How did Colin Campbell, an art school grad who designs landscapes for a Baltimore video game firm, end up hosting Oregon Public Broadcasting’s archeology show Time Team America? As he tells The Baltimore Sun: “I worked as a resident assistant, and before that as a desk monitor for a freshman dorm. And the guy who employed me in both of those roles eventually left MICA and went on to work in Portland, Ore. And the show’s producers … happened to call him asking if he knew anyone who would be good for this show, and he gave them my name.

The descendants of a U.S. general from the War of 1812 are requesting his exhumation, in part to inspire production of a PBS documentary about him, according to The Calgary Herald. Zebulon Pike was killed when retreating British and Canadian troops intentionally blew up a munitions depot during the April 1813 capture of present-day Toronto. His remains were moved to a military cemetery in Sackets Harbor, N.Y., but subsequently reburied. The Pike family would like to prove their ancestor’s resting place as well as bolster a worldwide genealogy project tracing his DNA to modern-day Pikes. “We believe there will be significant cultural, historical and economic upsides to the village, including national exposure and increased tourism from the film,” said Pike Family Association veep Stu Pike in letter to citizens of Sackets Harbor requesting permission for the exhumation.

Here’s a nice exclusive for PBS: President Barack Obama will present a message to the nation on the network’s A Capitol Fourth celebration. The statement will include congratulations to Sesame Street as it celebrates 40 years. The longtime fave Fourth of July show, this year featuring big names including Barry Manilow and Aretha Franklin, airs live from the Capitol from 8 to 9:30 p.m. Eastern on Saturday; check local listings.

Starting Aug. 3, University of Florida’s WUFT-FM is discontinuing classical music to run NPR news and talk. The station also will expand local news reported by students, according to The Gainesville Sun. Its longtime nickname, Classic 89, is being dropped. The changes also will take place at sister station WJUF-FM/Nature Coast 90 in Citrus County. The station’s ratings drop as much as 70 percent at 9 a.m., when NPR’s Morning Edition ends and classical music begins.

WHTJ in Richmond, Va., has shrunk from five employees to just two–both of whom work from home, reports The Hook, a weekly newpaper in Charlottesville. The station recently closed its office across from City Hall, and g.m. D.J. Crotteau left June 5, according to the paper. WHTJ is part of the Community Idea Stations, which are owned by the Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Corporation. The station offers one local program, but “we don’t really need a studio for that,” station spokeswoman Lynn McCarthy-Jones told the paper. “We don’t need to do that in-house.”

Nine positions, or 14 percent of the workforce, are gone at Iowa Public Radio. A statement from CEO Mary Grace Herrington said the move completes a reorganization that began with the merger of three pubradio groups into a state network (Current, January 2005 and September 2008). Several employees will take early retirement, and others are being offered severance packages. Four of the nine are vacant slots. The reorganization also includes shifting staff into other areas.

The Watchdogs at Pocantico conference, “Building an Investigative News Network,” has wrapped up in Tarrytown, N.Y., and attendees from nearly 30 media outlets are heading home. But before they departed, they signed onto the Pocantico Declaration. It recommends preparations begin immediately to form the Investigative News Network. The network will “aid and abet, in every conceivable way … the work and public reach of its member news organizations.” The steering committee will begin fund-raising work, and create an Investigative News Network website. “What is clear in this Pocantico Declaration,” the treatise concludes, “is that we have hereby established, for the first time ever, an Investigative News Network of nonprofit news publishers throughout the United States of America.”

Time for the PBS ombudsman’s Mailbag column. Michael Getler received a letter from a viewer upset about the PBS Board’s sectarian programming decision. The writer’s request: “Re the no religious broadcasting … please then remove Wayne Dyer from your begathon. He is as New Age as they come.”

The Miami-Dade (Fla.) County Board of Supervisors is the latest entity to take on Arbitron’s Portable People Meters. On Tuesday the board adopted a resolution to “ensure that the ratings methodology used by the Portable People Meter ratings system designed to measure radio station listenership does not under-represent minority radio listeners.” That’s the alleged problem that is drawing so much attention to the ratings devices. Broadcasting & Cable also reports that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee plans to investigate the devices. In its defense, Arbitron contends it has been refining and improving the meters with suggestions from members of Congress, the FCC, the industry and other interested parties.

The second Public Radio Tech Survey, a web-based analysis of listeners, runs for three weeks starting July 27. It will explore new media and technology use among pubradio listeners nationwide, as well as by market. Last year more than 70 stations took part, generating some 30,000 interviews. The project is coordinated by Jacobs Media, which calls itself “the largest radio consulting firm in the United States specializing in rock formats.” Partnering in the survey are NPR, the Integrated Media Association and Public Radio Program Directors.

Public broadcasters are in the impressive mix of forward-thinkers this week at the Aspen Institute’s fifth annual Ideas Festival. Here it is, only Day 1, and Frontline e.p. David Fanning had this great quote: “Public broadcasting has always been at war with itself. I don’t need to tell you about Yanni at the Acropolis.” Fanning also detailed ideas for turning the public broadcasting system into a journalistic powerhouse. James Fallow of The Atlantic is keeping tabs on the activities, providing “slightly-longer-than-Twitter-scale real time summaries of what is going on.” Other system insiders brainstorming at the sessions include Kurt Anderson of PRI’s Studio 360, Paula S.

KUAC/AlaskaOne is shrinking its staff by a third due to a $450,000 budget deficit, according to The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Two employees are gone effective tomorrow, the start of KUAC’s fiscal year. Five long-vacant spots “are no longer on the books,” Gretchen Gordon, the station’s director of development and outreach, told Current. Also, two full-time positions are now part time. One of the new half-time jobs is the station’s marketing slot. “That may also impact our ability to cultivate and solicit donations, because our presence in the community is going to be effected,” Gordon said. All the changes reduce the staff to 19 employees from 28.

PBS filmmaker Ken Burns is asking residents of Oklahoma to share their personal stories of the Dust Bowl for an upcoming documentary The Dust Bowl (w.t.). The Oklahoma Network is helping him gather the recollections. In a personal message to the people of the state, Burns said he thinks the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, when severe drought affected crop production and created huge dust storms, “is an important event in all of American history.” He adds that his production company, Florentine Films, is in the early stages of research but that the state “will be a major part of the Dust Bowl story we want to tell.”

PBS announced yesterday that public TV’s new classroom service will be called the PBS Digital Learning Library. The project, discussed in earlier Current articles, was previously called EDCAR (Education Digital Content Asset Repository). The searchable trove of “learning assets,” including short videos and games, will be customizable by stations and searchable and tagged for compliance with state teaching standards. PBS made the announcement at the National Educational Computing Conference in Washington.

In a Q&A with The Boston Globe, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (right, NOVA photo) reveals how he came to host NOVA ScienceNOW. “After their inaugural season, in which I had been interviewed multiple times, they needed a new host,” he recalled. “They knew what I looked like, what I smelled like–metaphorically–and so my name sort of rose to the top.” And who’s the toughest interviewer of all his ongoing media appearances? Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report, followed by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, both on Comedy Central.