WFLD revamps Good Day Chicago... again

In a long due overhaul, Fox-owned WFLD-TV has decided to revamp its low-rated Good Day Chicago morning news program with the announcement of two new anchors to take over the show - reporter Anna Delvates and sports anchor Corey McPherrin, effective August 2. News of a possible anchor change first surfaced on July 14 in Robert Feder's blog at Vocalo and was made official today by station officials.

Both Davalantes and McPherrin are currently on the station's 9 p.m. newscasts. They will air the 7-to-10 a.m. portion of the morning show.

The duo replaces David Novarro (who's headed back to New York, where he'll join sister station WNYW-TV) and Jan Jeffcoat, who is being moved to noon to co-anchor the midday newscast with Patrick Elwood. During their tenure of Good Day Chicago, both Navarro and Jeffcoat were criticized for their lack of chemistry on the show.

Replacing McPherrin on the sports beat on the 9 p.m. newscast - which already saw Bob Sirott take over from Jeff Goldblatt as co-anchor earlier this week - is Jill Carlson.

Anchors shifting from sports to news have met with mixed results. While Bill Weir has had success going from a third-tier sports anchor at WGN to news anchor at KABC-TV in Los Angeles (and who just today was named co-anchor of Nightline), a similar shift Tim Weigel did in the early 1980's with WLS-TV wasn't as successful (he wound up returning to the sports beat.)

The move is the latest in changes at WFLD's news operation in hopes of improving the station's sagging news ratings, which are the weakest of the entire Fox O&O chain with viewers clearly preferring WGN-TV's newscasts, whose numbers are the strongest of any CW affiliate in the nation in contrast.

In New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Houston, Fox-owned stations lead their Tribune counterparts by comfortable margins.

Currently, WFLD ranks fourth in morning news, only ahead of perennial basement-dweller CBS This Morning The Early Show. WGN meanwhile, often contends for number one in the time period with WLS and Good Morning America.

Thought: You wonder if all the changes the station has made over the past seven months in their news department - and there has been a lot of them - is going to make any difference. Right now, WFLD/WPWR GM Mike Renda and News Director Carol Fowler have their work cut out for them - it's going to be no easy task to build up these ratings. And a weak syndicated programming lineup on WFLD (outside of The Simpsons, The Office, and Dr. Oz)  doesn't help matters much, either. Given all of these problems, WFLD has apparently passed on launching an early fringe newscast anytime soon.

With that said, shifting McPherrin and Dalvantes - who left NBC-owned WMAQ-TV last year - to mornings is a risk the station should take and would be a vast improvement over the bland Navarro and the vapid Jeffcoat. With Jeffocat being shifted to noon, a good guess is she might be out when her contract is up. Her next career move? Well, E! is always hiring....

WBBM-TV names new 10 p.m. co-anchor

CBS-owned WBBM-TV is undergoing yet another change with its 10 p.m. weeknight newscast by pairing current anchor Rob Johnson with Kate Sullivan, a morning anchor at sister station WCBS-TV in New York City, also a CBS O&O. The report first surfaced Wednesday on Robert Feder's blog at Vocalo.

The change is expected to take place in September. Johnson had been anchoring the newscast solo since the departure of Anne State fifteen months ago (she remained with the station as a general assignment reporter, but WBBM did not renew her contract earlier this year.)

Ms. Sullivan is a Notre Dame graduate and landed her first gig at nearby WSBT-TV, a CBS affiliate in South Bend. From there, she went on to NBC affiliate WJAR-TV in Providence and ABC affiliate KATV in Little Rock before landing at WCBS in April 2006. She most recently co-anchored the morning show with Maurice DuBois, an alum of Fox-owned WFLD-TV.

Once a perennial also-ran in New York's competitive news race, WCBS now routinely finishes second in most time periods, thanks to stronger syndicated programming (Judge Judy and Dr. Phil), but also due to a series of disasterous on-air personnel and programming changes at NBC-owned WNBC-TV, whose newscasts now generally rank behind WCBS and market leader WABC-TV, owned by The Walt Disney Co.

By comparison, WBBM has been either in third, fourth, or even fifth place at 10 p.m. for most of the last twenty years, with the notable exception being last November's sweeps, when The Jay Leno Show helped pull down NBC-owned WMAQ-TV's ratings at 10 p.m. Today's change marks the eleventh anchor change at WBBM-TV's 10 p.m. newscast in the last decade. 

WBBM has also trailed in other news time periods, including early mornings where Monsters and Money In The Morning (with Mike North and Dan Jiggetts) currently resides.

Comic-Con 2010 is here

Hey, are you tired of turning on the TV news or logging on to the local newspaper websites and seeing Blago regularly making an ass out of himself or hearing about the latest shootings in Chicago?

Well, cheer up... because I got the prescription to cure your depression... Comic-Con!

Yes, the 41st annual geek fest begins today in beautiful San Diego, with people dressed in Chewbacca costumes, Star Trek uniforms, and Stormtrooper outfits.

And of course, there will be tons upon tons of panels whose subjects range from comic books to video games and from to Hollywood movies to TV shows. There's even panels on screenwriting and how to break into the business.

And for you Star Wars fanatics out there, Friday has been designated as Star Wars Day.

Among the mainstay genres being represented  include science fiction (Caprica, Warehouse 13, and Eureka), animation (Futurama, Cartoon Network's and Nickelodeon's shows, Adult Swim, and Fox's entire Sunday night lineup), live-action sitcoms (The Big Bang Theory, of course - their panel is on Friday) and mauch more.

Even television shows who don't fit the traditional definition of geek are here as well, including CBS' new Hawaii Five-O revival; USA's Burn Notice and Psych; and MTV's new one-hour drama Teen Wolf, based on the 1985 Michael J. Fox movie.

In addition, current pop culture favorites Glee , True Blood, and Vampire Diaries are being represented (now before you all go crazy, let's all be thankful Big Willie isn't holding a panel at Comic-Con.)

And you can't have a Comic-Con without Stan "The Man" Lee.  The legendary cartoonist is scheduled to helm several panels.

If you're looking for coverage of the event, you'll find plenty of it online via Twitter and Facebook and at Comic-Con's YouTube page (which as of this writing, hasn't been updated yet.) On television, G4 is scheduled to send Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn of Attack of the Show to cover the first two days of the event on Thursday and Friday.

For the complete listing of panels for each day of the festival - and believe me, there are a lot of them - click here.

And of course, The T Dog Media Blog will have daily wrap-ups of the events here. Plus, The Sidebar will feature numerous Comic-Con related links, from the official site to the local San Diego television stations covering the event. Plus, follow yours truly on Twitter to get even more updates, breaking news, and links to YouTube videos as soon as I'm able to get them.

Happy geeking, everyone!

"Big Willie" not so big

The one thing that was good about Bill Cunningham's daytime stint last week was he proved he can actually host a TV talk show.

Too bad it was the only good thing.

The four-episode test of Big Willie, which ran on six Tribune Broadcasting-owned stations and one Raycom outlet (Fox affiliate WXIX-TV in Cincinnati) stumbled out of gate. According to Broadcasting & Cable, the program averaged a 1.1 Nielsen household rating and a 4 household share during the four days the show aired. While those numbers are more in line with what a lot of syndicated fare earns during daytime these days, the ratings were down 35 percent from its lead-in and down 15 percent from its year-ago time period averages.

