Today's New York Times headline: Republican Chairman Exerts Pressure on PBS, Alleging Biases.
The scare story ("the Republicans are coming!") is actually more like business-as-usual Washington "jobs for the boys" cronyism than anything political, ideological, or educational on the part of Ken Tomlinson (Full disclosure: my only program recommendation to CPB--Agustin Blazquez's documentary on Elian Gonzalez featured on this blog and in a Wall Street Journal editorial--was sidelined by Tomlinson's CPB staff and PBS executives).
When I see Ann Coulter with her own nightly PBS talk show, instead of Charlie Rose, then I'll agree that CPB is affecting PBS programming -- and maybe helping increase PBS's lousy ratings.
Until then, who cares about PBS and NPR ? We have the blogosphere, after all...