“In the rush to proclaim [Bernard] Kerik the next secretary of Homeland Security, NPR sounded as though it were reporting on behalf of the White House, not about the White House,” writes NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin in his latest online column.

Jim King, founder of the Cincinnati-based X-Star public radio network, will retire next year. “We’ve done what no one else said could be done,” he tells the Cincinnati Enquirer. “. . . We’ve bucked the trend and programmed a station the way we wanted to, changing the types of programming every three or four hours.”

The Boston Globe reports that Boston University officials and the attorney for Jane Christo, former g.m. of WBUR-FM, disagree over who wielded the most influence over the station’s operations.

“The real key is you want to get them up and moving but you don’t want them to turn their heads from the TV.” Newsday reports on kids’ shows that encourage tots to get off the couch.

WDUQ-FM in Pittsburgh is replacing its transmitter, going digital and expanding its signal eastward with repeaters, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gaztte.

Media reform advocate Jeff Chester challenges PBS’s panel on enhanced funding to consider whether public TV deserves the gift of auction spectrum revenues.

In the Village Voice, WFMU deejay Irwin Chusid discusses his championing of outsider musicians.

In the Life, the gay/lesbian pubTV show that raises much of its operating funding from viewers, has set a $350,000 goal for a capital campaign for a new studio in Manhattan. [Current profile of the show.]

“If I felt that I was getting the kind of commitment that I needed to grow the program, then I wouldn’t have resigned,” says Tavis Smiley in the Chicago Sun-Times about leaving his show.

… at the bluest of TV channels, public broadcasting’s WNET, in the bluest of cities, New York, you know this country has entered a new cultural twilight zone,” writes New York Times columnist Frank Rich. WNET’s decision to kill a spot on the feature film, Kinsey, is a harbinger of the battles ahead as “politicians and the media alike pander to that supposed 22 percent of ‘moral values’ voters.”

Zoom, the interactive children’s series from Boston’s WGBH, will shutter production after its 2005 season. Kids, and PBS, are “looking for the next new thing,” says producer Kate Taylor in the Boston Globe.

The Center for Social Media at American University published a study recommending ways to help independent filmmakers negotiate the increasingly difficult process of rights clearances. Additional background materials are available on the Center’s website.

“I believe the price of this very considerable change is the right price to pay to achieve the prize of a strong and independent, creative BBC,” said Director General Michael Thompson when announcing a 10 percent staff reduction, the largest in the corporation’s history. With savings from the massive reorganization, Thompson promised BBC would spend more on high quality drama, comedy, current affairs and children’s programs, according to the Guardian. Reports on the restructuring characterize it as a premptive move to protect BBC financing via television license fees, which comes up for renewal in 2007. In the Financial Times, Thompson said the plan made the case for a renewal of its royal charter more compelling and added: “The BBC has not been badgered or pressured by government to do any of this.

A consultant’s study (PDF) recommends that stations licensed to three Iowa universities unite under common management, share resources, and develop three separate and coordinated programming schedules. The board’s office has endorsed the findings (PDF). Regents will take up the matter next week.

The FCC got only a few hundred indecency complaints in 2001, but about 14,000 in 2002 and no less than 240,000 in 2003, just before its Janet Jackson crackdown. Today, Todd Shields of MediaWeek revealed an unreleased FCC estimate that 99.8 percent of the 2003 complaints came from one organization, Parents Television Council. The same was true for 99.8 percent of complaints in 2004, through October. Via SPJ PressNotes. PTC, founded by conservative media watchdog Brent Bozell, monitors and compiles reports on sex, innuendo and violence on broadcast and cable networks, according to its website.