Cunningham is host of a daily conservative talk show on Cincinnati's WLW-AM, as well as a weekly three-hour Sunday night syndicated national radio show, which airs locally over WLS-AM.

Big Willie did best in his home market of Cincinnati, where he earned a household 1.9/5 on WXIX, up 73 percent from its lead-in and up 90 percent from July 2009's time period average. The program also posted year-ago time period increases in Seattle (KCPQ) and Indianapolis (WXIN).

But the program's ratings were down double-digits in the other four markets, including Chicago - where WGN-TV earned a 0.9/4 at 12:30 a.m., down 50 percent from its Friends lead-in and down 40 percent from year-ago time period averages, which consisted of sitcom reruns (Maury usually occupies the time period.)

Originally, five episodes were to be shown, but one of them was pulled due to a lawsuit.

The test episodes included a woman who wanted to set a Guinness Book of World Record for being the largest person ever to give birth (she weighed in at 600 lb. and was going for 1000 lbs.) She appeared on stage with her husband, who fed her sushi and had a whip to "keep her in line".

Other episodes featured women who drank alcohol and did drugs during pregnancy; and elderly women who stripped and worked as sex-phone operators.

If you thought the topics were bad, the overall look of the show was even worse: the set screamed cheap and amateurish and the program looked like it was shot in an office under going renovation with production values stuck in 1987. At any given moment, you'd expect Bob Vila to come out and start using power tools.

A search of Big Willie on Twitter (aside from numerous Will Smith and male genitalia references) turned up mostly negative reviews, with many viewers wondering where Maury was. A sampling of their comments as follows:

- "Big Willie Show = Weak. Sad. Boring. Disgusting. Dumb. Lame. Horrible. An #EpicFail." - SteeVWonders, Chicago

- "[I mean] Big Willie looks like a bootleg Jerry Springer, not Maury. Just awful." - flyyychick, Unknown city

- "They Can't afford chairs on The Big Willie Show?" - Lesile Mere, Houston

- "Who ever at WGN replaced my Maury Povich with this annoying Big Willie show, damn you to hell *sighs*" - Chitownloon (Gina), Chicago

Given these numbers, it is not known whether Tribune will pursue this project for a full-time syndication run, but given this debacle, maybe Bill Cunningham probably should have interviewed now-defunct Bachelor couple Jake Palvelka and Vienna Giradi on one of these shows. At least the two would have felt right at home with the obese woman who thinks she's a seal and the granny porn stars.

WLS-TV to replace "Oprah" with live, local morning show

In news first reported Tuesday morning on Robert Feder's blog at Vocalo, ABC-owned WLS-TV has announced plans to replace The Oprah Winfrey Show, which departs first-run syndication on September 9, 2011: The station is developing a live, local morning show to take her place. There is no word yet on a host or format, but it is expected to be targeted to women 25-54.

The program has a working title of Morning Rush, and the show would air live weekdays at 9 a.m. in front of a studio audience, starting on September 12, 2011 in a time slot Ms. Winfrey has dominated for a little over 25 years.

The new show would be a throwback of sorts - in the 1970s and 1980s, many local stations produced daily talk shows - some airing live in front of a studio audience. For example, then ABC-owned WXYZ-TV in Detroit had the long-running morning talk show Kelly & Company, while the five Group W stations produced plenty of daily, local programming. This came at a time when their were few first-run programs in syndication outside of prime access and local stations (who didn't have nationally syndicated talk shows featuring Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, or Dinah Shore) had only two choices- air off-network reruns or air locally produced programming.

Many talkers, like Ms. Winfrey, Phil Donahue, Regis Phillbin & Kathie Lee Gifford, and Morton Downey Jr. all got their start hosting local shows before they went into national syndication (only Downey didn't succeed.) In fact, Ms. Winfrey became host of WLS' locally-produced A.M. Chicago in early 1984, which evolved into The Oprah Winfrey Show. It started beating Donahue on CBS' WBBM-TV and the rest is history.


In the interview with Mr. Feder, WLS-TV General Manger Emily Barr stated she wasn't looking to launch the next Oprah Winfrey Show: "I think we want to go in a completely different direction. We want to do something that feels lighter rather than heavier, fun without being too silly, smart without feeling too sophisticated. If we can do all of that, and get the right hosts and make it both predictable and unpredictable, then I think people will try us out.”

Instead of airing a program from ABC's Live Well HD subchannel network (which Ms. Barr also manages) or going the vertical integration route by poaching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire or Regis & Kelly from Disney-ABC Domestic Television Distribution (who like WLS, is also owned by The Walt Disney Co.), the station decided to develop a local show and keep all the potential ad revenue earned from the program, instead of shelling out tens of thousands of dollars to a syndicator, and giving up some barter time on top of it. 

So far, this marks the second ABC-owned station to announce its post-Oprah plans. A few weeks ago, KABC-TV in Los Angeles announced its was replacing Oprah at 3 p.m. with The Dr. Oz Show in 2011. Oz, who has appeared on Oprah a few times, currently airs at 5 p.m. on Fox-owned KTTV in Los Angeles.

Sony could have convinced WLS to buy Dr. Oz to replace Oprah at 9 a.m., but opted to renew with WFLD-TV instead. The sale of Oz to KABC put the kibosh on any notion of an ABC group deal to replace Oprah on seven of its ten O&Os.

Meanwhile, other major ABC O&Os including WABC-TV in New York and WPVI in Philadelphia have yet to announce their post-Oprah plans, where she airs at 4 p.m., but sources say a local news expansion into those time periods is likely.

WGN-TV begins 4:30 a.m. newscast

Tribune-owned WGN-TV is adding yet another half-hour of news later this summer, this time at 4:30 a.m.

Following a trend many local stations have been doing across the country for the past year, WGN is adding the 4:30 a.m. newscast to take advantage of commuters getting up earlier to go to work (or as we say in the trade, increasing HUT levels in the half-hour.)

And not to mention the potential to grab extra revenue. Before NBC affiliate KUSA-TV in Denver decided to launch a 4:30 a.m. newscast, it was estimated the Gannett-owned station would earn $12,000 to $15,000 more per week - a number that would go higher for WGN since Chicago is a larger market.

Val Warner will anchor the new dawn patrol newscast, with Paul Konrad on weather. The newscast starts on August 16.

WGN becomes the second Tribune station to add 4:30 a.m. news; earlier this year, sister station KTLA in Los Angeles added a 4:30 a.m. show.

The CW affiliate entered the morning news business on September 1994 with an hour-long morning news show, more than a year after Fox-owned WFLD became the first local station in the market to air a weekday 7-9 a.m. news show (and shifted the long-running Bozo Show to weekends, to the outrage of its many fans.)

As WGN's morning show expanded, its ratings grew - passing WFLD rather easily and has often ranked #1 in its time period. The program also produces plenty of buzz-worthy viral video moments (including timeless classics like "I'm Freakin' Tom Skilling!)

The extra half-hour displaces an episode of The Andy Griffith Show, which stays at 4 a.m. (Chicago viewers can also catch Andy on Me-TV at a more reasonable time, weeknights at 8 p.m.)

Everybody Loves Mancow

Mancow's shtick is so laughable, it could pass itself off as a pathetic sitcom.

Welcome to Everybody Loves Mancow, starring Mancow Mueller! In this show, Mancow thinks the whole world only evolves around him and only him - and everybody who works with him suffers for it. In this latest episode, Mueller talks about Tuesday’s Federal Court ruling on indecency and his effect - on him.

