A packed post full of items in this edition of The Grab Bag: – Say au revoir to Swift Justice: CBS Television Distribution’s first-run courtroom strip is over and out after two years, as reported by Broadcasting & Cable last week. The series was originally presided over by Nancy Grace, but she left the show after one season and was […]
It’s time for T Dog Media’s weekly (or actually bi-monthly… okay, occasional) look at the winners and losers in the world of media: Winners NHL. Despite the hand-wringing over the increase in violent play in the quarterfinal round of the playoffs (i.e. Phoenix Coyotes’ Raffi Torres violent hit on the Blackhawks’ Marian Hossa), ratings for the NHL postseason are up […]
For the second time in a week, a high profile local marketing agreement (LMA) has shaken up the radio landscape in a major market. This time, its ESPN 1050 programming in New York – or more specifically, WEPN-AM (1050) – is replacing the Urban Adult Contemporary format at WRKS-FM (aka Kiss 98.7 FM) effective at 12:01 a.m. on April 30. […]
Format change takes place this Monday Merlin Media announced today it was taking over operations of low-power frequency WLFM (87.7 FM) and is flipping the Smooth Jazz format to Alternative Rock on Monday. WLFM’s owner (Venture Technologies, LLC), will continue to own the station and the station’s license. Merlin already owns classic rock WLUP-FM and all-news WIQI-FM, which replaced former […]
Fox celebrated their 25th Anniversary in prime-time this past Sunday with a two-hour retrospective, featuring clips of past shows and a few cast reunions. While the network officially launched its primetime lineup on April 5, 1987 with three airings each of Married… With Children and The Tracey Ullman Show, the network actually launched on October 9, 1986 with The Late […]
The television, music, and radio industries lost a legend today with the passing of Dick Clark. Clark suffered a massive heartattack a day after after an outpaitent procedure in a Los Angeles hospital. He was 82. Born in 1929 in Mount Vernon, N.Y., Clark got his first job at his family-owned radio station in Utica, where he started in the […]
Watch out WGN Radio fans! Mayhem is coming your way. But don’t worry – the station’s listeners are still in “good hands”. First reported by Chicagoland Radio & Media Friday night, Tribune-owned WGN-AM radio made a deal with Northbrook-based Allstate Co. to rename its Michigan Avenue streetside studio the Allstate Showcase Studio. The studio is basically used for its afternoon […]
It looks like The Revolution will no longer be televised. ABC announced the cancellation of the hour-long network strip on Wednesday after just three months on the air due to low ratings, and renewed long-running soap opera General Hospital for another year. GH will now be able to reach its 50th anniversary next April 1; the series premiered on this […]
Does the headline of this post look familiar to you? Well, aside from the “again” part. It should. I wrote this headline five years ago when the Chicago Sun-Times decided to put then-Chicago Bear Greg Olsen on the front page of the newspaper amid the controversy over a rap song he participated in while at the University of Miami, […]
When you come across something like The Puppet’s Court, you’re probably thinking this must be one of those first-run syndicated strips that was being pitched at the recent NATPE gathering in Miami back in January. But believe it or not, The Puppet’s Court was actually a newscast segment earlier this year on a local TV station in Cleveland – with […]
The Grab Bag today includes a revival of a classic game show – with a hip-hop bent; a local time slot change for syndicated reruns of 30 Rock; and Chicago lands another reality TV show: – Oprah and Rosie are long gone from the Windy City, but believe it or not, television production is expanding in Chicago – of the […]
Our long national nightmare is over. Tribune Broadcasting reached a deal with DirecTV to resume their programming on their systems this evening, just four days after Tribune pulled their signals from the service. The deal comes as the Chicago Cubs season opener begins tomorrow, which will be televised on WGN-TV and WGN America, two of Tribune’s 24 outlets affected by […]
Seems like a cruel April Fools’ prank to play on your viewers. It seemed DirecTV had a deal with Tribune Broadcasting – owner of WGN-TV in Chicago and WGN America, with a new retransmission deal. Or so we thought. DirecTV announced a deal Saturday stating it reached an agreement with Tribune two days earlier to compensate them for transmitting […]
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