The right wing has stopped trying to kill PBS and is now seeking a larger voice in shaping it, writes media chronicler Ken Auletta in today’s New Yorker. “Big Bird Flies Right: How Republicans learned to love PBS” [text not online] reports that PBS plans to add CPB-backed programs hosted by Paul Gigot of Wall Street Journal and conservative critic Michael Medved (co-hosting with a liberal). Auletta says PBS President Pat Mitchell was thwarted from signing Newt Gingrich to host a Friday-night show because Fox News had him under contract. But PBS didn’t pursue the idea of a program for middle-schoolers to be hosted by the vice president’s wife, Lynne Cheney, proposed by producer Michael Pack before he joined CPB.