Columnist Robert Novak reports on the “surprising relationships” that weren’t disclosed during the July 11 Senate hearing on public broadcasting, which he describes as an orchestrated ambush of CPB Board Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson.

The Chicago Sun-Times goes behind the scenes with Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!, which recently switched to live tapings before an audience. “[W]e did it so long without an audience it was almost like a rehearsal, a six-year rehearsal,” says Doug Berman, e.p. “And we got so good at it that by the time we went out in front of an audience, it was great every time.” (Via Romenesko.)

In the New York Times, This American Life host Ira Glass expresses mixed reactions about the show’s recent experiments with television.

An executive council seeking the director of the new Iowa Public Radio network is looking for a candidate with “Midwestern cultural competency,” according to the Iowa State Daily.

Producer Jay Allison offers stations tips for creating interstitial content on their airwaves, including “Sonic IDs”.

The New York Times looks at Open Source, the new show from Christopher Lydon: “Because of the program’s interactive component, its benchmark of success might be less the number of stations that ultimately carry the program and more the online presence Open Source establishes.”

The New York Times drops in on the set of A Prairie Home Companion The Movie. “All of us understand and respond to the fact that this is his [Garrison Keillor’s] baby, he is the creator, and that this is a 30-year project being immortalized on film,” says actress Virginia Madsen. (Coverage in Current.)

Studio 360 host Kurt Andersen shares recipes for fried sage leaves and deep-fried okra with the New York Times Magazine.

A Harvard professor laments the cancellation of WBUR’s The Connection: “While a growing audience is desirable, that should not be the chief criterion for a public broadcast outlet.” And Mark Jurkowitz notes the firing of WBUR reporter Michael Goldfarb.

CPB’s redesigned website includes detailed results from opinion polls that measured public perceptions of bias in pubcasting programs in 2002 and 2003. The survey findings don’t support CPB Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson’s view of liberal bias on PBS and NPR. As researchers wrote in a summary, “[b]oth surveys confirm the same thing: The majority of the U.S. adult population does not believe that the news and information programming on public broadcasting is biased.”

CPB denied funding to Theory of Everything, reports host Benjamen Walker, who adds that it might be “the beginning of the end for the radio program.”

“Something fishy is going on at PBS,” says Candorville.

Boston’s WBUR will cancel The Connection and move On Point into the vacated morning time slot, reports the Boston Globe. A Globe columnist praises the changes at WBUR and competitor WGBH: “The Montagues at ‘BUR are beefing up their signature local news, while the Capulets at ‘GBH are finally pursuing their mandate as our arts and culture station with some juice.” (More coverage from WBUR.)

The New York Times reviews two recently published histories of public radio: “Although the two books share a lot, they are separated by a substantial accomplishment gap.”

Jim Terr offers a new song, “Hands Off My NPR” (MP3, Windows Media also available). “You can do anything to my blue suede shoes/You can splash mud on my car/But you’re gonna be awful sorry/If you mess with my NPR.” Terr has also written a musical lament about Susan Stamberg’s cranberry relish recipe.