Also: Final Wheel with Pat Sajak draws four-year viewership high; Tegna’s Daily Blast Live to end The WNBA continues to soar to new ratings heights as Sunday’s Chicago Sky-Indiana Fever game illustrated thanks to the heated rivalry between the two teams courtesy of Caitlin Clark. Despite the 11 a.m. Chicago start time, the contest airing on CBS drew 2.252 million […]
Also: Black Chicagoans (still) not happy with media outlets; Syndicated ‘Dateline’ shifts to new local outlet; Rock 95.5 surges in ratings After just four weeks, CNN Plus is getting… subtracted. The Warner Bros. Discovery-owned service announced Thursday it was closing April 30 after launching on March 28, debuting to poor reviews and a cumbersome price of $5.99 monthly or […]
Eric Zorn’s column on police shooting highlights latest clash between the local media and minority communities In the latest example of how the Chicago media often bump heads with minority communities, Chicago Tribune opinion writer Eric Zorn published an article last Tuesday that generated a lot of heat. The subject matter was the fatal police shooting of thirteen-year-old Adam Toledo […]
Bears surprise; ABC 7 dominates November ratings; another new game show planned; Tom Joyner’s future On paper, it looked like another game against the Packers where the Bears would get blown out and the ratings would take a hit, given what happened last year. Turns out it wasn’t the case. Led by Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears stunned their Green […]
Lost in all the hoopla over the launch of The Game and 101WKQX Monday (ha ha) was the premiere of The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon on NBC, with the 39-year old comedian and Late Night host succeeding Jay Leno. And the results were amazing. Fueled by an Olympic-lead-in (actually after the local news), Fallon earned a whopping 11.3 1 […]
Tribune-owned WGN-TV is adding yet another half-hour of news later this summer, this time at 4:30 a.m. Following a trend many local stations have been doing across the country for the past year, WGN is adding the 4:30 a.m. newscast to take advantage of commuters getting up earlier to go to work (or as we say in the trade, increasing […]
It looks like more and more stations are joining the extremely early morning dawn patrol. If you thought 5 a.m. was early, you haven’t seen nothing yet. In two big markets, local stations have or are in the process of expanding their morning newscasts – to 4:30 a.m. In Los Angeles, four stations already have 4:30 a.m. newscasts (compared to […]
A week ago, a 27- year record fell when Super Bowl XLIV between the New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts drew more than 106 million viewers, marking it as the most-watched television event ever in the United States. Now its Canada’s turn. Friday’s Opening Ceremonies for the Winter Olympics drew the largest audience ever for a television event in Canada. […]
Welcome to a special edition of T Dog’s Four Pack (special because this is a bit serious in tone.) On Thursday, Oprah Winfrey announced she was leaving her syndicated daytime talk show after 25 years and ending the program on September 9, 2011. She is focusing on launching her new cable network with Discovery Communications, which goes live in January […]
The long national nightmare is over – the Bulls Ballboy is moving on. NBC Entertainment Co-Chairman Ben Silverman resigned today after two years to start a new company with Barry Diller’s IAC. He’s essentially returning to his entrepreneurial roots: he founded production company Reville, producers of The Office and Ugly Betty. His replacement is Jeff Gaspin, who will now add […]
WYCC-TV (which is on Channel 20) will become Chicago’s first television station to stop broadcasting in analog on April 16, two months ahead of the June 12 transition date. The public television station (run by the City Colleges of Chicago and is based at Kennedy-King College on 63rd and Halsted) will join dozens of other stations across the country to […]
Continuing our look at local May sweeps numbers: Denver: NBC affiliate KUSA-TV swept local news (except 9 p.m. on KTVD) in all time periods. At 10 p.m., KUSA was up a share point from May 2007. Buffalo: CBS affiliate WIVB-TV won at 11 p.m., but the big story here was NBC affiliate WGRZ-TV’s 11 p.m. news show improving from its […]
Affiliates – who depend on their network’s prime-time programs to draw viewers to their late newscasts – suffered ratings declines during the just-concluded February sweeps as the writer’s strike forced the networks into reruns and were forced to air less-appealing reality shows. Judging by the few markets available for review, NBC affiliates seemed to be affected less, thanks to a […]
Interesting tidbits from the world of broadcast TV: – New Jersey residents aren’t happy with New York area WWOR-TV and accuse the Fox-owned station of backpeddling on its commitment of public service and giving the residents of the state the short shrift. WWOR is the only commercial VHF station in New Jersey. The FCC will hold a hearing tonight in […]
We’re back, and we’re sweeping up from the recent February ratings period in local markets (All ratings are measured by Nielsen): New York: WABC-TV dominated the ratings and in all local news time periods as usual, but it was WCBS-TV that surged to second place overall. A bad book for WNBC-TV, which fell to third, but it was an even […]