PBS President Paula Kerger, 53, is one of several women (including a 74-year-old bodybuilder!) featured in the Washington Post Magazine’s May 29 cover story on women and aging. “So many people believe that when they get to a certain point in their lives, it’s too late to do something new,” she tells the mag. “I believe that testing the boundaries of what you’re capable of is what aging is about.” Training for and competing in triathalons is one way she’s constantly challenging herself “to do something terrifying,” she says.

Reaction continues regarding PBS’s upcoming experiment to interrupt programming four times an hour for underwriting or promotional spots. In a New York Times story Monday (May 31), feedback came from sources including Alberto Ibargüen, a former PBS board chairman and president and chief executive of the Knight Foundation, which finances pubcasting initiatives. “My first reaction is that in any kind of marketing opportunity, if you give up something that is desirable and differentiates you from your competition, it’s too bad, and that’s what this is,” Ibargüen said. However, he noted, “the people of PBS would not do this lightly.” And Jon Abbott, president of producing powerhouse WGBH in Boston, said that “we have a lot of people who care about the work and care about our way of presenting work; that trust, the values that people place in public media are things that we are very attentive to and respectful of.”

Hackers attacked the PBS website late Sunday (May 29), posting a story on the PBS NewsHour page that dead rapper Tupac Shakur was “alive and well” and exposing username and password information for various PBS staff and stations, all reportedly in retaliation for a Frontline report on Wikileaks. Online mischief makers Lulz Boat claimed responsibility on its Twitter page around 11 p.m. Sunday. It said in a Tweet that the attack was in response to the Frontline documentary “WikiSecrets,” about the leaking of U.S. government secrets to WikiLeaks, its founder Julian Assange and the alleged leaker, former army intelligence officer Bradley Manning.

New Jersey officials are finalizing a deal to allow WNET/Thirteen in New York City to run the New Jersey Network’s television operation, the Star-Ledger is reporting today (May 29). State treasury officials are expected to announce the agreement this week. Sources tell the paper that WNET will incorporate a new nonprofit in New Jersey to manage the operation, and will work with several programmers, including Caucus Educational Corp., the nonprofit New Jersey production company run by Steve Adubato Jr., to provide local content. WNET will pay nothing to the state for the right to run the station. The state network also is auctioning off rights to purchase and/or run the radio operation.

Franklin, Mass., is creating a nonprofit to run the town’s public access channels, reports the local Milford Daily News today (May 29). The town’s Cable Advisory Board hopes to increase public involvement, separate the channel from government entanglements and move it to a larger studio. Comcast stopped running the studio as part of the most recent license agreement the town signed last year. The town has since hired two part-time workers. In the past 10 years, Comcast has stopped running many cable access stations it inherited when it purchased AT&T Broadband, leaving towns to figure out how to keep providing those services, the paper notes.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback signed a $13.8 billion budget Saturday (May 28) for the fiscal year beginning July 1, which includes $1.5 million in operating grants for public broadcasting stations. However, he also warned pubcasting stations that he intends to target the funding next year. He called on the stations to make what he called appropriate preparations for losing their state funding.

The new managing director of news and culture for WGBH-FM/89.7 in Boston is Phil Redo. He’ll guide the overall strategy of the NPR station’s news and cultural programs and oversee WGBH-FM’s editorial partnership with Public Radio International. Redo worked for WGBH as an independent media consultant and was instrumental last year in its purchase of WCRB-FM/99.5, the station said in a release. Redo was formerly vice president and general manager of Greater Media Boston, a five-station FM radio group, and v.p. of operations and strategy at WNYC, New York Public Radio.

Here’s a tantilizing development: a free TiVo for radio. That’s the promise of DAR.fm (for Digital Audio Recorder), a Web site that lists every single radio show on 1,800 AM and FM stations across the country. The New York Times reports that listeners can “search, sort, slice and dice those listings” by genre, radio station or search phrase, then request the program and “shortly thereafter, an e-mail message lets you know that your freshly baked show is ready for listening.” “It lets you time shift, of course, but also presents the entire universe of radio broadcasting in one tidy menu,” it adds.

Public media stations are producing live webcasts from two major music festivals this Memorial Day weekend. New Jersey’s WFMU returns to Barcelona, Spain, for the Primavera Sound Festival, presenting two days of live concerts that began at 3 p.m. ET today with Suicide, the influential protopunk duo. (Listen and chat with other music fans here.) Seattle’s KEXP and NPR Music launch three days of coverage of the Gorge Amphitheatre’s Sasquatch Music Festival tomorrow at 3:25 ET. This is the first time that NPR Music has taken its web listeners to Sasquatch. In addition to KEXP, three radio stations are participating in the festivalcast: KUT in Austin, Texas; Oregon’s OPB Music; and The Current from Minneapolis.

After the University of Central Florida Board of Trustees approved the new WUCF-PBS on Thursday (May 26), “a small crowd at the meeting applauded loudly and cried out in celebration,” according to the Orlando Sentinel. “We see this as an opportunity to step up and serve the community in a new way,” said Grant Heston, UCF’s assistant vice president for news, information and UCFTV. “We look forward to finalizing this with PBS in the coming days.” The university is partnering with Brevard Community College in Cocoa. BCC operates public TV station WBCC, a secondary PBS station. Through an exisitng partnership with UCF, BCC broadcasts UCFTV. 

The University of Central Florida Board of Trustees today (May 26) gave its approval to become the PBS licensee for Orlando, the Orlando Business Journal is reporting. WUCF-PBS will launch when current affiliate WMFE-TV stops broadcasting July 1, following its sale to religious broadcaster Daystar. The deal includes a one-time, $1 million cash infusion to the station for HD. Both UCF and BCC already operate their own TV stations and would create content for the channel. UCF will commit $380,000 a year in personnel to the station.

Florida public broadcasters are reeling after Republican Gov. Rick Scott vetoed all public radio and television Community Service Grants today (May 26). That’s a loss of nearly $4.8 million in the next fiscal year, WMNF in Tampa reports. The governor kept funding for the Florida Channel, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the legislative sessions and Supreme Court hearings, Janyth Righter, executive director of Florida Public Broadcasting Service, tells Current. “Elimination of state funding will inevitably lead to the loss of programs, services, and jobs in communities across Florida,” the pubcasting group said in a statement, adding that “supporters of local public broadcasting stations across the state are deeply dismayed” at the governor’s decision.

Eight persons showed up at a WMFE Board of Trustees meeting Wednesday night (May 25) to voice concerns about sale of the PBS affiliate’s license to religious broadcaster Daystar. One was former Democratic U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson. “People spoke out against the sale,” Grayson told the Orlando Sentinel in an email. “I told them that they should ask for an FCC hearing on the transfer, and they should solicit competing offers from local groups that want to continue public broadcasting.” Station President Jose Fajardo also told the paper that proceeds from the $3 million sale “will help pay for any money that will need to be reimbursed to state or federal agencies.”

KCET in Los Angeles raised $70,495 during its May 24 live televised benefit for Japan, 100 percent of which will go to relief efforts in the regions most affected by the earthquake and tsunami disasters, the station says. L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made a special appearance during the three-hour primetime show, which will be rebroadcast locally from 3 to 6 p.m. Saturday. KCET is working with U.S.-Japan Council to disburse funds to NGOs in Japan. Above, from left, KTLA’s Frank Buckley and actress Lily Mariye with Villaraigosa, L.A. Deputy Police Chief Terry Hara, actor George Takei, and U.S.-Japan Council’s Bryan Takeda during the telethon.