The first four-post day in a long time! Here’s some more news… – From Chicagoland Radio and Media: WGN-TV news anchor Allison Payne is expected to return to the desk Monday evening. She has been sitting out off and on for the last year or so recovering from a set of mini-strokes. – The contestants for the new season of […]
In a move certain to make a lot of people angry, the digital TV switchover may not take place on Feb. 17 as planned. The new Obama administration wants to postpone the switch because money to fund those digital converter box coupons have run out. The possible move is being supported by the four major networks. With all the time, […]
More Twentieth Television news: The syndicator has cleared NBC sitcom My Name Is Earl in 47 percent of the country beginning this fall, including nine out of the top ten markets. Fox-owned My Network TV stations are part of the deal, including WPWR-TV in Chicago. The program is also expected to run on sister station WFLD-TV. Earl has also cleared […]
In what may be a harbinger for things to come regarding first-run syndicated fare, Twentieth Television has canceled The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet after a two-season run.The daytime strip, which competed with Live with Regis & Kelly in most markets (including Chicago until WFLD-TV expanded its morning newscast), averaged an season-to-date 0.8 Nielsen household rating, putting it twelfth […]
– Station swap: Raycom and Local TV are trading stations with each other and maybe one to be named later… Raycom has traded CBS affiliate WTVR in Richmond, Va. to Local TV for Fox affiliate WBRC-TV in Birmingham. Raycom, which is based in Alabama, will now have a presence in most of the state. Earlier, the Justice Department rejected Raycom’s […]
An interesting item from TV Barn: Sunflower Broadband (or Cable, or whatever they want to be called), which serves northeastern Kansas, dropped two Hearst-Argyle owned Kansas City stations from its channel lineup because they were asking too much money from them to be carried on Sunflower’s cable system. So Sunflower Broadband COO Patrick Knorr replaced departed ABC affiliate KMBC-TV from […]
For the first time in… I don’t know… many years, repeats of The Odd Couple are back on TV. On Thursday (an odd day to start airing a TV show on a “strip” basis), WWME-TV (or Me-TV) began airing The Odd Couple weeknights at 11:30 p.m. The sitcom, based on the Neil Simon play (and also spun off a 1968 […]
A feud between Equity Media Holdings and Luken Communications left RTN off the air for close to four hours on Sunday morning. The spat came after a breakdown in an extension of an agreement on the use of Equity’s automated system to uplink customized local schedules to RTN’s 80+ affiliates. After failing to come to an agreement, Luken officials decided […]
The semi-annual TV Critics Poll from TV Week is out, and it has AMC’s Mad Men as the best show and Fox’s Do Not Disturb as the worst. Yours truly has been reading lists from TV Week/Electronic Media for nearly 20 years, and its’always a fun read, whether I agree with them or not. Some observations: – Cable made its […]
Winners: WLIT-FM (The Lite), WBBM-AM, WVAZ-FM (V103) Losers: Well, since this month’s survey is an anomaly because of Christmas music, let’s give this a pass. WLIT dominated the PPMs in December with the Holiday Lite, a.k.a. Christmas Music. Their success pretty much lowered ratings for other stations in the Chicago market, with The Lite jumping five points from last month […]
The third annual NHL Winter Classic which featured an outdoor game played at Wrigley Field between the Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings drew an 2.9 Nielsen overnight household rating for NBC on New Year’s Day, up 12 percent from the 2007 Classic between Buffalo and Pittsburgh. Here in Chicago, WMAQ-TV notched an 11.8 household rating and 21 share – […]
I’ve noticed that hardly anyone has come up with a worst TV show list for 2008 (too easy, perhaps?) Maybe the economy was bad enough not to talk about any bad TV… Anyhoo, here are the worst, the inane, the horrible, horrible, stench of what was left behind in 2008 in terms of media – and remember, we’re not just […]
Happy New Year, everyone! Instead of listing just TV shows, yours truly has decided to include items other than TV shows in the annual Excellent 10 and Toilet 10 lists across this year. Two history-making events happening in 2008 – Michael Phelps’ Olympic Gold Medal run and Barack Obama’s acceptance speech here in Chicago after becoming the first African-American President […]
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