T Dog’s Six Pack: Pour a wet beverage on me

It’s time to grab your favorite beverage (a six pack of it would be best…) because it’s time for T Dog’s Six Pack! In this edition, Jerry Bryant expands his business, Betty White’s is actually on her rockers celebrating her 90th birthday while the Rev. Michael Pflager is far off his.

Rounds of Hot Cocoa for everyone.

Those who spoke up against SOPA and PIPA. Power to the people, man: After the millions… and millions… spoke out against the ultra-flawed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) – with an assist from Wikipedia and Reddit (who blacked out their sites last Wednesday) and Google (who put a black bar over its logo on the same day), the backers of the legislation postponed their bills until further notice so they can be reworked. It is important to our democracy that we keep a free and open Internet and resist potentially intrusive government regulation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m against piracy – yours truly is a content creator himself – but these pieces of legislation go way overboard.

JBTV goes national – of sorts. It may not be national coast-to-coast (at least not yet), but Jerry Bryant’s JBTV indie music show is expanding its presence beyond Chicago. Seen locally on WMAQ’s Non-Stop Chicago digital subchannel, JBTV has picked up by nine other Non-Stop stations in NBC O&O markets to air Saturday nights beginning February 18. With this deal (which was first reported by Chicagoland Radio & Media on January 17), JBTV has been cleared in the top six markets plus Washington D.C., Miami, and San Diego. JBTV began showcasing indie music acts since 1984 and has aired locally in the past on WGBO-TV, WJYS-TV, and public access channel Chicago Showcase (where it still airs, in addition to its WMAQ 5.2 clearance.) NBC is planning a national rollout of its Non-Stop format, which would expose JBTV in even more markets.

Betty White. First Bill Cosby saved NBC, now can Betty White? Last week, the Oak Park native toasted her 90th birthday on NBC in a Monday night (Jan. 16) special, which drew 12.4 million viewers . That was followed by a preview of her new prank series Betty White’s Off Their Rockers – it drew 12.2 million viewers and a 2.6 in the adult demo. This marks the best performance in the Monday night time period since the heyday of Deal or No Deal and Heroes. Even a Saturday night repeat drew respectable ratings, attracting an additional 4.9 million viewers. Raise a cup of Hot Cocoa and toast Betty White for her 90th!

Rounds of New Coke for everyone.

Remodeled. Wednesday night’s premiere of this uninteresting drivel drew just 707,000 viewers – the lowest-rated debut ever for a series on network television. The numbers were about as low as those for FM News 101.1 and Nine FM – two entities that had few listeners than the entire population of Joliet.

Are you There, Chelsea? Good grief! Chelsea looks like a real-life Peppermint Patty and there’s even a character who looks like Marcie! At any given moment, you’d think Charlie Brown would walk into the bar and get hit in the face by a drink. Yup, Chelsea’s there… but much like this season’s new comedies – the laughs are not.

Rev. Pflager takes on The Bachelor. Yours truly has never been a fan of The Bachelor. So its kind of odd to see the Rev. Michael Pflager (the pastor of St. Sabina Church) taking on the veteran reality show… a program that’s been on the air for a decade – and not the raunchy CBS comedies that air opposite it – especially 2 Broke Girls, a show filled with male genitalia and vagina jokes. And thumbs down to the Sun-Times for actually making this non-story a lead on the paper’s website Thursday – and not giving the same treatment to the SOPA/PIPA debate (the Sun-Times isn’t really giving us a reason to pay for their crappy website.)

As for Pflager, he needs to SHUT UP – he’s said enough. He and “community activist” Andrew Holmes are to the left what the just as moronic Parents Television Council and Rev. Donald Wildmon’s America Family Association is to the right, who only want to blame television, music, and movies for society’s ills. Pflager’s ramblings are nothing but idiotic and stupid. Pflager and the Sun-Times only prove what a national laughingstock Chicago media is. Why does the local media news media give these idiots a platform to begin with? This does not happen in any other market.

(For the record, yours truly does applaud Pflager for his work on making the South Side a better place to live – I met him twenty years ago and he is a nice guy -but he’s become so full of himself the last fifteen years or so. The Jerry Springer protests actually turned me against him.)

In Tuesday’s editions of the Sun-Times, look for an article on how much Mancow Mueller hates Scooby-Doo.

Man, I need more Betty White.