The Association of Public Television Stations has hired The O Team to lobby on spectrum fees and the upcoming spectrum incentive auction, reports The Hill, citing lobbying disclosure records. Bob Okun, a former NBCUniversal vice president and one-time assistant to ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), will work for the public broadcasting advocacy group. Other Okun clients include the National Association of Broadcasters and Comcast.

I’ve Got Issues, a community affairs program on KTWU-TV in Topeka, Kan., generally concentrates on the big picture: affordable healthcare, teacher pay, terrorism. But for its upcoming “Face Your Fears” episode Wednesday (Oct. 12), it’s exploring the topic of phobias by bringing participants face to face with what they’re most afraid of — such as big spiders and wriggly snakes, reports the local Capitol-Journal. “We’re going to have some fun with it,” VanDerSluis said. “It’s going to be serious and quirky at the same time.” Jared Gregg, coordinating producer, said the topic emerged during a brainstorming session when a staffer admitted being terrified of roller coasters.

WUWF Public Media in Pensacola, Fla., has compiled 12 songs singing the praises of pubradio for its Public Radio Song Project, and is offering the music free to stations in time for fall pledge drives. Joe Vincenza, station manager and program director, came up with the idea about three years ago. “The collection of tunes took a little longer to gather than we originally thought since we were relying completely on the good intentions of the writers to pen, produce, and record a tune worthy of inclusion, without any monetary compensation from us,” he told Current. “A lot of the artists coming through town said they loved the idea, but this group represents the ones who followed through and made the project a reality.”

NPR’s choice of Gary Knell as its next c.e.o. signals that the biggest challenges ahead for public radio are all about funding, not journalism, according to Politico‘s Oct. 9 story on the appointment. By hiring the president of Sesame Workshop, the NPR Board went for a leader with “a long history of both defending the federal funding of public media and raising money,” writes reporter Keach Hagey, who explores whether public radio would be better off without the congressional subsidies it receives through CPB. Hagey quotes Jeff Jarvis, journalism professor and author who advocates for an end to congressional appropriations, even though the change would jeopardize small stations that rely heavily on federal aid.

Music Director Seth Williamson, who had been with WVTF in Roanoke, Va., since October 1983, died Thursday night (Oct. 6) at Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg, Va., following surgery. He was 62. Williamson hosted the daily Morning Classics program as well as the weekly Back to the Blue Ridge, focusing on the traditional acoustic music of the Blue Ridge Mountains. “On the air, Seth was never simply an announcer,” said WVTF General Manager Glenn Gleixner in a statement. “Rather, he was really talking with his friends — about about music, life and nature. He was deeply connected with his audience and that’s how he saw radio, as a personal connection with listeners.”

In case you missed it, NBC’s Parks and Recreation opened with a hilarious two-minute send-up of an NPR interview with character Leslie Knope on Thursday night (Oct. 7). Here’s a link.

WGBH Open Vault, the Boston station’s online media archives and library, has posted raw footage of a May 1990 interview the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. (The final version of the edited interview is here.) NPR’s David Greene hosted a live streaming special on Oct. 6 that remembered Jobs’ life and assessed his legacy. The hour-long special was featured on the NPR News iPhone app and on NPR.org. “We wanted to make sure [the special] could be heard on the devices that Jobs created,” said spokesperson Emerson Brown. NPR.org’s archive of the show, which may be broadcast on NPR member stations, is here.

A Curious George episode titled “Monkey Fever” has Dr. Carl E. Bartecchi, a professor of clinical medicine at the University of Colorado, hot under the collar. “The lack of rational science in that show was appalling,” he writes to PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler. Dorothea Gillim, executive producer for WGBH, responds.

The BBC Trust, in consultation with BBC management, today (Oct. 6) announced proposals including cutting some 2,000 jobs from across the network to save nearly $2 billion annually by 2016-17. The changes “follow a review last year of the future strategy for the BBC,” the Trust said in a statement, “which culminated in Trust approval for four new strategic priorities for the corporation — distinctiveness, value for money, serving all audiences and openness and transparency. The proposals have been shaped by these priorities.” BBC Director General Mark Thompson said the changes would lead to “a smaller, radically reshaped BBC.”

Pulitzer Prize winner Jacqui Banaszynski will lead reporting efforts as collaborations editor for American Public Media’s Public Insight Network, it announced today (Oct. 6). Banaszynski holds the Knight Chair in Editing at the University of Missouri. As a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, she won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for “AIDS in the Heartland,” an intimate look at the life and death of a Minnesota farm couple. She’s also a a former editor for The Seattle Times and The Oregonian in Portland. Banaszynski will work to expand PIN’s editorial team, as well as use the network in her journalism classes to establish a partnership between APM, the University of Missouri’s journalism school and the Donald W.

During an Oct. 4 public meeting on the pending sale of university-owned WBFO-FM to WNED, listeners called for preservation of weekend music programs and local coverage, according to the Buffalo News and ArtVoice, an alt-weekly that questions whether Buffalo will be well-served by the sale of the city’s flagship NPR station on 88.7. WNED, a public TV and radio operation owned by community licensee Western New York Public Broadcasting Association, plans to tailor WBFO’s appeal to Canadian audiences, a service strategy that has been very successful for its public TV station. The Buffalo News estimated that 80 people attended the session in WNED’s studios in downtown Buffalo “with the enthusiasm so great for local public broadcasting that the scheduled 60-minute session ran more than 80 minutes.”

Oregon Public Broadcasting will produce and provide to NPR and PBS stations exclusive coverage of a Republican presidential debate at its studios on March 19, 2012. The debate “will come at a critical time in the campaign,” said OPB President Steve Bass in a memo to stations. “Super Tuesday is on March 6 but delegate counts indicate that it will not be possible for the nomination to be won by any candidate by then. Political observers believe that the nomination contest could very likely go into the late spring.” The Republican National Committee has officially sanctioned the debate, which “virtually assures the participation of the front-running candidates,” Bass said.

The freeform broadcasters of Jersey City’s WFMU are producing the first-ever Radiovision Festival in New York later this month, a weekend-long confab to highlight creativity in radio and technology’s potential to unleash it. On Oct. 29, panelists from WFMU’s own talent roster will be joined by the likes of This American Life creator Ira Glass, media innovator Kenyatta Cheese, and blogger Andy Baio of Waxy.org, among many others, for a day-long symposium on the future of radio. On “Hack Day,” Oct. 30, code-writers, digital story-tellers, musicians and others will “reinvent radio” by using WFMU’s Free Music Archive to create new programs and software applications.

PBS UK, launching Nov. 1 in Great Britain, has hired the Braben firm to handle public relations and boost brand awareness, “as it looks to target ‘upmarket adults’ under the banner ‘where television matters,'” reports PR Week. “Our job is to make the channel famous,” said Braben Director James Matheson. “We will position the channel as a British curator of American content and help it gain the trust and reputation that it enjoys in America.”

Lisa Trapani Shumate is the new executive director and general manager of Houston Public Media, the umbrella organization for the University of Houston’s KUHT-TV and its KUHF (88.7 FM) and KUHA (91.7 FM) radio stations, reports the Houston Chronicle. The university announced plans in January to merge its TV and radio stations, which employ about 165 people, to streamline operations and improve fundraising. Shumate will continue in her current post as director of programming and marketing for local CBS affiliate KHOU until assuming her new responsibilities in November. Previously, she was an executive director at Belo Corp., a Dallas-based company that owns 20 commercial broadcasting television stations and two regional 24-hour cable news television channels.