In the last sweeps period before Channel 4 News loses Oprah (her show is still in reruns) as its lead-in, the CBS affiliate remained No. 1 in all important weekday news time periods except 5 p.m. and 6 a.m. But the trends during the July sweeps favor second-place Channel 2, which won at 6 a.m. [...]
For 27 years in my past life as the Buffalo News television critic, I’d head to Hollywood in July to preview the new fall TV season. Television critics and bloggers across the nation are currently in Beverly Hills, Calif. at the semi-annual Television Critics Association tour looking for the next great thing. I can’t go this [...]
This is what I’m thinking: *The local ratings for Monday’s dueling speeches by President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner give some insights about the political mindset of local citizens. I apologize if there are too many numbers, but in this case the numbers paint a political picture of Western New York’s willingness to hear [...]
Phil Arno, the 60-year-old North Buffalo native who owns WNGS-TV, is looking to create some buzz for the station next week. At or about 5 a.m. Monday, Arno is changing the call letters of his independent station from WNGS to WBBZ. “The call letters stand for Buffalo Buzz,” explained Arno. “We’re the only commercial station [...]
This is what I’m thinking: * One of the memorable moments of the ESPYs a few weeks back came when a winner of some award I can’t remember (who remembers any of the awards) referred to presenter Emmanuelle Chriqui (see right) as Sloan, her character on HBO’s “Entourage.” Some members of the audience laughed. But [...]
If I have learned one thing about blogging, is that fewer people pay attention on weekends. And weekends in the summer around here start Thursday night. A blogging buddy of mine told me a year ago that he puts up a test pattern on his site during the weekends because so few people read his blog when [...]
More than a year ago, Donn Esmonde wrote a column for a Buffalo News retirement party that lamented the departure of nine veteran editors, reporters and columnists who took a buyout or pension enhancement. His final line for the private audience was: “As a columnist, I cannot imagine what I will do without them.” In [...]
It is time for a movie break. It was hotter than January Jones on Tuesday and the forecast is that is going to get hotter than Jennifer Lopez today and hotter than Rachel McAdam on Thursday. So I took a break from watching the new fall TV series to look for a movie to escape to experience [...]
As they used to say on the old game show — “You Asked for It.” I rarely venture into radio. But a blog reader asked for my take on the decision of the owner of WECK-AM to drop its sports and talk format after three years and play adult contemporary music. As I’ve said before, [...]
This is what I’m thinking: * Andre Braugher’s (see right) Emmy nomination for best actor in a drama wasn’t enough to save “Men of a Certain Age.” TNT canceled the series headlined by Ray Romano, Scott Bakula and Braugher because of low ratings. The limited viewership shouldn’t have been much of a surprise since TV [...]