One of the best things about navel-gazing is that when it's your navel, it's endlessly fascinating. And when someone else wants to gaze, too, why, that's just as intriguing. That's one of the reasons we're avid listeners of WNYC's On the Media.

At mediabistro, we're by, for and about the media, and love it when others are obsessed along with us. But it's hard to navel gaze when all the bellybuttons are overseas. Which is why we're wondering about OTM spending so much of its time on foreign coverage of foreign stuff. Not that it's not interesting. (Well, an entire hour on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict did try our patience.)

We hope we're not being overly parochial. And we do appreciate learning more about immigration in Europe (this week's show), Belarussian politics, Chinese censorship, and a little bit more than we knew about news coverage in Iraq. But does a U.S.-based audience, presumably made up largely of media navel-gazers like us, really want to, week after week after week, know that much more about what's going on overseas and less about all the ferment over here? Does the audience thrill to more talk about Al-Jazeera?

Personally, we (well I), get more of a kick from co-host Bob Garfield taking the piss out of an FCC commissioner.