TVSquad

Remember the brouhaha with Sesame Street over their alleged swipe at Fox News? Sesame Street has officially extended an olive branch.

Sherrie Westin, executive vice president of the Sesame Workshop, appeared on The O'Reilly Factor to explain the "Pox News" joke and unveil a new character that pays homage to "Papa Bear" as part of the show's long-standing Grouch journalism homages. Just so there's no confusion, the new Sesame Street character is the guy in the suit on the left, not the right, I think.

Even though the sudden pull out from several sponsors hasn't caused Fox to prematurely eject Glenn Beck from his time slot, he was suspiciously absent from the airwaves this week.

Some suggest this Beck-free week wasn't just a much needed vacation for the host, or for the viewer for that matter.

TVNewser spoke to some Fox insiders who claim the network ordered the silver haired devil to take a week off so some of the heat over his advertising boycott could die down.

Walter Cronkite's passing didn't mark the end of an era in the TV news business. The era he helped produce and prolong died long before he did.

It's hard for me to ever imagine a time when people considered a major network news anchor as America's most trusted source for anything. Claims of bias and political persuasion being injected into every story with a meat syringe created a thick fog that made it very hard to cover anything with a modicum of honesty.

Cronkite, however, was the man people turned to when something blew up, exploded, imploded, launched, landed or any other number of descriptive verbs, because his goal wasn't to make news every time he stepped in front of a camera. His goal was just to report it.

When Jon Stewart announced before a studio full of deafening cheers and Stephen Colbert's deafening silence that Barack Obama would become the 44th President of the United States, the show seemed to be in an interesting pickle.

Could the show be just as funny as it had been under an administration that didn't blur the line between setups and punchlines? Could Stewart and friends find the funny in a president who inspires more love and fear in people than a teddy bear with a switchblade?

So let's grade The Daily Show's first 100 days under socialism President Obama report card.

Have we seen the last of Mike Wallace on TV? If you believe his son, Fox newsman Chris Wallace, the answer is yes. Mike Wallace, who has been recovering from a January triple bypass heart surgery, recently had a fall in his home in New York. Fortunately, Mike wasn't badly hurt, but the doctors are watching him closely in the hospital because of the complications from his heart surgery. He is on blood thinner because of the bypass and if he starts to bleed from the fall, he could bleed out.

According to Wallace's son, Chris, host of Fox News Sunday, the heart "is working fine," but he added that his 90 year old father is done with TV. Does CBS know that for sure? I mean, will there be no future Mike Wallace interviews or special interviews? He retired from 60 Minutes in 2006, but remains with the network as Correspondent Emeritus. Chris made it sound like there will be no more TV ever for Mike Wallace.

He also said of his father, "He's doing really well," having spent time with him while he was in New York at Fox's studios to report on the presidential primaries.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Chris Wallace is on the short list for replacements if -- more likely when -- Katie Couric departs the CBS Evening News anchor desk. Wallace, son of the CBS elder statesmen and 60 Minutes attack dog Mike Wallace, has been host of Fox News Sunday since 2003. But the guy isn't interested.

"As much as I grew up in CBS and as much as I associate that anchor chair with Walter Cronkite and the history of broadcasting, I have never been so happy as I have working the last four-plus years at Fox. I suspect I've had a much better last couple of years than Katie Couric."