The First Amendment gives the press too much freedom, according to 42 percent of Americans polled, according to American Journalism Review. The percentage down on the First Amendment has doubled in two years.

Jim Lehrer says he’ll stay on the NewsHour until he loses his kick for daily journalism–or starts drooling on the air–during an interview on CNN’s Reliable Sources.

Julia Child’s kitchen is now in the nation’s attic, the Smithsonian Institution’s history museum on the Mall, inserted into a miscellaneous area behind the north escalators on the first floor, past the artificial heart, Bakelite radios and Carol Burnett’s charwoman costume. Visitors last week intently watched excerpts from her many pubTV cooking shows compiled for the 2000 pledge special Julia Child’s Kitchen Wisdom. (At one point she advises people to eat the green stuff in lobsters, which she claims is just delicious.) Last fall Smithsonian curators crated up her big, rectangular kitchen in her former home in Cambridge, Mass. They meticulously reassembled it at the museum behind clear plastic shields, complete with pans on pegboards, countertops raised 2 inches for the 6-foot tall cook, and the pipe along the ceiling where TV crews hung lights.

As different as they are, these public radio outposts share a carefully tuned appropriateness of structure. There’s the young two-transmitter operation on the Massachusetts shore. Dotted along Alaska’s southeastern panhandle, there are five little stations that survived the contraction of the state’s oil economy. And there are nearly 30 outlets of Minnesota Public Radio that connect small outstate burgs with the rich resources of a big state and the Twin Cities. Station operators say their structures handle functions locally that should be done locally, while relying on parent or sister stations to do other jobs that benefit from economies of scale.

Ira Glass, host and producer of This American Life, appeared on Talk of the Nation this week to discuss his show’s unique Warner Bros. deal.

Neal Conan is No. 1–and David Brancaccio is dead last. At least in San Francisco Ultimate Frisbee league match-ups, where teams have taken the names of public radio personalities. Team members appeared on Talk of the Nation this week.

The Car Talk brothers tell The New Yorker that the SUV craze is “a strange madness of crowds.” Trying to fight it has earned them a vast surplus of Stonyfield yogurt lids.

One of public TV’s best loved dramas has been remade for broadcast on A&E: Ursula LeGuin’s Lathe of Heaven. Starring this time around: James Caan, Lukas Haas, Lisa Bonet and David Strathairn. The director is Philip Haas (Angels & Insects) and the composer is (who else?) Angelo Badalamenti. Sept. 8, 8 p.m. WNET’s production last played on PBS two years ago, Current reported.

The FCC again blocked attempts by Central Wyoming College and the Idaho Board of Education to apply for licenses on spectrum to be auctioned off this week, according to Broadcasting & Cable magazine’s website. Both noncomms argued they were entitled to apply for the permits without participating in the auction.

Maryland Public TV announced lay-offs and salary cuts for top executives and rank-and-file employees. Lost underwriting revenue for the revamped Wall Street Week with Fortune contributed to the state network’s projected $2.1 million revenue shortfall.

Fast Company magazine sends a love letter to HBO and its new c.e.o., Chris Albrecht, for raising the standard of quality in original programming while making piles of money. Its profit last year, $725 million, was equal to nearly half of public TV’s total budget. The Sopranos is only the start. See the article by Polly LaBarre in the September issue.

Business 2.0 profiles Chris Mandra, who has molded NPR’s online presence in his four years at the network.

Julia Child’s kitchen has been moved from Cambridge and reconstructed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in D.C., the Washington Post reported. It will be on display for two years. [Smithsonian’s kitchen page.]

“For the conflicted soap fan longing for a simulacrum of realism,” the British import “EastEnders is an addictive slice of heaven,” says John Dougan, TV critic of the cultural webzine PopMatters.

Britain’s Prince Andrew has fallen for Cynthia Gouw, a reporter and producer for KQED’s Pacific Time, reports the San Francisco Examiner.