Channel 4 and Channel 2 both got some good news during the July sweeps, which is considered the least important of the four ratings periods during the year. After all, summer viewing is lower and the networks generally don’t provide as much lead-in help in the summer while emphasizing reality programs in prime time. But [...]
Channel 2 anchor Scott Levin as a spokesman for Tops? Of course, that’s an absurd idea. A journalist can’t endorse any commercial enterprise. But Levin sure sounded like he was up for the job Tuesday night after the station ran a very positive story about the success the supermarket has had with gas sales and [...]
This is what I’m thinking: * I love the new look of the Buffalo News website. However, I have a harder time finding what I’m looking for on the site than I did in the old format. My 26-year-old son, who lives out of town and diligently reads the paper online, put in succinctly in [...]
With only a few days until the end of the July sweeps period, the big question over at news leader Channel 4 and sister station CW23 is whether 5:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. anchor Lia Lando will stay aboard. Lando was thought to be a temporary fill-in for Lisa Flynn after Flynn left the station [...]
It is such a slow time for televised sports that I thought about taking a Saturday off. Then I decided it was a perfect time for this blog to give seven illustrations of how slow it is in the TV sports business. With apologies to the late Johnny Carson, it is so slowwww that: * [...]
Tim Russert’s son Luke did the late host of “Meet the Press” proud on Thursday, refusing to back down in a tough, contentious interview with 80-year-old Congressman Charles B. Rangel. Rangel didn’t appear to realize who he was wrangling with when Luke asked him whether he feared losing his job over ethics violations that the [...]
“Who is Don Draper?” If you have to ask, then you haven’t been following the Emmy-winning basic cable series “Mad Men” for the last three seasons. And even if you do ask – as a journalist does in the opening scene of the fourth season premiere of the AMC series at 10 p.m. Sunday – [...]
One of my favorite moments as a TV critic came when I visited a friend who used to be the TV critic for the Boston Globe. One night, I sat down with him to watch the local news and instinctively criticized it. The criticism included some catty comments about the veteran co-anchors, who at the [...]
Channel 4’s Jacquie Walker, Don Paul and Mylous Hairston apparently are going back to school. The owner of the CBS affiliate started mandatory training for AFTRA Buffalo members at WIVB-TV and WNLO-TV last week that will teach them how to shoot and edit stories. The training became mandatory after a previous company request for “volunteers” [...]
In the immortal words of Frank Barone (the late Peter Boyle) on “Everybody Loves Raymond: “Holy Crap.” A federal court judge panel last week struck down a FCC ruling on “fleeting expletives” that cost the broadcast networks big bucks after Bono, Cher or someone else said a dirty word or Janet Jackson showed too much [...]