In an interview with Vocalo’s Robert Feder, Mueller said the ruling, which the court threw out the government’s strict rules on profanity, does little for him - declaring radio “dead” and then compared it to someone who died of cancer and they just found the cure.

On Tuesday, the Court thankfully threw out those silly rules, which found TV and radio stations liable for any type of profanity, even the “fleeting” kind. The court said the strict policies - made up after the Super Bowl Halftime Show debacle in 2004 - were called  “unconstitutionally vague and chilling”.

Mueller was host of Mancow’s Morning Madhouse on WKQX-FM (Q101) until 2006, when his contract was not renewed. He wound up suing Q101, in a case still pending in the courts. His most recent gig - a 9 -to- 11 a.m. talk show with Pat Cassidy on WLS-AM ended a few months ago when the station canceled the show despite strong ratings.

Mueller’s show was targeted by one person - uber-idiot David Edward Smith of the Illinois Family Institute - who filed 70 FCC complaints and the agency fined Q101 owner Emmis for indecent broadcasts.

In the interview, Mueller said the ruling had little consolation for him and blamed the crackdown for “safe radio” due to the FCC’s stepped-up enforcement of indecency rules. But Mueller also played the race card, saying Chicago’s Hispanic and urban-targeted radio stations got away with more than he ever could, claiming the FCC didn’t go after them because he thinks they didn’t view their audience as voters (and I suppose he forgot - or chose to forgot about the huge voter turnout in Chicago’s minority communities during the last major election.)

In his filings of his lawsuit against Q101, he claims he was denied the opportunity to work at WPWX-FM (Power 92) - a station that plays hip-hop/rap and R&B music - the same type of music Mancow once played at San Francisco’s KMEL-FM.

How hypocritical.

While Mueller is spot on about the FCC crackdown creating more bland radio, his comments were basically on how it affected him - and he plays the victim as he usually does. And he talks about how “big” his show is nationally when it isn’t even heard in the 10 largest radio markets, including Chicago.

But all of this drama surrounding Mancow plays out like a poorly acted and poorly written farce of a sitcom with Mancow as The Fonz and David Edward Smith as Officer Kirk, trying to run him out of town. The only difference is, the Fonz wasn’t an arrogant asshole like his nemesis was. In this sitcom, it’s a riot with two idiots running their mouths. Just throw in a phony laugh track, a lousy plot, and several cliches, and you get something resembling Til Death or Tyler Perry’s House of Payne... you’d hope Mancow would get hit upside the head with Madea’s purse.

But unlike Til Death, Everybody Loves Mancow is a sitcom that will never get canceled as long as the motormouth keeps his broken-down engine running.  And it took four years for Fox to finally pull the plug of the stupid Brad Garrett sitcom (pictured, above when he actually had a better job playing fourth banana to Ray Romano, Patricia Heaton, and one of those kids on the show.) How long it will take for Mancow Mueller to finally shut up?

T Dog's Six Pack: The Emmys, "Hot In Cleveland", LeBron, and more

Three up, three down: The best and worst in media during the past week:


What's Hot.

The Final Answer: Pay up, Mickey Mouse. A grand jury ruled in favor of Celador after The Walt Disney Co. skimmed the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire producer out of millions of dollars, thanks to "Hollywood Accounting."  The jury awarded Celador $269 million, which Disney is appealing. A huge setback for big media conglomerates - and good news for the rest of us.


Hot In Cleveland. This surprise hit from TV Land of all places has been picked up for 20 more episodes, set to return in January. The program has averaged a cumulative 4.7 million viewers this season - more than Comedy Central's much-ballyhooed return of Futurama and TBS' new laugh-free comedy Are We There Yet? With Betty White, who needs LeBron?


World Cup Fever. ABC and Univision scored more goals than the teams did with the soccer tournament. Sunday's Cup Final in which Spain defeated the Netherlands 1-0 drew 15. 5 million viewers to ABC and another 8.8 million on Spanish-language Univision, giving the match close to 24 million viewers overall. And now, Americans can go back and ignore soccer to the next four years.


What's Not.

The LeBron Debacle. Who's to blame here? ESPN? LeBron James? Jim Gray? Cavs owner Dan Gilbert's remarks? Jesse Jackson's even dumber remarks? How about each one of these dumbasses involved? That's better than going on an one thousand-word rant on this subject (which I did with WGN Radio and ESPN two weeks ago.)

And for the record, yours truly is not a LeFraud James fan.

Emmy nominations. Okay, how does Glee - a program with a bunch of musical numbers strung together by a very thin plot - get 19 Emmy nominations? And this show nominated in the Outstanding Comedy category while The Big Bang Theory isn't?. Meanwhile, Ed O'Neill is the only cast member of Modern Family not nominated?  And neither edition of Survivor gets nominated for Outstanding Reality Series, but the cheesy Dancing With the Stars does? And only four minorities nominated for  the Emmys? So much for diversity. At least the inane Minute It To Win It and Marriage Ref weren't nominated - or are they next year's nominees? The Emmy Awards are becoming more and more irrelevant with each passing year. Yours truly will not be watching this year, and possibly ever.

Jeremy Green. Remember those Holiday Inn Express commercials where you were instantly smart for staying in one? Well... Tirico Suave tweets:

"Jeremy Green busted with kiddie porn AND cocaine. Good thing he was at a Holiday Inn Express or he might have done something REALLY dumb"

The now-former host of ESPN's Football Today Podcast and son of former NFL coach Dennis Green becomes the first person in history to go to a Holiday Inn Express and comes out looking like an idiot. But don't worry his future career endeavors - he now qualifies to co-host with fellow convict Jim Laski on WGN Radio when he gets out of jail.

Bob Sirott returns to WFLD

He's back!

Veteran Chicago media personality Bob Sirott  is returning to Fox-owned WFLD as an anchor for the station's signature 9 p.m. newscast on July 19, alongside Robin Robinson. He replaces Jeff Goldblatt, whose contract at the station was not renewed.

The station initially denied it was pursuing Sirott, even though Vocalo's Robert Feder and the Tribune's Phil Rosenthal said otherwise.

Sirott was last at NBC-owned WMAQ-TV as a temporary 10 p.m. replacement anchor alongside Allison Rosati. Sirott took over after Warner Saunders retired. Sirott was released from his contract after negotiations to renew failed.

Sirott's hire is a bit of a homecoming. He helmed Fox Thing In The Morning for six years with co-anchor (and future wife) Murianne Murciano.

When Fox let him go in 2000, Sirott went on to host Chicago Tonight on WTTW and later went to WMAQ as a fill-in anchor.

Sirott's other employment gigs in Chicago included stints at WBBM-FM (during the station's progressive rock era), WLS-AM, WGN-AM, WBBM-TV. He also did a stint for CBS News' short-lived newsmagazine show West 57th. 

The move is intended to boost sagging ratings for WFLD's 9 p.m. newscast, which has not benefited from its network's strong lead-ins of Glee and American Idol - and the opportunity to further cash-in on the latter's success may be slipping away with ratings already declining and likely to accelerate with Simon Cowell now gone from the show (for the record, American Idol has historically underperformed the national average locally, notably after hometown favorite Jennifer Hudson was eliminated from competition early in 2004.)

WFLD's newscasts are the weakest O&O in the Fox chain, given its New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, and Boston counterparts (among others) fare so much better in 9 p.m. (10 p.m. ET) and morning newscasts.

