The Media Notepad: NBC 5 launches new local show with The Wieners Circle’s Poochie
Also: Amazon to stream Diamond’s RSNs; Dish-DirecTV deal dead
A staple of local television is coming back: the food show.
According to Axios, NBC 5 (WMAQ-TV) has ordered four episodes of Poochie and Pang Eat Chicago, premiering Sunday, November 24 at 11:35 p.m. (time approximate after Sports Sunday) and will air in the late-night slot for the next four weeks.
Hosted by former Chicago Tribune food columnist Kevin Pang and Weiner’s Circle Poochie (not the dog they killed off 10 minutes in a 1997 episode of The Simpsons but the person who serves up the food with the insults), they review the cuisine from the restaurant scene – mostly cheeseburgers.
“Our show isn’t just a food show uncovering great burgers in unexpected places,” Pang told Axios writer Justin Kauffmann. “We spent all summer writing sketches, bits, parodies, music montages, and fake commercials.”
It’s basically Siskel & Ebert meets SNL.
Wiener’s Circle is the famous hot dog stand on the North Side, featured on national late-night shows such as Late Show With Stephen Colbert for its crazy signs. Among the famous who’ve made stops at the North Side eatery includes now-retired NFL players Jason Kelce and Marshawn Lynch.
Eatery shows have been a TV staple for decades, thanks to the success of Food Network, which even spawned a celebrity (Rachael Ray) who hosted a daytime talk show for seventeen years. Such programming flourished on local TV in the 2010s but many of the restaurants featured on these shows were shuttered due to the pandemic and never reopened. The result was the cancellations of two long-running cuisine shows, WTTW’s Check Please and WGN-TV’s Chicago’s Best within weeks of one another in 2021, the latter also part of an elimination of local weekly entertainment programming at the station over two years as Tribune sold its station group to Nexstar.
After this four-episode test run, Pang and Poochie will be back in 2025 with more episodes, so no, you won’t see Krusty The Clown come on screen with a signed affidavit promising Poochie would return to her home planet.
With Donald Trump back in the White House soon, talks of media mergers have fired up again. But a recently announced merger between two of the country’s biggest satellite TV providers has been benched.
On Wednesday, DirecTV announced that it would not pursue a merger with competitor Dish Network, as Dish’s bondholders rejected a proposed debt swap. This decision comes just weeks after the merger was first announced.
“A successful exchange was a condition for acquiring the DISH video business,” a DirecTV spokesperson said Wednesday in a statement to Fox Business. “Given the outcome of the EchoStar exchange, DIRECTV will have no choice but to terminate the acquisition of DISH by midnight on November 22.”
The objections came after EchoStar objected to a proposed debt exchange from DirecTV, where it would assume $9.75 billion of debt from Dish and accept a “haircut” of $1.5 billion. DirecTV proposed to buy Dish from EchoStar for only $1. The deal was contingent on the exchange, but Dish bondholders disagreed, leading to the deal’s collapse. Echostar aimed to separate from Dish and concentrate on Boost Mobile, the budget mobile division they acquired from Sprint.
With the merger dead, the future for Dish is now more certain. Surprisingly, there was a little public backlash against the deal, given the financial straits of both companies as there were doubts this deal would happen from the beginning.
With so much debt and the continuing decline of the pay-TV bundle, a Chapter 11 filing may come sooner rather than later.
Thanks to an overly generous bankruptcy judge, Diamond Sports officially exited bankruptcy a day after striking a deal with Amazon to stream FanDuel regional sports networks on Prime Video.
The networks would be available for subscribers through Prime Video Channels in each market’s footprint. So if you live in Wisconsin or downstate Illinois, you can purchase FanDuel Sports Network through Amazon. A price point hasn’t been determined, but consumers can buy individual NBA or NHL games for $6.99 each.
In January, Amazon and Diamond reached a similar agreement, dependent on Diamond exiting bankruptcy. However, Amazon eventually withdrew from the deal.
On Thursday, MLB teams Detroit Tigers, Tampa Bay Rays, and Los Angeles Angels reached new deals with Diamond, joining the St. Louis Cardinals and Miami Marlins. MLB and the Atlanta Braves recently withdrew their objections to Diamond’s post-bankruptcy plans.
Despite their exit from Chapter 11, Diamond’s long-term outlook still doesn’t look rosy as there’s a distinct possibility they could wind up in bankruptcy again. Diamond will now have thirteen NBA teams, eight NHL teams, and six MLB teams in their stable – at least for now.
[Editor’s Note: An earlier draft had the incorrect start date for Poochie & Pang Eat Chicago.]