The Washington Post‘s Lisa de Moraes reports from ringside on the Crossfire slap-down. Part One: Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and PBS’s Tucker Carlson call each other colorful names you’ll only hear on cable TV. Part Two: Robert Novak and James Carville call Stewart “uninformed” and worse on Monday’s Crossfire, and Stewart retorts from The Daily Show.

The Chicago Tribune‘s Steve Johnson reviews Bob Edwards’ new show on XM and also sizes up the changes to Morning Edition since Edwards left. (Reg. req.)

Patrick Goldstein of the L.A. Times says Bill Moyers, who leaves his PBS show at the end of December, “has used Now as a razor-sharp scythe for laying bare issues rarely scrutinized by his media peers.” Moyers is quoted about the new PBS talk shows hosted by conservatives: “In my 33 years at public broadcasting, it’s the first time I’ve seen shows that were clearly created for ideological reasons.” (Open only to registered seven-day Times subscribers or Calendar Live subscribers.)

“Nearly as splashy, flashy and phantasmagorical as the American art form it celebrates, Broadway: The American Musical is the TV equivalent of a grandly panoramic coffee-table book.” Washington Post critic Tom Shales reviews the six-part mini-series debuting tonight on PBS.

Terry Gross tells the Boston Phoenix that interviewing guests by phone makes it less likely she’ll gush. “I’ve learned the hard way that that’s really not a very productive thing to do,” she says.

“It’s one thing to get knocked off the air by a show that’s better than yours, but it’s another to get knocked off by a show whose only reason to exist is a numbers argument,” says Ira Glass of Weekend America in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. (Reg. req.)

Mark Glaser sizes up podcasting, satellite radio and other technologies that could shape radio’s future, checking in with Public Radio Exchange to boot.

A WXXI exec tells the Rochester City News why his station won’t carry Pacifica’s Democracy Now: “On our air, it would be swaying our balance. Our integrity as an alternative, non-polarized station would be harmed.”

A Boston Globe update on WBUR notes that Jane Christo’s son is being moved out of the station and adds some details about the station’s new interim g.m.

Boston University named one of its assistant vice presidents, former TV exec Peter Fiedler, interim g.m. of WBUR.

WBUR-FM and its parent, Boston University, share tendencies to overspend and dream too big, says a Boston Globe columnist.

Former PBS star Louis Rukeyser, stricken with cancer and absent from his CNBC investment commentary program for nearly a year, says he asked the cable net to discontinue the show, according to a snarky Washington Post dispatch. The program goes out of production Dec. 31.

Frontline‘s “The Choice 2004” debuts on PBS stations Oct. 12. Reviewers for the New York Times and the Seattle Times write in today’s editions that, by contrasting the presidential candidates’ military service during the Vietnam War, the two-hour documentary casts Senator Kerry in a more favorable light.

More coverage of Jane Christo’s resignation in the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald and the Providence Journal, and on NPR.

The New York Times reviews Postcards from Buster, the new PBS show starring “the sort of character that children understand: perpetually hungry, a little nervous and fascinated by outer space.”