New York magazine culture critic John Leonard named David Grubin’s Destination America as the best nonfiction TV program of 2005. The four-part doc debuted Oct. 19 on PBS. “This is the sort of television that puts faces on stats, but it’s also almost elegiac: These are the doors we are bolting behind us,” Leonard wrote.

Five rules from the NPR drinking game. There’s also the PBS pledge drive drinking game.

Sesame Workshop and New York-based cable provider Cablevision on Monday launched Sesame Street Games, an interactive video game service available to customers in the New York metropolitan area. The educational games, available on Cablevision’s interactive digital cable tier, feature Muppets and are designed for children ages 2-5, who will use the cable remote control to make choices on their TV screens. The service costs $4.95 per month.

Radio consultant John Sutton had a staticky introduction to owning a digital radio: “I tried everything I could to get a better signal. It all seemed so old-fashioned, so ‘analog.'”

WDET-FM in Detroit has gone all-news during middays, replacing a mix of locally originated music. “Public radio listeners let us know they’re looking to us to provide news and information, and public affairs programming,” says Michael Coleman, g.m. “That’s what we’re responding to.” (Compare with the Audience Research Analysis study, below.)

A new report from Audience Research Analysis (PDF) begins to address public radio’s recent stagnation in audience growth by looking at some listening trends. One observation: “At a time when many station managers seem certain that airing more local programming is their best competitive strategy, listeners are generally showing less interest in listening to it.”

“[T]he few extra bucks aren’t worth it.” PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler writes that WGBH and PBS erred by allowing the Las Vegas Convention Authority and other local groups to underwrite Las Vegas: An Unconventional History.

The Traffic Directors Guild of America is completing its annual salary survey for traffic continuity, office and business managers in public and commercial broadcasting. The online survey ends Friday, Dec. 16. Results will be published in mid-January. For more information on the guild, see its website.

CPB seeks to award a three-year contract to a distributor of programming to Native radio stations.

The audience of WETA-FM in Washington, D.C. is “smaller, no more generous than the classical audience was, and no more reflective of the demographics of the Washington area” 10 months after the station dropped classical music in favor of news, writes the Washington Post‘s Marc Fisher. (Earlier coverage in Current.)

CPB Chair Cheryl Halpern personally co-funded, with El Al Airlines, a joint exhibition of 61 paintings by 50 young Israelis and Palestinians, and trips to London for four teenage artists for the opening at the Ben Uri Gallery, the Hampstead and Highgate Express reported last week. The peace-minded paintings featured such images as doves flying over the Mideast and the Palestinian and Israeli flags flying side by side. The exhibit closes Dec. 23.

A ruling on the fate of KALW-FM in San Francisco is expected later this month, reports the East Bay Express. Station execs are accused of misrepresenting the state of their public file. [Details of the FCC accusation in 2004 FCC document, in Word format: Commission orders hearing on whether KALW lied.]

Seattle’s KEXP-FM went ahead with plans to lease a signal in Tacoma despite opposition from many senior staffers, reports the Seattle Weekly. The station recently cut the satellite frequency loose to shore up its finances.

An Editor & Publisher columnist suggests that newspapers might get a new lease on life by emulating public broadcasting’s nonprofit model.

Conservative columnist George Will takes aim at congressional plans to subsidize DTV converter boxes. “Call it No Couch Potato Left Behind,” he writes.