Funding hikes for public broadcasting in Alaska survived a challenge in that state’s House of Representatives, reports the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

“After just five weeks on the air, it seems that MPR’s new alt-rock-and-variety station is already a significant tastemaker in town,” says the Twin Cities’ City Pages, which devotes three articles to “89.3 The Current.”

“Let’s take a moment to acknowledge something that has, in fact, been true for some time: Technical innovation in U.S. radio broadcasting is being led by public radio,” writes Paul McLane in Radio World.

Terry Gross’s idea of cooking used to be “opening a can of Progresso minestrone and taking out their vegetables, keeping the broth and putting in my own vegetables,” she says in Delware’s News Journal.

The San Francisco Chronicle looks at the the competition between secular and religious broadcasters for low-power FM stations.

In the MP3 era, “the art of the set and the segue is in imminent danger of dying,” writes WFMU deejay Dave Mandl in the Brooklyn Rail.

A Boston Globe writer looks at the business model — or lack thereof — of podcasting. “One problem is that, much like the Web before advertising and e-commerce, there’s no money in podcasting yet,” he says.

Former WBUR-FM host Christopher Lydon will host an evening talk show on WUML-FM, reports the Lowell Sun. The Lowell, Mass., station is licensed to the University of Massachussetts, and the students who host some of the station’s programs object to Lydon’s arrival.

Indicating perhaps that PBS did not have to fear some four-letter words in a recent Frontline, the FCC yesterday chose not to stifle the right of (actors playing) soldiers to swear while risking their lives in war. (Surprised?) The order (news release, full text) rejected indecency complaints about ABC’s airing of Saving Private Ryan last fall.

PBS’s president stands by her decision (“not an easy one”) to pull the two-mommies episode of Buster, reported Broadcasting & Cable. “I wouldn’t inject PBS stations into a culture war they did not start and cannot stop,” Pat Mitchell said at an AWRT meeting Feb. 25. Via Benton.org.

“My challenge is to develop a public radio sound that’s different from NPR but compatible,” says American Public Media’s Jim Russell in a Minneapolis Star-Tribune interview.

A Washington, D.C., radio listener bemoans recent format changes, including WETA’s: “[I]t seems like radio used to be so much better.”

Independent producer Benjamen Walker discusses his show and podcasting with Pitchforkmedia.com: “Where do I see myself as having more of a future, the Internet or NPR? I’d pick the Internet, definitely.” Also at Pitchfork, a profile of KCMP, Minnesota Public Radio’s new eclectic station.

Podcasting has doubled the online audience for WNYC’s On the Media in just four weeks. And Tod Maffin has started PublicRadioFeeds.com, a directory to podcasting pubcasters that is similar to ours.

“I think there’s a lot of fear in the air out there,” KCPT President Bill Reed tells the Kansas City Star, in an article about “A Company of Soldiers,” a Frontline documentary that includes profanity spoken by American soldiers under fire. “That’s how the climate is now. You have to go back to the McCarthy era to get a feel for how far this has gone.” [Via TV Barn.] KCPT is one of 40 public TV stations that will air the documentary tonight with the unedited language.