Pai, a former FCC adviser, had been considered the top candidates for seat left open by Republican Meredith Attwell Baker and the vacancy coming at the end of this year with the departure of Commissioner Michael Copps.

Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), an outspoken opponent of federal funding for public broadcasting, appears in a new fundraising video for Rocky Mountain PBS, alongside the station’s president, Doug Price. “We don’t see eye to eye on everything about public broadcasting,” Price says to Lamborn, “but I know you and your family have supported Rocky Mountain PBS with an individual gift.” “Yes, that may surprise some people,” Lamborn replies, “because as you know I don’t support federal funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But I do know that Rocky Mountain PBS has a vital role in the marketplace of Colorado media.

Fresh off of public radio pledge-drive season, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution examines compensation packages of top execs of Georgia’s largest pubcasting stations, Public Broadcasting Atlanta and Georgia Public Broadcasting, the statewide public TV and radio network. With a raise that recently boosted his compensation to $280,000, WPBA chief Milton Clipper is the highest paid among them, and four members of his executive team made more than $180,000 in fiscal 2009, according to AJC. GPB’s Teya Ryan receives a base pay of $180,000, but with bonus incentives could earn much as $210,000. Three additional GPB execs earn six-figure salaries. “In its review, the AJC found that Public Broadcasting Atlanta pays its top executives more than GPB does, although GPB is a statewide system with twice the budget,” writes reporter Richard Halicks.

In a reorganization of the University of Houston’s pubcasting stations, top managers John Proffitt of KUHF-FM and John Hesse of KUHT-TV will depart on Dec. 31, according to the Houston Chronicle. The shake-up, announced as commercial broadcasting exec Lisa Trapani Shumate prepares to sign on as c.e.o. of the recast Houston Public Media, was announced yesterday. Proffitt and Hesse, both veteran pubcasters, have been reassigned to special projects until their departure at year’s end. Shumate is a former TV news reporter who most recently directed programming for Houston’s CBS affiliate KHOU. She was appointed last month to lead the pubcasting stations through the merger.

Tom Keith, who created the sound effects for Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion radio show for decades, died Sunday (Oct. 30) after collapsing at his Woodbury, Minn., home. He was 64. The cause of death has not been determined, a spokesperson for the show told Minnesota Public Radio. “The Minnesota Public Radio family is shocked and saddened by the sudden loss of our friend and colleague, Tom Keith,” APHC producer MPR said in a statement. “Tom was beloved by everyone who had the pleasure of knowing and working with him. We will sorely miss his humor, his amazing talents and his friendship.”

America in Primetime, which premiered on PBS Sunday night (Oct. 30) carries underwriting spots for Unilever’s Dove brand produced by the Documentary Group, the team that created the program, and are shot in a style similar to the content, reports the New York Times. “Such crossover producing is increasingly common in commercial television,” the newspaper noted. Creators, writers and actors behind primetime television shows are interviewed in the series, which examines how character archetypes have evolved through the years. Unnamed Dove marketing and public relations executives are interviewed in the 30-second underwriting spots, discussing how the brand strives to relate to changing consumers.

KIXE-TV in Redding, Calif., is launching a television version of the On The House home-improvement AM radio call-in show. KIXE General Manager Mike Quinn tells the local Record Searchlight that the new show, set to debut in January, likened the project to a West Coast version of This Old House, originally produced by WGBH in Boston. Heard on around 200 stations, On The House offers advice from the Carey Brothers, James and Morris, experts in home building and renovation. Their first projects for the KIXE television version will be a remodel of the station’s Redding studio and construction of its new satellite studio in Oroville, Calif.