To celebrate 1700 posts at The T Dog Media Blog (corrupting your mind since 2006), here's the Super Groovy Grab Bag of items! (sorry, no party... the budget's real tight this year...)
- Book 'em, Danno!: David Hernandez, the co-owner of the now-defunct Chicago Sports Webio.com, was arrested today in Normal, IL today a week after he skipped town. He is charged with running a Ponzi scheme and bouncing checks, among other things. Webio ceased webcasting last week after running out of money.
- NBC affiliate WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee got a helping hand from Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting over the weekend: After lightning hit its broadcast tower knocking WTMJ's over-the-air signal off, Weigel's WBME-TV stepped in to simucast the station's signal over its 49.2 digital subchannel from noon Friday to about 7 p.m. Saturday (WBME airs the classic TV "Me-TV" format, which run on WCIU's 26.2 and 26.3 in Chicago.)
This was important, given NBC was carrying the U.S. Open Golf Tournament over the weekend. Weigel also owns CBS affiliate WDJT-TV in Milwaukee.
- Speaking of WCIU, happy 30th anniversary to Svengoolie - well, make that Rich Koz as Svengoolie. Last Saturday, WCIU marked Rich Koz's 30th anniversary of playing the funny horror movie host with a airing of Attack of the Puppet People (1958's answer to Eddie Murphy's Imagine That), along with clips from his long-running Svengoolie shows at WCIU and WFLD-TV before that.
Svengoolie started in 1973 at WFLD with Jerry Bishop in the role of the horror movie host. Koz succeeded Bishop in 1979 when he left for the West Coast. When Fox finalized its purchased of WFLD (and five other Metromedia-owned stations) in 1986, Svengoolie was sent packing. When WCIU was looking for a local program to re-launch its general-market programming format in 1995, they hired Rich Koz to revive the character and has been a mainstay at the station ever since.
Koz was hired by WFLD in the mid-'70's to work on the show as a writer after he sent in story ideas.
One question: If he didn't play Svengoolie for nine years, can this still be classified as a 30th anniversary?
- The CW has flipped time periods for Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill. This fall, catch One Tree Hill at 7 p.m. (CT) and Gossip at 8 p.m. (CT) - not that it will make much of a difference in the ratings...
- Bryan Fuller has quit Heroes. Again. The writer/producer left the troubled series to focus on several projects he's producing. Earlier, Fuller left Heroes to work for ABC's short-lived Pushing Daisies.
I guess he rejected a demotion from dipshitter Tim Kring in which he would be stuck cleaning toilets at NBC Universal... Hey, that's should be Ben Silverman's job!
- Premiere Radio Networks and Casey Kasem have announced the end of American Top 20 and American Top 10, effective on July 4 - 39 years to the day Kasem launched American Top 40.
American Top 20 (formerly known as American Hot 20) was targeted to Hot Adult Contemporary stations while American Top 10 (formerly known as American Top 20 the name the Hot AC version currently uses) was targeted to Mainstream AC stations. Both had their origins as Casey's Top 20 and Casey's Hot 20 - both spinoffs of Casey's Top 40 when the shows were produced by Westwood One until 1998.
The number of affiliates for both shows have been dwindling for years. While AT20 has never been heard in the Chicago market, AT10 was carried by WLIT-FM until 2005. Kasem stepped down as host of AT 40 in January 2004 to be replaced by current host Ryan Seacrest.
While Casey Kasem is retiring from the weekly countdown grind, he can still be heard on classic American Top 40 shows from the 1970's and 1980's on terrestrial radio and on Sirius XM (for now, anyway - the Sunday Morning show on '80's on 8 was recently downgraded from 11 a.m. to 6 a.m. CT - not a good sign.)
And for the record, Kasem hosted a television spin-off (America's Top 10) from 1980 to 1992 (part-time between 1989-91), with Golden West and later All American Television syndicating the show.
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