Thought: I think the pairing of Bob Sirott and Robin Robinson (another WBBM-TV alum) is a good idea - Sirott's chemistry with on-air partners have worked well in the past and will work with Ms. Robinson. Sirott never should been released from Fox Thing In The Morning, which was one of the best local morning shows in a long time. Had WFLD management been patient and not throw in the towel in the face of WGN-TV's morning show, Fox Thing could have been the market's top-rated morning show.

Instead, it languishes in fourth place (just barely ahead of perennial last-place dweller CBS This Morning or The Early Show, or The Morning Program, or whatever they call it now) with David Navarro and the ditzy Jan Jeffcoat, who alone makes the show unwatchable. She makes former CBS morning show hosts Phyills George and Mariette Hartley geniuses by comparison.

"American Top 40" to celebrate 40 years

American Top 40 - the legendary radio program which counted down the week's popular hits from number 40 to number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and gave us the Long Distance Dedication, marks its 40th anniversary on July 4 - the exact day the program was born back in 1970, when it was heard on only seven stations. Two years later, AT40 would have more than 200 affiliates across the country and by the end of the 1970's, would be heard all around the world.

The program has been through almost every musical genre you can think of the last four decades - from Disco to New Wave, from Rock to Hip-Hop, from Grunge to Crunk and kept track of artists such as The Bee Gees, The Jackson 5 (and of course, Michael's solo career), Whitney Houston, Prince, Madonna, Duran Duran, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Eminem, Justin Timberlake, Alicia Keys, Usher, and Lady GaGa, as each become superstars.

In Chicago, American Top 40 has aired on WDHF, WBBM-FM (before the Hot Hits/B96 era), WLS-AM, WYTZ-FM (Z95), WBUS-FM, and its current home, WKSC-FM.

Ryan Seacrest, the show's current host, will look back at four decades of chart-making hits on the special broadcast, which also includes this week's Top 40 songs (the countdown airs Sunday from 7-11 a.m. locally on WKSC.)


American Top 40 was co-created by Casey Kasem, who hosted the show from July 4, 1970 to August 6, 1988, when he departed the show he created after failing to come to terms with ABC Radio on a contract renewal (Kasem would start another countdown show titled Casey's Top 40 with Westwood One in January 1989.) He would be replaced by Hollywood Squares announcer Shadoe Stevens on August 13, 1988 who hosted the show until its cancellation in January 1995 (the show ended a few months earlier in the U.S. in July 1994.)

When ownership rights reverted back to Kasem and co-creator Don Bustany, Kasem left his Westwood One show and launched a new version of American Top 40 in conjunction with AM/FM Radio Corp. (now Clear Channel-owned Premiere Radio Networks) on March 28, 1998 with Kasem again as host. On January 10, 2004, Ryan Seacrest took over as host, but Kasem continued to host AT40's Adult Contemporary spinoffs (American Top 20 and American Top 10) until July 4 of last year, when Kasem retired from the grind - exactly 39 years to the day AT40 premiered.

The success of American Top 40 spawned numerous imitators - some successful (Rick Dees' Weekly Top 40, which began in 1983 and is still going strong)... and some not so (remember Dan Ingram's Satellite Survey?)

American Top 40 is best known for counting down the forty most popular songs from Billboard's Hot 100 pop chart, but in 1991 switched to an all-airplay chart from the magazine in order to cut down on the number of raunchy Hip-Hop, Rap, and Heavy Metal songs prevalent on the Hot 100, which many of AT40's client radio stations did not want to play. When the show returned in 1998, it used the CHR/Pop Airplay Chart used in the now-defunct Radio & Records magazine and complied by Mediabase. Today, AT40 uses Mediabase's Top 40 Airplay Chart and can be found on All Access' website.

And for those who want to listen to the very first American Top 40 broadcast from July 4, 1970, you're in luck - Premiere Radio Networks' American Top 40: The '70's is broadcasting it this weekend. For showtimes and streams where you can listen to the broadcast, click here, and use the drop-down buttons to select AT40: The '70's and the time zone you live in (for example, in Chicago, use -6 for Central Daylight Time.)

T Dog's Think Tank: A hiring suggestion for Randy Michaels

Reader discretion is advised. 

I have some hiring advice for Tribune CEO Randy "Court Jester" Michaels directly from The T Dog Media Department....

Hire Seth Everett away from WEPN-AM in New York City (known primarily as ESPN 1050) and from ESPN's Baseball Today podcast.

Why you may ask? Because he is a seasoned, reliable broadcaster. Wait, no... you don't want people like that. Let me put it another way...

This guy is an abrasive jackass, which would certainly fit WGN Radio's criteria of hiring talent these days, which is right up yours' and Kevin "Pig Virus" Methany's alley.

And never mind his sports background. Assholes like him can be bought and sold for the right price, and you can make him talk about anything topic you want.

So why should The Court Jester and Pig Virus consider hiring Everett? Here's an example... on June 11th's Baseball Today podcast, right out of nowhere, Mr. Everett slammed Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen after he got into an argument with Ken Williams, the team GM over the drafting of Guillen's son and the elder Guillen offering his son $50,000 not to play for the team (after all, it is the Chicago way. Click here to listen and speed to about 11:05 to listen.)

Alright, Ozzie is.. well a bit much - he would fit in with the political crowd in Chicago, that's for sure.  But the garbage Everett is spewing is so hypocritical.

This idiot calls out Guillen for using profanity during post-game interviews... but yet, he admits to watching Family Guy, a program which contains such language (albeit bleeped) and rather questionable content. In fact, the Parents Television Council has a file so large on this show, it's practically a phone book (if you've read this blog for the past four years, then you know where I stand on the PTC.)

And he has the nerve to call out Ozzie for profanity and unprofessionalism? Good grief. Take a look at who the Worldwide Leader in Bullshit employs as a college basketball analyst - yes, that wonderful angel Bobby Knight, who spent half of his career tossing chairs across basketball courts.

And here's another gem: after a pitcher from an American League team recently injured himself running the bases at a National League ballpark during interleague play, he had the nerve to blame interleague play for the fiasco. I guess to him, pitchers rarely have injuries, right? According to his logic, robots should go out to the mound and throw no-hitters instead.

And a few days ago on ESPN's Baseball Today while discussing (or ranting) about the firing of the Florida Marlins manager, Everett said he wouldn't call for any major league manager to be fired- while he has called for Ozzie Guillen's firing on numerous occasions.

While yours truly won't defend Ozzie, Everett's constant attacks on Major League Baseball players and personnel is unwarranted, unfair, and totally hypocritical. This person is just as bad as Jay Mariotti - and some of the reasons why sports talk radio is unlistenable is because the majority of the hosts are retards and Seth Everett is no exception. His voice is so annoying, it makes you want to stick your head in the toilet and vomit.

But it's not the attack on Guillen that gets your truly. No, it's the fact that he would attack someone on the air about the person's professionalism when his own comes into question. And Everett sounds like a member of the despised PTC - when he says his favorite show is Family Guy. This moron sounds like one of those hot-air windbags WGN Radio is trying to hire.

Remember, this is a guy who replaced Peter Pascarelli as co-host of Baseball Today - a job Pascarelli was fired from after he made a crack about MLB Commissioner Bud Selig's statue in front of Miller Park in Milwaukee and birds from all over Wisconsin dropping off some... um, substances on the top of the statue's head. And when the gig became available, Everett took a two month vacation. In other words, he wanted to start the job when he wanted to. Wow, I wish I could've gotten a vacation when I started my new job!

