which airs on public radio, is coming to TV on Showtime this year. But wouldn't PBS make more sense? Host Ira Glass said he had a polite and an impolite answer as to why not PBS. Thankfully, he went with the impolite.

"I just feel like, in terms of innovation and what they do, it's just not that interesting most of the time," Glass said. "I do love 'Frontline' and a couple of shows that are great."

Glass, who said he loves listening to Howard Stern on the radio but not on TV, then went into a long dissertation on how a 1970s study showed public television was never adequately funded to do what it set out to do and that in its current state, public TV "is more beholden to corporate interests than commercial TV."

First Published: January 19, 2007, 5:00 a.m.