More power means a classical option for listeners around St. Louis

Classical radio in the St. Louis area won’t go away if KRCU-FM gets the power increase and antenna upgrade it wants. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has been in talks since last spring to sell its Classical 99, KFUO-FM in St. Louis, to Gateway Creative Broadcasting, which has two contemporary Christian stations in the state. Music and news KRCU at Southeast State University, 100 miles south in Cape Girardeau, hopes to reach the southern St. Louis market with an improved repeater at KSEF in Farmington. The station applied Sept. 30 to the FCC to go from 9,500 watts to 20,000 watts, the university said in a statement this week.

Emmys honor Biz Report anchor, founder; give pubcasters nine nominations

Lifetime Achievement Awards for Business and Financial Reporting will go to Paul Kangas of Nightly Business Report, and Linda O’Bryon, founder of that broadcast in 1979 and now chief content officer of Northern California Public Broadcasting, according to the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. In nominations announced this week, pubcasters pulled in nods for NewsHour, NOW, Frontline (four), Wide Angle, Nova scienceNOW and the PBS Vote 2008 project. A full list of the Emmy nominees here. Awards will be presented Dec. 7 in New York City.

Experts at Harvard ponder potential "terrible vacuum" of news

A panel of media experts gathered at the Harvard Kennedy School this week for a discussion that “acknowledged both the despair and the hope that journalists feel over the present state of the American news business, rocked by economic turmoil and the rise of the Internet,” according to the Harvard Gazette. One participant was Pulitzer Prize winner Alex Jones, former host of Media Matters on PBS and director of Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and author of the new book, Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy. He said that newspapers create most of the “cumulative reporting” that underlies American journalism, and if they disappear it will create “a terrible vacuum” of information that drives the national conversation, according to the paper. Read more about pubcasting's involvement in the future of news coverage in the Nov. 9 issue of Current.

Sesame gets actual street

The street running through Kiwanis Park in Charleston, Ill., will be permanently renamed Sesame Street on Sunday, according to the Daily Eastern News of Eastern Illinois University in the central-Illinois city. Mayor John Inyart will read a proclamation to kick off a day of activities hosted by pubstation WEIU and a local commercial radio station. Participants are encouraged to dress as their favorite Sesame Street characters, and have a chance to record their favorite moments from the show.