It's really interesting watching this community - you guys are the only "headless" metalayer, lacking a founder or team and yet delivering with real working software.
Keep up the good work
If you're asking for my permission, feel free - everything I do is creative commons, attribution + noncommercial
For the minute spots maybe we're overthinking this, maybe it should really just be the NXT Minute on LTB, and twice a week listeners of LTB get updated to the most important thing "This is the NXT Minute, this week saw the release of the new client that does blah blah blah" you have enough room for about 65-72 words in a minute of human speech, you'll want to pick out some music (I can help with that) and leave a little space on either side to allow for the fade in and out.
Would someone be willing to take up that task? I think the NXT minute with occasional experiential spots shared by members of the NXT community would go over really well. Then you could have something that would always be different, always be useful and informative, and whenever a really good community submission comes up you just run that instead of the update. You get the best of both worlds, informational, timely and cheap while community spots provide the emotional and real world context. It would probably be good to have people write these and then have them voiced by members of the community who are a) good at that, and b) have good mics, it makes a big difference.