When her preschooler began humming the jingle from a McDonald’s commercial, Cleveland pediatrician Susan Connor decided to analyze the sponsorship spots that surround TV shows for tots. She found that fast-food companies are the predominant sponsors of preschool fare on PBS Kids and the Disney Channel, both of which “promote themselves as ad-free,” reports the Associated Press. The study, published this month in the medical journal Pediatrics, concluded that the ads targeting preschoolers on Nickelodeon and sponsorship messages on PBS and Disney “took similar approaches and used similar appeals, seeming to promote the equation that food equals fun and happiness.”

John Whiting reviews Uneasy Listening, Matthew Lasar’s latest chronicle of the battles within Pacifica Radio. “As the backroom plots continually recycle, the story begins to read like an endless reality-TV pirate game in which the protagonists are made to walk the plank and then try to get voted back on board,” he writes.

The Los Angeles Times profiles Tavis Smiley: “In an era where Jay Leno and David Letterman use guests as comedy fodder and Charlie Rose has become a courtier to the barons of the Eastern media elite, Smiley is a reminder of the days when talk show hosts were conversationalists, not sycophants or joke meters.”

National Review Online blogger Stephen Spruiell comes to Kenneth Tomlinson’s defense, urging fellow conservatives not to “stay silent while Democrats tear down Tomlinson’s reputation just because he’s a conservative.”

The Washington Post‘s Marc Fisher profiles NPR’s Radio Lab, which enters its second season this fall. “. . . [T]here is a music to these nonfiction stories, a beat and a rhythm that feel fresh, and that’s something that good old public radio dearly needs,” he writes.

The future of KCEP-FM in Las Vegas is in doubt as the station’s parent organization, the Economic Opportunity Board, struggles with a debt of $1.9 million, reports the city’s Review-Journal. “We’re being sued by a sausage company,” says the EOB’s executive director. “That was definitely a low point.”

In a profile in the alumni magazine of Oberlin College, Radio Lab hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich discuss the show and its ties to their shared alma mater. “It feels like an extension of conversations I used to have at Oberlin,” Abumrad says. “There’s a playfulness that connects it to college. I hope that’s not just regression.” A coda to the article features other Oberlin grads in public radio contemplating the connection between their college and their jobs.

Put dialogue from Scorcese films into the mouths of Grover and Big Bird and you get Sesame Streets. (NSFW. Via WFMU’s blog.)

As of Tuesday, Sirius Satellite Radio stopped carrying programs from Public Radio International.

In actions announced today, the FCC denied a low-power FM application on localism grounds and fined WXLV-FM in Schnecksville, Pa., $10,000 for failing to maintain its public file (PDFs).

The Knight Foundation will spend $5 million in the first year (and perhaps $25 million over five years) for innovative digital prototypes, initiatives and experiments that improve connections among people in communities. Application deadline for the Knight Brothers 21st Century News Challenge: Dec. 31. Guidelines are posted at www.newschallenge.org. Applicants need not be journalists or have printing presses or transmitters. The foundation adds: “Nothing is too far out to qualify.”

Mark Ramsey comments on Arbitron’s decision to include ratings for noncommercial radio in its market reports. “Public radio will now be on commercial radio’s radar like never before,” he writes. “Commercial radio will more aggressively learn from public radio, compete with it, and counter-program it.” (Via Technology360.)

The New York Observer‘s NYTV columnist reports on how FCC indecency rules inhibit PBS’s coverage of the war and other topics. “It’s a really sorry state of affairs if we’re Disney-fying combat,” says filmmaker Martin Smith, whose Oct. 3 Frontline documentary, “Return of the Taliban,” will air without f-words spoken by soldiers in combat.

Dan Gillmor and Dennis Haarsager share thoughts from last week’s Open Content and Public Broadcasting conference, held at WGBH in Boston.

“. . . [W]hat about an Internet Channel for Public radio that is run by the rebels and that has the new as its focus?” asks Robert Paterson in a blog post about innovation in public radio.