Look who’s riding back into town after 21 years… and look who’s he brought back from the gutter with him… J.R. Ewing – whose seedy antics made even superhero villains look good by comparison, is coming back to television this Wednesday night in a revival of the popular 1978-91 CBS primetime serial Dallas for TNT, which features the dealings of […]
Howard Shapiro, chairman of Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting, died from pneumonia today at the age of 86. A graduate in electronic engineering from Purdue, Shapiro was a electronics dealer, with a business called C.E.T. (Chicago Engineers of Television) and was one of the first advertisers who bought commercial time on WCIU, which was launched by the Weigel family in 1964, becoming […]
It’s time to grab your favorite beverage (a six pack of it would be best…) because it’s time for T Dog’s Six Pack! In this edition, Jerry Bryant expands his business, Betty White’s is actually on her rockers celebrating her 90th birthday while the Rev. Michael Pflager is far off his. Rounds of Hot Cocoa for everyone. […]
RTV: The R stands for “ruined”. – Good news for fans of Richard Roeper and Roe Conn – the duo at WLS-AM signed a three-year contract extension to continue their successful afternoon show through the year 2014. The move come as Cumulus is about to take over Citadel Communications, owners of WLS-AM and FM in a merger. If you want […]
Numerous executive shake-ups in the last few days… in the offices and behind the scenes: Another protege from the Court Jester era is out the door… Tribune Broadcasting President Jerry Kersting exited on Tuesday and his position eliminated while Nils Larsen was elevated up to CEO of Broadcasting. Effective immediately, Larsen will be responsible for Tribune’s 23 television stations, cablers […]
Your official mascot for Fox Chicago News. A little over two weeks ago, yours truly was channel surfing on the night the earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit in Japan and landed on Fox-owned WFLD-TV around 9:02 p.m. or so. While almost every news organization in the world led off with the disaster in the far eastern country, what did Fox […]
With Mayor Richard M. Daley’s decision not to run for a seventh term, it could mean good news for local television and radio outlets in the terms of revenue in the form of increased political advertising. While the rest of us will being running to our nearest electronics store to buy Tivos, the announcement would mean a huge influx of […]
WWOR in New York also drops 10 p.m. newscast, but moves it to 11 p.m. Time’s up for The Ten. Fox-owned WFLD is dropping its 10 p.m. newscast titled The Ten after two uneventful years and will remove it from its schedule on September 18 (this blog’s birthday.) On September 21, WFLD will air off-network repeats of The Office in […]
The ongoing saga of Tribune bankruptcy will have a big effect on the syndication business. Tribune owes four major syndicators money: Warner Bros., NBC Universal, Disney-ABC, and Twentieth. As a result of the Chapter 11 filing (with Tribune restructuring debt), the studios aren’t going to see a dime of the cash anytime soon. This puts some stress on the studios’ […]
– The ALCS Game 7 between the Boston Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays on TBS last night drew a record-setting 13.4 million viewers, making it the highest-rated baseball game in cable TV history. Boston made a historic comeback in Game 5 being down 7-0 and winning the game 8-7, and winning Game 6. But the Rays beat Boston […]
The play-by-play of last night’s Bears-Redskins game on the NFL Network (broadcast locally on My Network TV affiliate WPWR-TV) was about as bad as the play on the field. Bryant “Kermit the Frog” Gumbel was quite awful, as usual. Analyst Cris Collinsworth was sharp, and delivered the best line of the night, summing up the Bears: “There’s professional football and […]
The bold station owner, who purchased WGBO-TV in 1985, passed away Saturday at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. In the 1980’s, he founded stations in Dallas (KTXA) and Houston (KTXH), and purchased WDCA in Washington, D.C., but sold them all to Gulf Broadcasting. In 1984, he founded WBFS-TV in Miami, and a year later, he purchased WGBO and WGBS-TV […]
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