Lehrer and Ifill to moderate debates

The Commission on Presidential Debates has announced the moderators, schedule and locations for the three presidential debates and one v.p. debate. The Newshour's Jim Lehrer will moderate the first presidential debate on Sept. 26 at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss., and Gwen Ifill, Newshour correspondent and Washington Week anchor, will moderate the v.p. debate on Oct. 2 at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. Tom Brokaw and Bob Schieffer will moderate the last two debates in Nashville and Hempstead, N.Y. 

Online flames over Feulner's legacy

Blair Feulner's exit from KPCW in Park City, Utah, is the "end of a sleazy era," writes Salt Lake Tribune columnist Rebecca Walsh. Some online commenters point to "sleaze" elsewhere. The Tribune also reports that KPCW withdrew its late-filed FCC applications to build six new noncommercial stations. "Part of what you're seeing is the effect that a stronger and more independent board of trustees is having on the direction of Community Wireless," says Joe Wrona, spokesperson and executive committee member for KCPW's licensee.

All FCC indecency policing is bogus, networks claim

In a brief filed today with the Supreme Court, ABC, CBS and NBC claimed that the legal underpinnings of the landmark Pacifica decision and other content regulation precedents are no longer valid, Broadcasting & Cable reports. The filing is in support of Fox in an indecency case that the Court will hear later this year -- the FCC asked the justices to reconsider a lower court's finding that the commission was wrong to fine Fox for airing curse words uttered during a live awards show broadcast. The FCC wants the justices to consider only narrow legal questions specific to the case, but the networks in their filing urged the Court to broadly examine the legality of broadcast indecency enforcement as a whole. "The antiquated notion of spectrum scarcity can no longer serve as a basis for according only 'relaxed scrutiny' to content restrictions in the broadcast media," they argued, according to B&C. "Nor can the outmoded premises of Pacifica -- that over-the-air broadcasting is ‘uniquely pervasive’ or ‘uniquely accessible to children.’" (See timeline of notable indecency regulation developments here.)

Fan fights for weekly broadcasts of Rogers

A devoted Mister Rogers fan has started a campaign to restore daily broadcasts of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood to PBS stations. Brian Linder is protesting the network’s decision to feed episodes of the show on a weekly basis starting next month. “As long as children need to be nurtured, then there is a place for this program because there’s nothing else like it,” Linder tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

NPR acquires Public Interactive

NPR and Public Radio International announced yesterday that NPR will acquire Public Interactive, PRI’s web services company. PRI will continue to manage sales and marketing for PI until the end of the year. A memo to NPR stations excerpted on PRPD's blog said, "Public media’s web capabilities are dramatically under-resourced and clearly, we need to pool resources to develop our collective potential."

How to liven up public radio without resorting to cannibalism

Producer Doug Gordon offers his Modest Proposal for Making Public Radio More Entertaining and invites your comments and ideas on DirectCurrent.

Hutchison in for Stevens on Commerce Committee

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas will replace Sen. Ted Stevens (Alaska) as the GOP's ranking member on the Commerce Committee, which oversees broadcast legislation, while Stevens is under indictment, TV Week reports. Congress is about to recess for its August break and the party conventions and won't be back in session until mid-September.

WMUB drops evening jazz, goes all-news

WMUB in Oxford, Ohio, is adopting an all news/talk format next week. The format switch moves longtime evening host Mama Jazz to WMUB Jazz, a 24-hour HD-2 channel and online stream, and clears evening slots for repeats of the Diane Rehm Show and Talk of the Nation. The station invited listener feedback on its Directions blog, where a couple of commenters questioned why WMUB would drop the music programs that differentiated it from Cincinnati's WVXU, a nearby NPR News station. "By focusing our format, we believe we will increase our ability to attract and retain new listeners as well as serve the great majority of current listeners," said Cleve Callison, WMUB g.m., in a statement. "This change thus orients us toward future growth in audience and local fundraising capacity."

Food and beverage marketers seek kids online

"The nation's largest food and beverage companies spent about $1.6 billion in 2006 marketing their products to children [ages 2-17], according to a Federal Trade Commission report released Tuesday," reports the Washington Post. About 200 million of that went to cross-promotional campaigns using films, TV shows, video games. "The Internet--though far less costly than television--has become a major marketing tool of food companies that target children and adolescents, with more than two-thirds of the 44 companies reporting online, youth-directed activities," the report said. The FTC recommended that media companies license their characters to healthier food and drinks and that food and beverage marketers expand their efforts to educate kids about healthy choices. Lawmakers sought the study because of concerns about growing childhood obesity rates. Read the FTC report here.

Sen. Ted Stevens indicted

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the longest serving GOP senator in U.S. history and a longtime pubcasting advocate, was indicted on federal corruption charges tied to his relationship with an Alaska oil exec. According to Senate Republican rules, Stevens will have to give up his position as vice chairman of the influential Commerce Committee, among other leadership positions, the New York Times reports.