“Jeopardy!”: A case of a successful game show

  A: This show has been a successful story for 35 years – even before Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer came on the scene. Q: What is Jeopardy? In 1983, King World was looking to pair something with its already red-hot Wheel of Fortune, an NBC daytime game show debuted in evening syndication and became a smash hit. So they […]

Tamron Hall’s new show gains ABC O&O clearances

ABC 7 to carry local show in unspecified time period In an expected move, Disney/ABC’s new Tamron Hall daytime talk show strip has found a home on the eight ABC-owned-and-operated stations, covering 23 percent of the country. In addition to ABC 7 here (WLS-TV), other clearances include WABC in New York, KABC in Los Angeles, WPVI in Philadelphia, and KTRK […]

The T Dog Media TV Hall of Shame

No one expected CNN’s Chicagoland to be a love letter to the city – but no one expected it to be a Rahm infomercial either. A critical and ratings flop, Chicagoland is the one of TV’s lowlights in 2014. Recently, the prime-time portion of The Simpsons marathon on FXX attracted more viewers than Chicagoland did. (As of May 2018, the […]

T Dog’s Think Tank: Rodents in the Mouse House

  Disney’s “Live” blunder the latest in management woes To understand the brouhaha over Kelly Ripa, Michael Strahan, and ABC executives’ handling of this Live crisis, you have to go back 20 years. In 1995, the financial interest and syndication rules – or fin-syn as it was called – expired after 25 years, once again letting the major broadcast networks […]

T Dog’s Grab Bag: Back to the future for ABC 7’s daytime lineup

– Inside Edition/Jeopardy return to old time slot – WMAQ adds 11 a.m. newscast – Chicago Little Leaguers success on and off the field – Dan McNeil, Cheryl Scott exit while Dish Nation adds a Real Housewife  – Back to the future in early fringe: as expected, ABC-owned WLS-TV is returning syndicated first-run series Inside Edition and Jeopardy to its […]

“Katie” to close up shop

In a long overdue move,  Disney-ABC Television Distribution canceled second-year daytime talk show Katie, with Katie Couric. The series is wrapping up production in June 2014. The handwriting for Katie was on the wall when Couric exited ABC a month ago to join Yahoo for an estimated $6 million a year. Even though Yahoo would let Couric continue with her […]

The 2013 T Dog Media Turkey Awards

It’s a blizzard of turkeys! Welcome to the 2013 T Dog Media Turkey Awards, where every Thanksgiving, we serve up turkeys of bad TV, bad radio, and bad decision making in media for the eighth consecutive year. This year, we have 24 turkeys to hand out. So batten down everyone, because here they come! Crowd Goes Wild. Fox Sports 1’s […]

Katie Couric exits ABC News to join Yahoo

Pending deal has no effect on daytime talk show, which is still on bubble Katie Couric’s stint at ABC News is coming to a close. But her syndicated talk show could be another story. As first reported by The Hollywood reporter Friday evening, Ms. Couric is taking take a position at Yahoo!, the internet portal which was a huge player […]

Introducing Quick Hits and Bits

Yours truly is testing a brand new feature titled Quick Hits and Bits, a quick roundup of the latest and not-so-latest television, radio, and Internet news – along with a few editorial quips. This is not meant to replace “The Grab Bag” column I’ve been writing about for the last few years, but wanted to get more media items on […]

Is “Katie” on the ropes?

Could Katie get knocked out of the daytime talk show ring before the end of her second season? Another report has surfaced over the increasingly iffy future of Katie Couric’s daytime talk show, which airs in predominantly early fringe time slots on most ABC affiliates. Fox News is reporting that ABC Syndication is looking for a replacement when Couric’s talk […]

T Dog’s Grab Bag: Sun-Times fires entire photography staff

– In a stunning move, the Chicago Sun-Times fired almost all of its photography staff on Thursday, which left 28 people out of work. The Wrapports -owned paper instead plans to train reports to take pictures with smartphones. Yes, smartphones. Among those who were laid off include 35-year veteran Pulitzer-prize winning photographer John H. White, one of the first African-American […]

Confirmed: “Queen Latifah” to CBS 2… and WCIU

As reported here and on other trade sites last week, Queen Latifah’s return to daytime TV snared its first major deal with Sony Pictures Television: CBS’ owned and operated TV stations signed on for the show in sixteen markets. According to an article in Broadcasting & Cable last Monday, Latifah’s show will in fact, be shown on WBBM-TV next fall, […]