T Dog’s Four Pack

The best and the worst in media for the week ending May 9: Winners: – Perfect. The City of Oakland and the word “perfect” often goes together as Playboy models and science-fiction conventions. But the city gets to celebrate for one day as Dallas Breaden pitched a perfect game Sunday for the hometown Athletics against the Tampa Bay Rays. Now […]

T Dog’s Fridge Pack: The twelve items that made the decade

In his 2008 speeches, President Barack Obama talked about change. Well, in the media world, change arrived in the 2000s. And boy, did it ever! When the decade started, who knew we would be watching clips on YouTube, or friending people on Facebook, or watching network TV shows online? Or how broadcast television and terrestrial radio would both have trouble […]

T Dog’s Four Pack

A week of shock and awe – literally. A Halloween edition of T Dog’s Four Pack: Treats – White Collar. USA had a lot of goodies in its bag – to the tune of 5.3 million viewers for the debut of its new Friday night drama White Collar. With the continued success of Dexter on Showtime, being a criminal has […]

T Dog’s Groovy Grab Bag

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 […]

A look inside WBBM-TV’s new studios

Arthur Greenwald of TVNewsday reviews CBS-owned WBBM-TV’s new digs in the Loop, which brings the station into the 21st century and a long way from its decrepit McClurg Court headquarters. The new building at 22 W. Washington Blvd. lets the station broadcast its news and local programming in HD and new high-tech equipment – such as Apple’s Final Cut Pro […]

"Legend of the Seeker" improves time periods (updated)

More rating upswing news: The new syndicated action hour from Disney-ABC titled Legend of the Seeker improved time periods by 15 percent from October 2008, including an 80 percent jump in the ratings at WGN-TV here in Chicago, which aired the premiere Saturday at 4 p.m. Among demos, Seeker sook and got big rating increases among men 25-54, women 18-49, […]

TV Week declares Blu-Ray the winner

After Warner Bros. announced on January 4 that they were releasing its content exclusively on Blu-Ray, with the possibly of Paramount joining them, leaving NBC Universal as the only studio exclusively in the HD-DVD camp. And according to the article, viewers might not want to fork over $300 for a Blu-Ray player but get downloadable HD content from Apple’s iTunes […]

News and notes

– The game between the Chicago Bears and Washington Redskins that aired on WPWR-TV last Thursday night from the NFL Network averaged a 16.6 rating – the highest number on that station since at least 1994, when WPWR aired the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. But it’s not so good for the Bears: The 16.6 rating and […]

NBCU, Apple come to impasse on pricing of TV shows; deal ends

NBC Universal has decided not to renew its deals with Apple’s iTunes when it comes up in December. Apple then retaliated and pulled NBC’s fall shows from its service. NBC Universal’s content accounted for 40 percent of the sales of iTunes video product, including popular shows like The Office and Heroes. This happened coincidentally with NBC Universal ‘s announcement that […]