Friday, August 22, 2008

Who's in your four, Edition II

The week's winners and losers:

T Dog's Fab Four

- Michael Phelps. The best Olympian. Ever.

- NBC and the Summer Olympics. The numbers posted by the event are on the pace to be the most watched Olympics. Ever.

- Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. A slight revamp and an upgrade to early fringe (5 p.m.) at WGN-TV in Chicago bodes well for the future of Meredith Vierra and this underrated game show, once an ABC prime-time mainstay.

- Bob & Tom. Those Clear Channel connections are paying off for Tribune, as the duo land a late-night TV show on WGN America.

T Dog's Flop Four

- Steve Dahl. - His show is being shortened and now moves to 5-9 a.m., so Jack-FM (WJMK) can play more music - but it may be because preliminary PPM numbers haven't been good as the diary ones. But the best lines of the week came from Dahl himself about the move: "By 9, you're done with your morning rush-hour-type radio. You're ready to kick back and enjoy some Huey Lewis, or whatever it is we play." And... "It's easier to start with something like that. It's really hard to start …[when] I've got to talk about this stupid song and Def Leppard. I've got nothing to say about Def Leppard." Funny Stuff. But you wonder if this is Steve Harvey and the now-defunct KKBT-FM (The Beat) in L.A. all over again...

- Star Wars: The Clone Wars. This year's most anticipated project turned out to be both a critical and a box office dud, dampening enthusiasm for the soon-to-launch animated TV series this fall, or whenever it premieres.

- Stargate: Atlantis. The sci-fi show on SciFi finally ran out of gas this week, canceled after five seasons.

- Washington Nationals. They couldn't find an audience (or fans) in Montreal as the Expos the last few years and now can't find an audience in Washington, D.C. With the baseball team getting beat on the field and in the ratings by infomercials featuring Wilford Brimley selling life insurance, it's time to pull the plug on this mess called MASN. As Brimley would say on those oatmeal commercials: "It's the right thing to do."

Toss Up: A pre-season Bears game Thursday night nearly beat the Summer Olympics locally, with the Bears-49ers tilt averaging a 13.3 household rating/22 share to the Olympics' 13.8/23. Hey, aren't we competing for the 2016 Olympics?

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