Jim Lehrer, co-founder and host of PBS’s NewsHour, spoke April 12, 2005, at the PBS Showcase meeting in Las Vegas, where he accepted the PBS Be More Award. At one point, he refers to CPB’s appointment of a pair of ombudsmen, announced a week earlier. Thank you. It is always a pleasure to be among the professionals who make up my public television family, and have done so for more than 30 years. There are indeed many familiar friendly faces in this room, but few that would have been in a comparable place when I began my life in public television.

CPB announced Friday it will replace President Kathleen Cox, its president for 10 months. She had been predecessor Robert Coonrod’s No. 2 executive and his chosen successor when the CPB Board promoted her, effective July 1, but last week’s terse news release cast her as a temporary hire who was finishing up a series of research projects inspired by a McKinsey & Co. study of public TV she managed for Coonrod. “Last spring, in no small part because of her significant contributions to [implementing the findings of the study], Kathleen Cox and CPB agreed to a one year contract to serve as president and CEO,” the statement read.

“I care about poetry as a place where people are still able to express powerful feelings, and this is rare,” says Garrison Keillor in the Hartford Courant as he discusses his tastes in reading and media.

WFAE-FM in Charlotte has tested two supplemental digital broadcast channels, the first station to do so, reports Radio World.

CPB will have not just one but two longtime journalists as ombudsmen, the corporation announced April 5. Ken Bode, former host of the PBS staple Washington Week in Review, and William Schulz, retired executive editor of Reader’s Digest, will monitor public broadcasting content and serve as liaisons for complaints. Appointed for two-year terms, they will cover journalistic programming whether CPB puts money into it or not, but Chairman Ken Tomlinson, formerly a longtime colleague of Schulz’s at Reader’s Digest, told Current they won’t weigh in on entertainment and educational programs — the Buster lesbian-mommies flap, for example.

From Saturday’s Washington Post, TV critic Lisa de Moraes offers her take on CPB’s Friday evening announcement of President Kathleen Cox’s impending departure: “One of the things you learn as a cub reporter at the Podunk Independent is that when a company puts out a news release at 5 p.m. on a Friday … something big and unpleasant is up. Or, more usually, someone’s out.”

What you are about to read may sound familiar—like the strategy in public radio, with its emphasis on serving a core audience—but it’s an evolution in the thinking of the LeRoys, prominent audience consultants for public TV stations and co-directors of TRAC Media Services. Public television’s cume fell below 50 percent in the 2001-02 season. The portion of the viewing public that samples it in a week — as high as 59.2 percent in 1991 — was down to 47.8 percent a decade later. Fewer and fewer homes are sampling public television’s fare and they’re viewing it less. When cumes and gross rating points decline, stations can lose membership and support.

“Imagine laughing and learning with Elmo, Big Bird and even Oscar any time of the day,” says Sesame Workshop President Gary Knell in a Washington Post story on the launch event for PBS Kids Sprout, the digital programming service for preschoolers in which the Workshop and PBS hold an equity stake with Comcast and Hit Entertainment. As the deadline for public TV stations to sign affiliation marketing agreements with the digital service neared, the Boston Globe reported that WGBH was negotiating for special provisions that would allow it to keep operating its local digital preschool channel.

Bruce Warren, p.d. at WXPN-FM in Philadelphia, has a blog where he links to articles and even shares music files.

The Baltimore Sun profiles “Gerry from Pikesville,” an 81-year-old retiree who has made regular calls to Diane Rehm, Talk of the Nation and local talk shows for almost four decades. “I get a lot of e-mails about Gerry,” says WYPR-FM host Marc Steiner. “People love him and say we should have him on as a guest, and other people say can’t you shut him up?”

NPR’s Rick Karr is seeking funds to produce TechnoPop, a “four-part, six-hour, public-television style series” about the intersection of music and technology.

“Total subscribers at XM and its competitor, Sirius Satellite Radio, will probably surpass eight million by the end of year, making satellite radio one of the fastest-growing technologies ever — faster, for example, than cellphones,” reports the New York Times.

New York’s WNYC has compiled its podcast links on one page on its website.

Barry University intends to transfer ownership of WXEL-TV/FM in Palm Beach, Fla., to New York’s WNET and a community foundation established by WXEL’s local supporters. “WXEL is turning from being university-owned into being community-owned,” says Richard Zaretsky, president of the Community Broadcasting Foundation of Palm Beach County.

“[T]rue diversity won’t come from propping [Ed] Gordon or [Tavis] Smiley up in shows that stand as islands of black culture in a sea of white-focused programs,” writes St. Petersburg Times columnist Eric Deggans. “Public radio needs to stop transcending or targeting and integrate a little more.”