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.

Fitch Ratings affirmed Colorado Public Radio’s bonds as stable but has downgraded Nashville Public Radio’s bonds to negative, citing the station’s negative operating margins and “resulting liquidity drawdowns to cover debt service costs.”

Cheryl Halpern, a major Republican donor on the CPB Board, is likely successor to Ken Tomlinson as chair, the Washington Post reports. His term expires in September. Halpern stirred debate in a 2003 Senate hearing when she objected that the CPB Board lacks the power to do much about its balance mandate. When she and Tomlinson served on the board overseeing VOA, she said, they could remove journalists who editorialized.

The Senate Appropriations Committee today backed the addition of $111M to the $400M CPB advance appropriation for FY08 recently approved by the House, APTS reported. The Senate panel okayed $35M for DTV conversion, $40M for an upgrade of pubTV’s satellite system, $25M for Ready to Learn and $11 million for Ready to Teach.

CPB has released an RFP for public radio music programming. Proposals will compete for $1 million of the $6.4 million available this year for national radio programming.

An upcoming Masterpiece Theater will feature Rupert Everett as Sherlock Holmes, prompting the Washington Post‘s Lisa de Moraes to quip that the network “must now find a Masterpiece Theatre production starring a homophobic actor to preserve that perfect ‘balance’ demanded by Corporation for Public Broadcasting chief Ken Tomlinson.”

“‘[B]alance’ is not the whole story and supporters of public broadcasting should not take it as some sort of gold standard,” writes former CPB employee Elizabeth Spiro Clark on TomPaine.com.

Some newspapers misreported how much CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson spent to hire lobbyists and commission Fred Mann’s report, CJR Daily points out.

The Public Radio Exchange Flickr stream offers a behind-the-scenes photographic peek into the innovative online content shop.

HearingVoices offers a pop quiz on radio with some questions related to public broadcasting.

Guests on yesterday’s Democracy Now! debated whether public broadcasting should be federally funded and other matters. (A nimble argument from David Boaz of the Cato Institute: “[Y]our bias is subtle enough that most of your viewers don’t recognize it, and that’s the most effective bias of all.”)

CPB’s Inspector General will also investigate whether the agency’s hiring of Patricia Harrison as president was inappropriately conducted, according to Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), who requested the inquiry. CPB Board member Ernest Wilson said on yesterday’s Democracy Now! that he “was disturbed by the way in which the search was conducted.” Meanwhile, PBS President Pat Mitchell called CPB’s monitoring of public TV programming for liberal bias “very troubling,” reports the Washington Post.

“16 seconds of audible breathing from one hour’s worth of All Things Considered,” courtesy of artist Chuck Jones. (MP3. Via WFMU-FM’s excellent blog.)

The New York Times covers CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson’s appearance in the Senate yesterday.