Homer Simpson and Peter Griffin save Fox

Crossover classic, death of “Simpsons” character fuel Fox After a week where many of Fox’s new and returning shows tanked, the network received some much-needed adrenaline shots from two reliable standbys. The 26th season premiere of The Simpsons and the 14th season premiere of Family Guy – which featured a crossover episode between the two – scored their highest ratings […]

How to get away with a hit show

Viola Davis and her students murder the competition The good news continued to roll on for the broadcast networks (except Fox) in the young television season thus far with ABC scoring a hat trick victory last night among entertainment fare, led by the successful premiere of How To Get Away With Murder. The debut of the Shonda Rhimes-produced show drew […]

“Black-ish” off to strong start

South Park beats Fox’s entire Wednesday night lineup  One of the season’s most anticipated – and most controversial sitcoms premiered last night to strong numbers. ABC’s new Black-ish scored a 3.3 rating among adults 18-49, down from its Modern Family lead-in (3.9), but matched it in total viewers, earning 11.1 million viewers. The sitcom is about an African-American father of […]

Strong returns for opening night

Everyone’s a winner in the first night of the TV season!  Well, almost… The first night of the 2014-15 got underway Monday night and judging by the numbers, DVRs are going to be working overtime this week. Despite heavy competition, many shows were amply sampled, including heavily-hyped new entries Gotham and Scorpion. Meanwhile, The Big Bang Theory dominated its competition on […]

Tribune, Fox headed for a Showdown In Seattle

Could have implications for Chicago’s WPWR  A brewing affiliation fight in Seattle could have implications for a local Chicago TV station. According to a story in Tuesday’s edition of the New York Post, Fox is expected to yank the affiliation from Tribune Media’s KCPQ in Seattle-Tacoma. As it was reported in local media circles over the last few weeks, Fox […]

Clear Channel changes name to iHeart Media

When you think about Clear Channel, what usually comes to mind? Layoffs. Voice tracking.  Low pay. Heavy commercial loads. The Arby’s of radio (OK, you get the drift.) Looking for a fresh start, Clear Channel announced on Tuesday it was changing the name of the company to the more audience-friendly iHeart Media, named after the successful iHeart Radio Internet platform. […]

Welcome to the ninth season

[This piece was originally published on September 15, 2014 on the T Dog Media Facebook and Google Plus pages.] When yours truly launched T Dog Media on September 18, 2006, I started with a puny blog on Google. Eight years later, the operation has grown leaps and bounds, thanks to social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus – not […]

Rihanna rips into The Church Of Tisch

It looks like Rihanna has run afoul of The Church Of Tisch. The award-winning singer wasn’t happy about CBS pulling her cover of Jay-Z’s Run This Town from the intro of Thursday Night Football telecast last week, a game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens due to the toned-down atmosphere after the Ray Rice scandal. And so she sent this not-so-nice […]

WGN-TV, Tribune adds “Crime” to daytime

Tribune Broadcasting wants to make Crime pay in daytime. In what looks like a first step in making over its daytime schedule, Tribune has purchased a new first-run strip titled Crime Watch Daily, scheduled to debut next fall from Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution. The program is being targeted not only for daytime, but also for early fringe (late afternoon) […]

WLUP-FM makes major changes

Tim Virgin is back in; Patrick Capone, Maxwell are out Everyone knew changes were inevitable when Cumulus hired Wade Linder as WLUP-FM’s (The Loop) new operations manager/program director. Over the weekend, those changes began. On Friday, WLUP released Patrick Capone after nine years at the classic rock station. Capone broke the news on his Facebook page, thanking Chicago audiences for […]

Remembering Roy Leonard

WGN Television and Radio personality left lasting impact Just 24 hours after Joan Rivers passed away, another well-known radio and TV personality has left us. Roy Leonard died quietly surrounded by family and friends last Thursday night in an Evanston Hospital, where he was admitted recently. He was 83. Leonard arrived to WGN from Boston in 1967, and remained with […]