And this trash can also worked in the Major League Baseball Commissioner's office for eight years - I guess ESPN won't ever be worried about Everett running off pigeon jokes.

And his "expertise" on baseball isn't that great either if you listen to the podcast along with Eric Karabell, who comes off as a whiny little prick who mentions the Phillies are his favorite team on every single podcast (and who says The Worldwide Leader in Bullshit has no East Coast bias?) But of course, if you want to work in sports talk radio, a knowledge of the subject isn't really a prerequisite - just acting like an jackass gets you right in the door. Just ask Tony Kornhiser from Pardon the Interruption, who is another self-absorbed jackass at the Worldwide Leader In Bullshit. And don't get yours truly started on Mike & Mike, the weekday morning train-wreck of a show those two idiots on Baeeball Today keep name dropping on their podcast. What, I want to listen to two more idiots?

Given The Court Jester and Pig Virus are so hell-intent on remaking WGN Radio as a outlet full of moronic windbags, Seth Everett would fit right in with ex-convict Jim "don't drop the soap" Laski and newcomer Mike McConnell from WLW-AM in Cincinnati, a polarizing talk show host who spews about the same amount of garbage as Everett does. All of this while good-natured and relatable personalities like Steve Cochran and Bob Sirott were kicked out the door. And WGN was this close to hiring Bill Cunningham from WLW, another polarizing figure who is shooting pilots for a daytime talk show on Bradley Place titled Willie, or its more appropriate title, Randy's Circus on Bradley Place featuring angry parents of child pageant contestants.

But what do you expect when Big Media is in control? Common sense and taste doesn't matter. Shock value and ratings does. It's the kind of values that Randy Michaels, Sam Zell, Kevin Methany, and ESPN executives thrive on. They hire personalities who are hypocrites who call other people's behavior into question while their own behavior comes into question. Does it make good radio? It makes stupid radio. But stupid people love stupid radio, and sadly, there is a lot of stupid people out there and even stupider executives, and it goes beyond the suites at the Tribune Tower and in Bristol.

And while the Internet has provided a new platform for distribution, ESPN's podcasts break no new ground. Big Media conglomerates like The Walt Disney Co. (owners of ESPN) and Tribune don't invest in innovation - they stifle it by trotting out the same old bullshit you are used to hearing on terrestrial radio. And it will get worse because Big Media is only going to get bigger with Comcast's purchase of NBC, which is all but certain thanks it part to the public's indifference on the matter, stifling creativity and innovation even more.

And this is what you get... Pascarelli no longer being employed at ESPN because his comments about Bud Selig offended no one but Bud Selig - and that's all it mattered to ESPN execs, who canned him anyway and replaced him with someone who would rather criticize Ozzie Guillen's actions and Interleague play, but not MLB's shaky steroid policy while running his mouth like a total jackass. No, criticism of Major League League Baseball - or any sports league ESPN has rights to isn't allowed at The Worldwide Leader In Bullshit, but half-truths and lies are.

And Seth Everett is the biggest pathological lying scumbag in sports talk radio today.

So Mr. Michaels and Mr. Methany, please hire away Seth Everett and bring him to Chicago. Because his arrival would complete the task of destroying what was once a great radio station. Better yet, pair Everett in prime time with that ex-con Laski the Loser. Yes, that would make great radio, according to you two morons. Why not go for broke? Adding an assclown like Everett would fit in the rest of the assclowns who work in the executive suites at Tribune Tower.

"Glee", "Modern Family" sold to Oxygen, USA respectively

In a deal that helps set a precedent, NBC Universal's cable networks have acquired exclusive cable off-network rights to Twentieth Television's hour-long drama Glee and half-hour sitcom Modern Family.

USA Network- which hasn't bought a major sitcom for its first cycle since Major Dad and Wings in the early 1990's, gets Modern Family for a reported $1.4 million per episode while female-targeted Oxygen acquired Glee for roughly $500,000 per episode.

And the deal could start paying dividends for Oxygen as soon as 2011 - included is the rights to air a reality show which would focus on finding the next cast member of Glee, which would air beginning next summer (Fox has already renewed Glee for a third season and is likely to renew for a fourth.)

These two shows and NCIS: Los Angeles - which sold for $2.2  million per episode to USA last fall, set a major precedent - marking the first time ever a series has been sold into syndication - broadcast or cable - after only a season on the air (not counting back-end strip deals for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine when those series were launched.)

Usually, shows are sold into syndication when they are in their second or third season on the air. For example, The Big Bang Theory is currently in its third season on the air (heading into its fourth season this fall) and is currently being sold in syndication.

But what makes these deals so unusual is how the bidding process. Usually, syndicators make the decision to bring a show into market and set the floor prices, which has been the standard practice for decades. NBCU made the rather unprecedented move to make Twentieth an offer for the shows outright - forcing rival cable networks to scramble to put together bids. 

The sales also the growing clout cable networks have - thanks to dual revenue streams from both subscriber fees and advertising - over the off-network syndication market these days, something broadcasters used to have. For example,  repeats of 30 Rock were sold to both Comedy Central and WGN America before they were sold to broadcasters.

While Twentieth plans to sell Modern Family as a weekday strip to broadcast syndication later, it is unlikely Glee will be sold in that manner as stations are not interested in airing off-network dramas five days a week. Look for Glee to be offered as a weekend offering for broadcasters instead.

Thought:  These three shows - NCIS: LA, Glee, and Modern Family have re-written the rules when it comes to selling programs in off-network cable syndication. While Modern and NCIS are keepers because they repeat well, the same cannot may not be said for Glee. While the series has been a water-cooler hit for Fox this season, the series' faddish nature - with flavor of the moment guest stars and musicial acts - could date itself when it gets to off-net in 2013, essentially becoming the next Miami Vice.

When Miami Vice came out to market in 1986, stations passed on it because they belived the series' heavy emphasis on fashion and music would date itself by the time it hit syndication - and they were right. After a long delay, the show was finally sold to USA and when they began airing the series in 1990, the show predictably flopped in the ratings.

The same could very well happen to Glee - a program with too many musical numbers wrapped around a very thin plot. Oxygen and NBCU better hope this $500,000-per-episode investment is worth it.

Marvel forms TV division

In its first move since being acquired by The Walt Disney Company, Marvel Entertainment announced it is forming a television division in order to create programs to take advantage of the medium.

Jeph Loeb will head the division's effort as the Executive Vice President in charge of Television. He will oversee the production of animated and live-action programs and direct-to-video releases.

Loeb is primarily known as a comic-book writer, but has also worked on several television shows, including Lost, Smallville, and Heroes. During his tenure at Heroes, he was co-executive producer with Jesse Alexander. After the series went into a creative and ratings slump, both were released from their positions. Loeb is also credited with writing the screenplays for Commando and Teen Wolf.

Loeb's comic book credits include creating stories featuring Batman and Spider-Man and has worked for both DC Comics and Marvel.

T Dog's Six Pack

Yes, T Dog's Four Pack is back! But due to the struggling economy (ha, ha), yours truly is forced to cut one each from the winners' pack and the losers' pack - and merge the rest together to form T Dog's Six Pack - three winners and three losers each in the same post - plus, Six Pack is a catcher name, anyway...

What's Hot:


- World Cup Soccer. The U.S. may have lost to Ghana, but the game was the big winner Saturday afternoon, drawing nearly 15 million viewers for ABC and now ranks as the highest-rated Men's soccer telecast of all time.


