The Los Angeles Times reviews The World According to Sesame Street, a documentary examining Sesame Workshop’s international co-productions in three countries. The film launches the new season of Independent Lens.

Bill Buzenberg will join the Center for Public Integrity next year as its executive director. He is now senior v.p. of news for American Public Media/Minnesota Public Radio in St. Paul and served as news v.p. at NPR in the ’90s. Based in Washington, D.C., CPI does investigative reporting and research on public policy issues.

  In the 1980s, Peter Gelb produced 25 Metropolitan Opera broadcasts for PBS. Now, as the Met’s general manager, he runs the red-carpeted center of the opera world. The first media guy to run the hallowed New York institution has begun an ambitious but carefully modulated makeover of the Met. He’s putting its operas on more media platforms than ever before but using electronic media to reproduce the gilded in-theater experience. He’s bringing in a new breed of directors for fresh staging but relying largely on the beloved music of the past.Hired two years ago, Gelb was off to a running start in August when he took charge.

After interviewing Wal-Mart Chief Executive H. Lee Scott in August about the company’s new environmental initiative, PBS’s Charlie Rose will co-host a private dinner tonight honoring Scott for his environmental work. Is there something wrong with this? PBS doesn’t think so, but PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler does.

The Pacifica Foundation and Free Speech Radio News have agreed to work toward integrating FSRN into the radio network, Pacifica announced last week. The progressive newscast airs on more than 90 stations.

Vermont Public Radio barred a third-party candidate for the U.S. Senate from an upcoming forum because of fears that he might use profanity on the air, reports the Associated Press. Peter Diamondstone, a Liberty Union party candidate, was expelled from a debate last week and handcuffed after using profanity and exceeding time limits.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press profiles Katherine Lanpher, the former host of a talk show on Minnesota Public Radio who left for New York to join Air America. “There were nights in those first months when I wondered if I’d wrecked the rest of my life,” she says. “That is what’s so great about the book. I wrote my own rescue.”

Yet more skepticism about HD Radio — this from John Proffitt of KAKM-TV/KSKA-FM in Anchorage, Alaska. “I’m just deeply concerned that the ‘neat’ stuff HD Radio ‘could’ do is oversold and cannot possibly deliver — not technologically, but in terms of market acceptance.”

The show from NPR and WNYC explores big ideas in science in an accessible, even addictive style.

The Los Angeles Times asks: just how far will PBS go to please a corporate sponsor?

NPR is ending its “Mixed Signals” blog but expects to create some new ones. “The scattershot nature of Mixed Signals didn’t really work,” writes JJ Sutherland, who asks the blog’s readers to share their ideas for NPR’s future blogs and online interactions with listeners.

Consultant John Sutton looks at how different methods of calculating cume audience for public radio produce varying results. “There is strong evidence that the National Public Radio network Cume is overstated by as much as 15 percent,” he says.

Slate reports on a Cornell University study that found a statistically significant link between autism rates and television viewing by children under the age of three.

Commenters on WFMU’s blog share stories about working in college radio.

Discovery has boosted its ratings by returning to its educational roots, says Advertising Age (via SmartBrief, from the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing).