In a move certain to make a lot of people angry, the digital TV switchover may not take place on Feb. 17 as planned. The new Obama administration wants to postpone the switch because money to fund those digital converter box coupons have run out. The possible move is being supported by the four major networks. With all the time, […]
As the NATPE convention draws closer and closer (next month in Vegas – assuming it doesn’t snow), you’ll be seeing these updates more and more here. So, here we go… – TNT’s The Closer has been sold to all Fox-owned stations for weekend play, including WFLD/WPWR here, as Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution hopes Closer’s success on TNT will translate […]
From the bag today: – Comcast SportsNet announced it is splitting its signature sports news show SportsNite into two half-hours at 10 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. (Yours truly thought they were already separate.) – It looks like an Obama-led FCC could steer the focus away from indecency, which has been the focus of the agency over the last few years. […]
In a move that comes as surprising and shocking, The Tribune Co. – home to the Chicago Tribune, WGN-TV and WGN-AM and the Chicago Cubs, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It’s no secret Tribune has been under heavy debt load since the company was taken over by Sam Zell for $8.2 billion and was taken private last year. […]
Seventeen years after Jonathan Brandmeier’s syndicated TV show came – and went – quickly, he’s taking another stab at the small screen. NBC-owned WMAQ-TV is set to air two half-hour specials featuring Brandmeier on Dec. 6 at 1:05 a.m. (that’s Saturday morning, not Saturday night) and the other airing a week later on Sunday night, after Sports Sunday. It is […]
Chalk up another victory for The Worldwide Leader in B.S. And the coup involves an organization that put the B.S. in BCS. After Fox Sports rejected to match an offer, the Bowl Championship Series – or BCS – is headed for ESPN beginning in 2011 in a four-year, $500 million deal. The deal means the Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Sugar […]
The merger between XM and Sirius is now official – the deal closed earlier today, with the new company being titled SiriusXM Radio (of course the Sirius name goes first…) The company will trade on Nasdaq under the name SIRI. With the two companies combining forces, the new entity has 18.5 million subscribers to start. The new company also plans […]
Much like what the New York Mets did in the cover of darkness (canning manager Willie Randolph after hours), those class acts at the FCC approved the XM-Sirius merger by a margin of 3-2 this evening when commissioner Deborah Tate and chairman Kevin Martin agreed on another of principles, including a $19.7 million fine for past FCC violations. The merger […]
Leave it to this joke of an agency to make something like the XM-Sirius merger a partisan issue… But that’s what we have so far as Republicans Kevin Martin and Robert McDowell have voted for the merger and Democrats Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein voting against the merger. Adelstein considered voting for the merger, but changed his mind after the […]
In a move that makes an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court all but likely, The Third Circuit Court Of Appeals threw out the fine against CBS-owned stations for the Janet Jackson Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction”. The court sided with CBS and found the FCC “capricious” and “arbitrary” in changing the rules in not holding fleeting nudity indecent, also concluding […]
Stop me if you’ve seen this headline before… But for a second time in thirteen months, the FCC has rejected complaints from Chicago Media Action regarding local and state election coverage from 2004. The complaint named every commercial station in Chicago. The FCC also rejected complaints from a related Milwaukee activist group regarding their stations. Chicago Media Action fired back […]
Every move you make, I’ll be watching you… Creepy! Hold the flag above your heads kids, because there is a network that will make you proud to waive the red, white, and blue this 4th of July. But it doesn’t have an American flag as part of its logo. And the programming (crummy as it is) hasn’t really changed. Yet. […]
A poster on Radio-Info.com wrote the following: Since most TV & cable networks have declined in morale & the liberal biases & the big corporations & the reality programming that are ruining quality television today, here’s how congress should act in the way we watch television or listen to the radio. Because 25 years ago, there was nothing but quality […]
But I wish I wasn’t… Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti has signed a multi-year contract extension with the paper. Thought: I guess the Reader Alienation Plan continues at the Sun-Times. Read the Think Tank I wrote last week. Didn’t I tell you? And to think the FCC is ready to bail out the newspaper industry by axing the cross-ownership rules. […]
Independent studio Media Rights Capital unveiled its Sunday night schedule for The CW, and is as follows (all times Central:) – 5:30 p.m.: In Harm’s Way, a reality show in the mold of fare seen on Discovery and TLC. – 6:30 p.m.: Surviving Suburbia, A new sitcom whose creator wrote a script, tucked it away, and forgot all about it […]
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