- Hot in Cleveland. Yes, there is something hot in Cleveland other than LeBron James! This new sitcom from TV Land featuring Betty White drew an average of 4.1 million viewers in its first two airings, defeating TBS' heavily-hyped Are We There Yet?, a new sitcom in the Everybody Loves To Hate Chris Payne & His House Of Kids mold.


- YouTube wins first round against Viacom in copyright suit. The video-sharing site owned by Google won a round in court against The V of Doom, saying Google is protected from Viacom's copyright-infringement claims. For more information on the ruling, click here.

What's Not:

- Steve Cochran exits WGN Radio. Didn't care much for the guy or his show, but his exit (he said on Facebook he was canned after coming from the bathroom) is just another symbol of the change sweeping the station led by the Court Jester and Pig Virus.

- Downfall. A new ABC  game show featuring stuff thrown off the side of the building and crashing to the ground. Really, this should happen to the person who green-lighted this idiotic program. In fact, Downfall kind of reminds me the state of network television and WGN Radio...


- Zambrano's meltdown. Another summer of hearing stories about an millionaire idiot from the Cubs acting like a fool dominating the local headlines, while people who are struggling to pay their bills don't get the same attention. Unfortunately, the struggles of the everyday person doesn't boost ratings or newspaper sales like lowest-common denominator assholes like Zambrano and Milton Bradley. I guess the people in Big Media who are "asking the questions" need to ask the right ones for a change.

Another "Bachelor" break up (wow, what a surprise)

Reader discretion is advised.

Two idiots. One's a BP exec, the other runs the Baltimore Orioles.

Another Bachelor couple is kaput: Jake Pavelka and Vienna Giardi split up after becoming engaged on the inane ABC show last spring. Pavelka ended the relationship with Giardi because he believed he was cheating on her - a charge she vehemently denied - and she claims she dumped him. Among the other accusations: Giardi said she and Pavelka weren't intimate in months;  Pavelka claims they had sex; Pavelka claims she was jealous because he was on Dancing With The Stars (are you bored yet?), she slept until 10:30 a.m. every day and being a freeloader, and so on, and so on.

Since the two broke up, ABC quickly took back the engagement ring before Giardi can pawn it. With this breakup, its 0-for-14 in the marriage department for The Bachelor.


While the two will go on The Bachelorette July 5 to face-off with each other, why should they go there? Those two idiots can come right here to Chicago and join Randy "Court Jester" Michaels' circus on Bradley Place - otherwise known as Willie, the new just-sued talk show hosted by Cincinnati conservative radio talk show host Bill Cunningham, which is airing on WGN-TV and other stations this summer as a four-day test. In fact, if they decide to go and air out their differences in front of Cunningham, here's "Slick Willie's" own personal welcome for Jake and Vienna:

The Grab Bag: "Entertainers with Garry Meier"

Here's what going on:

- WGN-AM's Garry Meier is starring in his own TV special, set to air on WCIU July 11 at 10:30 p.m, titled The Garry Meier Special. Among the featured interviews: George Wendt (Cheers), Cubs broadcaster Len Kasper, Richard Lewis (Anything But Love), Tim Kazurinsky, and the lady who pick the lottery numbers.

This sounds awfully like the syndicated late-night weekend show Entertainers With Byron Allen - only with local talent.

- Radio host Bill Cunningham's new planned television talk show is already in trouble - he and producer Tribune Broadcasting is being sued by the guests of the program for abuse - and the program isn't even on the air yet!

The guests were mothers of child pagents winners, who claim they were misled about the topic and were subject to abuse by Cunningham and the studio audience.

Tribune is taping the Cunningham shows at WGN-TV for a two-week test which would air on the station, Raycom-owned Fox affiliate WXIX in Cincinnati, and other Tribune stations. The format would be a confrontational-style talk show in the line of Jerry Springer (who has Cincinnati ties), Maury Povich, and Steve Wilkos' talk shows, which airs on several Tribune stations.

And yes, this is the same Bill Cunningham who is a conservative talker at WLW in Cincinnati. I suppose next, Randy Michaels & Co. will try to lure Chad Ochocinco of the Bengals to host a talk show if Cunningham doesn't work out.

- Warner Bros. Big Bang Theory has cleared eight more markets for its September 2011 premiere, on top of the fifteen it has already cleared. The latest clearances are: Tribune's duopolies in Seattle and Indianapolis, WNOL in New Orleans and WTIC in Hartford-New Haven, Conn.; WSBK in Boston; and Fox affiliates KDVR in Denver; and WCCB in Charlotte.This brings the total to 23 markets cleared thus far.

- Also on the syndication beat, Dr. Oz is now cleared in 35 percent of the country for a second cycle, beginning in September 2011. Latest stations to take the doc's prescription include Fox affiliate KTVU in  San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose; ABC affiliate WFAA in Dallas-Fort-Worth; NBC affiliate KPRC Houston; ABC affiliate WTAE in Pittsburgh; and independent KTVK in Phoenix. Two of those stations - WFAA and KTVK - are owned by Belo.

NBA Finals perform a ratings slam dunk

Viewers fled into the entrances for Game 7 of the NBA Finals between storic rivals the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics and blew the competition out of the water.

The game drew 28.2 million viewers in final ratings released Friday afternoon, marking it as the most-watched NBA game since Game 6 the 1998 NBA Finals, which the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls beat the Utah Jazz to win their sixth (and last-to-date) NBA Championship.

The Lakers beat the Celtics to win their sixteenth NBA title, their second straight, and their fifth title in the last eleven years.

Overall, the NBA Finals averaged 18.1 million viewers this year, up 26 percent from last year (when the Lakers' opponent was the Orlando Magic) and the highest-rated Finals since 2001, when the Lakers beat the Philadelphia 76ers for the NBA Championship.

For some great ratings info on the NBA Finals from past years - and how they stack up compared to this year's finals, click here. 

As for Game 7 in major markets (time measured from 8:15p to 11:00p Central Time), Los Angeles' KABC-TV averaged a 40.9 household rating and a 64 household share, with a peak of 52.5/74 at 11:45 p.m.

In Boston, ABC affiliate WCVB-TV earned a 34.7/55 for the entire game, but peaked at 37.1/63 at 11:15 p.m.

Other markets where the game fared: New York City (WABC, 14.2/26); Chicago (WLS, 17.8/31); Philadelphia (WPVI, 12.8/20); San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose (KGO, 19/37); Houston (KTRK, 18.1/29); Detroit (WXYZ, 15.7/26); Minneapolis-St.Paul (KSTP, 14.0/25); and Indianapolis (WRTV,  17.3/30).

- On a side note, if you have watched the NBA Finals this year, you may have noticed a lot of audio drop-outs during most of the games. Many people thought it was a problem with their satellite or cable provider, but it was also prevalent on the over-the-air HD broadcasts as well (the method yours truly watched the games since the money-grubbers at Comcast charges for a HD upgrade.)

Turns out the dropouts were actually from a dump button ABC and ESPN used to prevent profanity from making the airwaves, in which the Parents Television Council praised the networks for doing (but apparently failed to note the rioting and criminal acts that took place in Los Angeles immediately after the Lakers won the championship.)

But this Comedy Central-type move made watching the NBA Finals an unbearable, annoying, and frustrating  experience for yours truly and most other NBA fans.

