Robert Krulwich is returning to NPR. “My feeling has always been that there’s a kind of imprinting going on if you do journalism and broadcasting for a living,” he says. “Like if you’re a duck and the first thing you see is a duck. I imprinted on NPR — it’s the duck I know and the duck I own, and I’m going back to my original duck.”

Bring out your dead, practice your silly walks, and steel yourselves for something completely different, yet strangely familiar. PBS is launching a video onslaught of Monty Python humor—the classics as well as the humorists’ annotated favorites and an acclaimed sequel of sorts. PBS has scheduled Monty Python’s Personal Best, a pastiche of new material and clips from the TV series and movies, for Feb. 22, March 1 and 8. Separately, PBS will release all the naughty bits — the 45 original 30-minute episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus — this spring. And Fawlty Towers Revisited, a pledge special celebrating the comedy starring Python John Cleese as the world’s least hospitable hotelier, has been available to SIP (Station Independence Program) stations since early December.

Peter Sagal tells Chicagoist how he became host of Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!: “[L]ike a lot of public radio geeks, I would sit around saying, ‘I could do that. Why don’t they put me on the air? I can be pompous just as they can! What’s the problem here? What do they have that I don’t?'”

Bill Moyers shares his side of a “sordid little story” about Kenneth Tomlinson, Paul Gigot, and the ideological battle over Now.

A well-connected panel of business leaders, broadcasters and policy wonks last week got specific about what public broadcasting could do in the future to use its digital signals for the greatest public benefit—and to justify the increased funding that would make it possible. ¶ The Digital Future Initiative panel, convened by PBS President Pat Mitchell a year ago, released its report Dec. 15...

The Knight Foundation and PBS said today that Knight will give the network a $2.5 million challenge grant to launch a multicast Citizen’s Channel next fall and $500,000 for the pilot of a nightly show for the channel, Global Watch. The show, produced by KCET of Los Angeles and KQED of San Francisco, will cull stories from around the world. It will be followed nightly by ITVS Presents, a showcase for indie docs. The channel will also feature video blogs and vox pop segments, live coverage of major press conferences and congressional hearings and repeats of PBS nonfiction shows.

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.