A Sesame Workshop project to create special programming for Arab-American children founders from lack of financial support–and mistrust of mainstream media–among Middle Eastern immigrants in Detroit. “People are leery of anything that goes on in the media, especially because of past representations of Arabs,” one supporter of the project tells Salon (subscription or daypass required).

Early-aircraft enthusiasts and the producers of Nova are at odds over insurance proceeds from the crash of a Wright Brothers’ biplane replica in Virginia, the Fauquier Times-Democrat reported. Nova, which put up some money for the project, planned to film the replica.

Senators escaped having their votes recorded with a nonexistent voice vote on the war-related $87 billion bill, so NPR’s Daniel Schorr suggested that people ask them how they “voted.” Fifteen members of the Society of Professional Journalists called senators and reported their findings yesterday. The bill would have passed anyway, it seems, though 19 senators refused to disclose how they would have voted.

Lanpher watch update: Katherine L. will be Al Franken’s co-host as rumored, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported today. She leaves a big gap at Minnesota Public Radio, where she hosted a talk show, said news chief Bill Buzenberg.

Public radio host and producer Chris Lydon tells Leonard Witt that dissatisfaction with mainstream news coverage has turned him into “one of those who goes automatically, many times a day now, to the Web, to get a sense of what people are actually thinking and doing.”

Minnesota Public Radio talk show host Katherine Lanpher announced today she’s leaving the network. The hunch is she’s joining lefty comic Al Franken to co-host his upcoming radio talk show. Franken told Newsweek that his co-host comes from public radio: “She’s a hell of a journalist, but she’s got a great laugh.” One writer previously noted Lanpher’s “sudden, braying laugh.”

The new PBS Kids series Boohbah may seem trippy to grown-ups, but the idea behind the show is to get preschoolers to jump off the couch and join in the calisthenics, reports AP. The Boston Globe‘s Suzanne Ryan found the show didn’t hold much interest for her own three-year-old.

Brooke Gladstone, latest guest in Transom’s online forum, reveals how she and WNYC’s On the Media team rebuilt the show. Newsmags generally have had too much passion drained away, she says, and need to syncopate their too-soothing talk. OTM‘s dirty secret: they “edit like crazy.”

Leaders of the Public Radio Partnership in Louisville, Ky., defend their decision to add more triple-A music to the schedule on one of their stations at the expense of jazz. A former board member charges PRP with eyeing the bottom line rather than serving audiences with diverse programming.

Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times spoofs “another blast of limp-wristed, angsty self-loathing” brought to him by NPR.

If you tell your 10th grade daughter that you’ve begun dating after the divorce, what does she want to know, besides the obvious “What’s on her iPod?” Pubradio producer Jay Allison recounted the grilling in the New York Times Magazine.

Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey, among Bill Gates and other tycoons, are among the 25 business leaders cited by public TV’s Nightly Business Report and the University of Pennsylvania, marking the program’s 25th anniversary, AP reported.

Joseph Tovares, producer of the Feb. 2 American Experience doc about the Alamo, focused on Texas pioneer Jose Antonio Navarro, though he struggled with Navarro’s early involvement with slavery, the San Antonio Express-News reported.

Backed by a $200,000 Knight Foundation grant, PBS will develop a proposal for a public affairs channel — working title, Public Square — that public TV stations could air on DTV multicast channels, the network announced Jan. 8 [2004]. The channel would offer “sustained electronic journalism” that contrasts with other networks where “sleaze repeatedly trumps substance,” said Hodding Carter, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, in a news release. “You might say what CNN’s potential seemed to be at the height of its potential is where we’re going,” Carter told Current. Repeats of PBS public affairs shows on the new channel could bulk up the programs’ audiences, cable-style, but Public Square would also need exclusive programming, said PBS co-chief program executive Coby Atlas.

Elizabeth Campbell, founder of WETA in Washington, D.C., and a pioneer of educational television in the U.S., died Jan. 9 [2004] in Arlington, Va., after suffering from respiratory problems.