So I guess its more important for Disney (the parent company of ABC and ESPN) to appease the jack-booted hypocrites at the Parents Television Council and the FCC instead of the NBA fans who watch the games - just like Comedy Central appeasing Muhammad protesters when the network bleeped the dialogue of two South Park episodes and later puled the episodes from circulation.

Don't you just love the cowardly actions of Big Media?

Scripps stations make a deal with "Dr. Oz"

In a two-station deal with Sony Pictures Television, Scripps has acquired The Dr. Oz Show to replace The Oprah Winfrey Show on its ABC stations in Detroit and Cleveland.

In Cleveland, WEWS simply upgrades the show from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., while sister station WXYZ-TV snatches the show away  from NBC affiliate WDIV in Detroit. In the Motor City, the program - which now airs at 3 p.m. on WDIV will move to 4 p.m. on WXYZ.

The moves are effective on September 12, 2011 when Oprah ends her long run. The show has been a staple on both WEWS and WXYZ since 1986.

Both WEWS and WXYZ were once dominant stations in their respective markets with Oprah as a news lead-in. In recent years however, their ratings have eroded and the station has  fallen behind key competiors.

In Detroit, WXYZ - once a part of the five original ABC-owned-and-operated stations - has fallen behind WDIV in key news races (including 5 p.m.) and behind WDIV and Fox's WJBK in the morning news races.

In Cleveland, WEWS often places third, behind Fox affiliate WJW and NBC affiliate WKYC-TV. Its 5 p.m. newscast though, is quite competitive.

Earlier this week, Sony made deals to move Dr. Oz. to KABC in Los Angeles and WTXF in Philadelphia while renewing the show on  Fox-owned WNYW in New York and WFLD here in Chicago.


Did you know?

- WJBK and WJW, once crown jewels of the Storer Broadcasting Co., were both CBS affiliates until 1994, when both went to Fox in the New World deal - both stations were owned by New World Communications at the time of the affiliation switch.

- WKYC was once an NBC-owned-and-operated station.. It is now owned by Gannett.

- WXYZ still uses a "Circle 7" logo, a holdover from its ABC O&O days, albeit modified. Scripps acquired the station in 1985 after the merger of Capital Cities and ABC, which forced the network to divest its Detroit outlet.

A high-five for "Big Bang Theory"

Off-net sitcom clears five more markets. Weigel's WDJT/WMLW in Milwaukee gets syndie rights to show.

Warner Bros. red-hot Big Bang Theory has now cleared five more markets a month after the show cleared ten Fox-owned and operated stations, including WFLD-TV and WPWR-TV in Chicago.

Among the five markets cleared is Milwaukee, whose CBS-affiliated WDJT-TV purchased the show to air on the station and on sister independent WMLW. Both stations are owned by Chicago-owned Weigel Broadcasting Co.

The other markets are in Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Tampa-St. Petersburg, and Sacramento.

Warner is selling Big Bang the old-fashioned way: market-by-market in order to get the best price -  in other words, putting competing stations head-to-head in a bidding war - a method which until the last few years, has been standard for selling off-network sitcoms in broadcast syndication.

In Kansas City, Hearst's duopoly of ABC affiliate KMBC and CW affiliate KCWE acquired the show, as did KQCA in Sacramento (also owned by Hearst), and another Hearst station (Tampa's WMOR) grabbed the show as well.

But it wasn't a clean sweep for Hearst, though: in Pittsburgh (where Hearst owns ABC affiliate WTAE), Sinclair won the rights for its WPMY-TV.

Hearst also owns WISN-TV in Milwaukee, where Weigel's duopoly won the rights.

The bidding wars comes as big-ticket sitcoms are scarce and the cable window is now simultaneous with broadcast (TBS recently snatched Big Bang for more than $1 million per episode.)

CBS is shifting Big Bang out of its longtime Monday night time slot to anchor Thursday evenings this fall.

WCIU gets Sept. 27 Packers-Bears game

ESPN have come to agreement with WCIU to air a Monday Night Football game featuring the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers at Soldier Field on September 27, according to Phil Rosenthal's Tower Ticker blog.

This marks the sixth local outlet to carry a Bears game this upcoming season. Aside from the regular home of the Bears (WFLD, whose parent network Fox holds the NFC rights and WBBM-TV, who will carry the two CBS games when an AFC opponent visits Soldier Field), games are scheduled for WMAQ-TV, WGN-TV and WLS-TV, which will carry ESPN's feed of the Bears-Minnesota Vikings game on Dec.20 (WLS and ESPN are both owned by The Walt Disney Co.)

The reason for the deal in the first place is because WLS will be carrying a live edition of Dancing With The Stars on Sept. 27. Otherwise, the show would have been forced to air in the wee-hours of the morning. Another reason is Chicago is one of Dancing's strongest markets, where the show is the top-rated program in primetime. Delaying the program until 2 a.m. in the nation's third-largest market would certainly the show's national rating.

On October 5, a Vikings-Packers game - which featured the return of Brett Farve to Lambeau Field in a Vikings uniform - forced Dancing With The Stars to air at 2 a.m. on ABC affiliates WISN-TV in Milwaukee and KSTP in Minneapolis-St. Paul, two markets where Dancing also does well. There was no way those two stations were going to give up a game that big for an edition of Dancing.

WISN is expected to air the Packers-Bears game on Sept. 27, and they can with a major difference - Milwaukee is the 35th-largest market in the U.S., so delaying the show might not have such a major effect on Dancing's national rating as it would if the show had been delayed in third-ranked Chicago.

As for WCIU, the station is expected to produce a pre-game show with possible assistance from sister station WDJT in Milwaukee, as noted by Tower Ticker (WDJT announced last week it was expanding its HD offerings outside of the CBS lineup, including airing Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! in HD for the first time.)

This is not the first time WCIU has carried a Bears game - the station carried a Bears-Vikings game from ESPN a few years ago and a  pre-season contest when then-pre-season rights holder WMAQ was carrying the Olympics.

WFLD, WNYW to continue Living In "Oz"

But Fox loses show to KABC in Los Angeles

In moves that come off somewhat surprising, Fox Television Stations has renewed Sony's Dr. Oz through the 2013-14 season on WNYW New York and WFLD Chicago, which keeps the show from jumping to competing stations. In addition, it secured Oz for WTXF in Philadelphia, stealing the show from CBS-owned KYW-TV in the process, beginning in 2011.

But in Los Angeles, Fox lost the show to KABC-TV, the market's ABC-owned station. KABC is scheduled to air Oz at 3 p.m. weekdays, beginning September 12. 2011 replacing The Oprah Winfrey Show. The program now airs at 5 p.m. on KTTV in Los Angeles.

So far, KABC is the only ABC O&O to acquire Oz (no ABC O&Os currently air the show.) With the Los Angeles deal, it is unlikely ABC will pursue a group deal to replace Oprah, which airs on seven of its stations - six as news lead-ins (with WLS-TV in Chicago the lone exception of course.)

But with Oz renewed on Fox stations in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, it keeps the show away from ABC-owned stations in those markets.

On WFLD, Dr. Oz has been averaging a rather unimpressive 1.0 household rating and a 3 share (with a 0.6/3 in females 25-54) in its 4 p.m. weekday time slot, while the show has fared better in the other three large markets.

Sony sells the show on a cash/barter basis, with four minutes of commercial time set aside for national advertising sales and the rest of the commercial time for stations to sell locally.

