In a June 16 New York Times op-ed, NPR’s Juan Williams praised George W. Bush and advised him on how to attract more black votes. On Morning Edition, Williams regularly interviews members of Bush’s administration.

Nap Turner, a fixture on the Washington, D.C., jazz and blues scene and a deejay on Pacifica’s WPFW-FM, died yesterday. The Washington Post‘s Marc Fisher remembers him.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch media writer Eric Mink lauds Frontline’s Ofra Bikel in this column. (via mediabistro.com)

The Chicago Tribune profiles Chicago Public Radio host Gretchen Helfrich and her nationally distributed talk show, Odyssey.

NPR will invest $15 million over the next three years in news programming, the network announced today. The money comes from the payout of the invested Joan Kroc gift.

KVCR-FM in San Bernardino, Calif., may drop A Prairie Home Companion, reports the San Bernardino County Sun. Larry Ciecalone, g.m. of KVCR, tells Current that a new affiliation fee from Minnesota Public Radio has prompted the decision. The crunch also led to program cuts at WRVO-FM in Oswego, N.Y.

The Christian Science Monitor writes up low-power FM and, in an editorial, backs the Senate bill that would expand LPFM.

Appearing on On the Media, New Yorker writer Ken Auletta says CPB’s decision to back new shows with conservative hosts, but not Bill Moyers’ Now, exposes an agenda at work.

The big religious broadcaster Daystar Television has bought its second public TV station in recent months — WTBU in Indianapolis, sold by Butler University for $4 million, local TV station WRTV reported June 9. The university explained earlier why it was cashing in. Last summer, KERA in Dallas sold one of its two channels to Daystar for $20 million. Daystar is also suing an Orange County college to buy public TV station KOCE. The network says it owns and operates more than 30 stations.

Comcast is in advanced negotiations to create a 24-hour preschool channel with PBS and producers of Barney and Sesame Street, according to a Wall Street Journal report summarized by Reuters. (Earlier coverage in Current.)

Democracy Now host Amy Goodman sat down for a long interview with C-Span’s Brian Lamb on Booknotes.

Public Radio International will distribute Odyssey, the weekday talk show from WBEZ in Chicago, beginning July 1.

The Washington Post‘s Marc Fisher details why Washington, D.C., has almost no college radio stations.

The Weekly Standard discusses at length the tensions between news/talk and classical programming on public radio. Audience researcher David Giovannoni says a lot of classical music programmers “are living in the past.”

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced a bill Friday that would allow more low-power FM stations to get on the air. (PDF of bill.) Their effort follows an FCC-commissioned study that recommended relaxing interference protections on full-power stations. (More in the Washington Post.)