Appearing on On the Media, New Yorker writer Ken Auletta says CPB’s decision to back new shows with conservative hosts, but not Bill Moyers’ Now, exposes an agenda at work.

The big religious broadcaster Daystar Television has bought its second public TV station in recent months — WTBU in Indianapolis, sold by Butler University for $4 million, local TV station WRTV reported June 9. The university explained earlier why it was cashing in. Last summer, KERA in Dallas sold one of its two channels to Daystar for $20 million. Daystar is also suing an Orange County college to buy public TV station KOCE. The network says it owns and operates more than 30 stations.

Comcast is in advanced negotiations to create a 24-hour preschool channel with PBS and producers of Barney and Sesame Street, according to a Wall Street Journal report summarized by Reuters. (Earlier coverage in Current.)

Democracy Now host Amy Goodman sat down for a long interview with C-Span’s Brian Lamb on Booknotes.

Public Radio International will distribute Odyssey, the weekday talk show from WBEZ in Chicago, beginning July 1.

The Washington Post‘s Marc Fisher details why Washington, D.C., has almost no college radio stations.

The Weekly Standard discusses at length the tensions between news/talk and classical programming on public radio. Audience researcher David Giovannoni says a lot of classical music programmers “are living in the past.”

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced a bill Friday that would allow more low-power FM stations to get on the air. (PDF of bill.) Their effort follows an FCC-commissioned study that recommended relaxing interference protections on full-power stations. (More in the Washington Post.)

An analyst tells Forbes that the market for digital radio will start to pick up next year or in 2006.

The war in Iraq–especially the Abu Ghraib prisoner scandal–have eclipsed Bono and Janet Jackson, the New York Times reports. This article says indecency legislation crafted this spring is increasingly unlikely to reach President Bush’s desk before the November election. The story claims politicians “who push too hard on the decency issue may risk appearing to have their priorities out of whack.” Also: Broadcasting & Cable reports that an upcoming episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit will “explore the rights of those who express their views over public airwaves.” The show will hinge on the alleged offenses of a Howard Stern stand-in.

Thoughts of Appalachia may stir up visions of either hillbilly backwoods or quaint Edens, but both miss the complicated truth illuminated by three documentaries coming to public TV. The docs diverge in their depictions of the mountain region

Rising program costs have prompted WRVO-FM in Oswego, N.Y., to drop some PRI shows and consider axing The Splendid Table, reports the Syracuse Post-Standard. MPR will soon distribute its own shows, which costs stations that air its programming an additional affiliation fee.

Dick Gordon, host of public radio’s The Connection, lives across the street from boss Jane Christo in a home full of “extraordinary international furnishings and artifacts,” according to a Boston Globe feature.

Common Cause picked up on today’s New Yorker article (see below), charging that CPB is now acting as “the agent of ideological interference” instead of playing its original heat-shield role. CPB is backing two new programs hosted by conservatives at the same time PBS is halving the length of Bill Moyers’ program, the lobbying group said.

A Philadelphia Inquirer columnist vents her frustration with the BBC Newshour, which some public radio stations carry. (Via Romenesko. Reg. req. Bugmenot.com is a useful tool for dealing with website registrations, by the way.)