Can Nick Haines paint? Maybe we’ll find out

Local PBS affiliate KCPT Channel 19 announced today that Kliff Kuehl (pictured) has been hired as the station’s new president and CEO. The deal ends an eight-month search to replace Victor Hogstrom. Kuehl starts April 6.

To work here, 47-year-old Kuehl leaves behind PBS station KNPB in Nevada. Before he shot shows in Reno just to watch them die, he ran the PBS affiliate in Waco, Texas, where he’s from. (The Star‘s reliable Aaron Barnhart gets Kuehl’s CV out of the file cabinet in more detail, though he leaves out the Rotary Club.)

A look at KNPB’s programming schedule shows that out west, pledge-drive types like their shows a little more rugged. But the station also caters to more sensitive souls. For example, there’s The Beauty of Oil Painting, in which, the station’s Web site promises, “Gary and Kathwren Jenkins guide viewers through the process of creating a beautiful floral painting from start to finish in each 30-minute

episode.”

Public-affairs programming seems not to command the same priority in northern Nevada than it does here, so pay attention to what show you talk about next time you call in a pledge to KCPT. Otherwise, Kansas City Week in Review might make its guests pick up a brush and interpret the news on canvas instead of through tight, Midwestern-polite smiles while host Nick Haines asks for “a little bit of color.”