Did You Know? What was the last program to occupy Oprah Winfrey's 3 p.m. time slot on KABC in Los Angeles before her show began? It was a local talk show hosted by Tom Snyder, which ran during the 1985-86 season and was beaten in the ratings by Phil Donahue's talk show on KNBC. Snyder died in 2007.

T Dog's Four Pack: The Stanley Cup Edition

What a ride it was.

The 2010 Stanley Cup Final goes down as one Chicago fans will never forget as the Blackhawks win their first championship since 1961.  Here are the winners - and losers - of the Stanley Cup Final, noting the biggest winner of them all are of course, the Chicago Blackhawks.

Winners


Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews. They delivered when it mattered most. Patrick "The Big Red Machine" Kane scored the winning goal in OT to clinch the cup and Toews was named the Conn Smythe Trophy winner and named Playoff MVP.

Dustin Byfugulien. A physical player scoring eleven goals in the post-season? Yep, he came though offensively and defensively. Dustin Byfugulien (produced Bufferin) delivered a headache to opposing players so big...


Rocky Wirtz. Give credit to the man who turned around this one-flailing franchise which went from one of the worst franchises in all of professional sports (as rated by ESPN in 2004) to one of the best - all in three years' time.


NBC, Versus, CBC, and the NHL. With the Blackhawks' Stanley Cup drought draped in the background, their quest to end it created a storyline that had viewers hooked and attracted even more of them as each game was played, similar to the New York Rangers' 1994 Cup run, which ended a 54-year drought. On NBC, ratings for the Cup Final were up from last year, with Game 6 the highest-rated hockey telecast in 36 years. In addition, the CBC and Versus also saw increased viewership for their coverage and the NHL clearly benefited with the nation's third and fourth-ranked markets in the Final.

And just important, the profile of the sport of hockey has been raised significantly in Chicago.

Losers

Chicago Tribune. For their rather tasteless photoshopped poster in their paper last week featuring the Philadelphia Flyers' Chris Pronger in a skirt and calling him "Chrissy Pronger". Only this would come from the infertile mind of Tribune CEO Randy "The Court Jester" Michaels.

Chris Pronger. And speaking of Pronger, he sure defined sportsmanship in this series by depositing the pucks from the first two games (in which the Hawks won) into the garbage. And he was still talking smack on Friday, when responding to the Hawks' Adam Burrish, he replied: "I could care less what somebody on another team says about me. I don't play this game to make friends. I play to win." While this is basically true of any competing player in sports, the way he said it was pretty crass. It's people like him is the reason what's wrong with professional sports, and personally, I don't give a damn what he's won the past.

Pronger the Prick sounds like a reality show contestant with his comments. During the summer, maybe he should appear on one - The Biggest Loser, perhaps?

Philly fans. Not sure if the fans were booing NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman or the Stanley Cup Trophy presentation, but either way, it was classless. But what you expect from a city whose fans boo Santa Claus, boo Density's Child performances, cheers injuries, vomit on kids, let kids suck on beer bottles, and run out on the field and get tasered?

Billy Bush. And just why did the Access: Hollywood host appear on one of WMAQ-TV's pre-game shows, which actually pre-empted an episode of Access: Hollywood? I guess the station figured Billy Bush fans needed their fix - all eleven of them.

Blackhawks a winner - on the ice and on the tube

Conn Smythe winner Jonathan Toews hoists the Cup, the Blackhawks' first since 1961.  (Photo courtesy of Chicago Tribune)


For the first time in 49 years, the Chicago Blackhawks hoisted Lord Stanley's Cup.

And viewers fled into the entrances to see the history making event.

Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Blackhawks and the Philadelphia Flyers drew a local household rating of 32.8 and a share of 50, from 7 p.m. to 10:15 p.m. Wednesday night. The 10-10:15 p.m window, which saw Patrick Kane clinch the Cup-winning goal, peaked at an outstanding 46.0/66 household rating and share. Aside from the Olympics, the game is the highest-rated hockey telecast in the history of the Chicago market with records dating back to 1976, when Chicago started receiving metered market "overnight" reports.

Nationally, the Blackhawks-Flyers matchup drew a 5.8 overnight rating, its best in 36 years and drew a 3.2 adults 18-49 rating, topping all competing programming for the night. The game also drew 8.3 total million viewers, the largest for a Stanley Cup Final since 1974's Flyers-Boston Bruins matchup. Game 6 also drew more viewers than last year's Game 7 matchup between Pittsburgh and Detroit, with a 4 percent advantage.

Among individual overnight markets, Chicago rated the highest of course, followed by Philadelphia. But the game drew strong ratings in one place where you least expected it: Fort Myers, Fla., where NBC affiliate WBBH-TV drew a 6.1/10.

Other markets who drew well include Buffalo (WGRZ, 13.5/20), Pittsburgh (WPXI, 9.7/14 ), Detroit (WDIV, 6.3/10), Indianapolis (WTHR, 6.3/10), Minneapolis-St. Paul (KARE, 5.9/11) and Boston (WHDH, 5.1/9).

Apparently, the Blackhawks quest to end one of the longest championship droughts in sports drew lots of viewers, much like what happened in 1994 when the New York Rangers ended their 54-year drought when they beat the Vancouver Canucks to win the Cup.

The four NBC Stanley Cup games this year averaged 6.1 million viewers - the most in the thirteen years the Stanley Cup Finals have aired on broadcast network television (Fox had rights from 1995-99, then ABC from 2000-04, and NBC from 2006 on. The 2004-05 lockout prevented a Stanley Cup Final from taking place.)


Geek alert: As Phil Rosenthal's Tower Ticker blog points out, eight of the nine championship clinchers in Chicago in the TV era all took place over NBC's owned outlet here, WMAQ. Fox-owned WFLD aired the 2005 World Series clincher between the Chicago White Sox and Houston Astros.

So, what was media consumption like when the Blackhawks last won the Cup on April 16, 1961? Well...

- The top-rated freshman series was CBS' The Andy Griffith Show, which finished fourth for the season.

- If you thought the 1960-61 season was overrun with Westerns, you're right: of the ten highest-rated shows on televison that season, four were Westerns, including the top three in respective order: CBS' Gunsmoke, followed by NBC's Wagon Train and  CBS' Have Gun, Will Travel. (CBS' Rawhide was sixth.) Rounding out the top five were Griffith, and ABC's The Real McCoys.

- Walt Disney Presents, a show which was instrumental in getting ABC off the ground, jumped to NBC in 1961 with the lure of producing and airing the series in color and changing the title of the series to what else? Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. NBC ditched the show in 1981 after 20 seasons because of declining ratings and an increasing reliance on reruns. (35 years later, Disney would wind up buying ABC.)

- Other popular television series at the time included Dennis The Menace, The Untouchables, Naked City, Maverick, Lassie, and The Ed Sullivan Show. 
 
- WLS-AM entered its second year as a Top 40 radio station. With personalities like Gene Taylor and Dick Biondi, the station quickly ascended to the top of the ratings.

- The number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 the day the Hawks won the Cup was "Blue Moon" by the The Marcels, which spent three weeks at the top spot. 

- Just weeks after the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup, FCC Chairman Newton Minow dismissed television as a "vast wasteland" in a speech at the National Association of Broadcasters convention. Don't ask him what he thinks about television today.

Finally.

Blackhawks continue to roll in the ratings

The ultimate showdown in marquee events took place Sunday when the Game 2 of the NBA Finals took on ABC and Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Philadelphia Flyers took place on NBC.

While it was no surprise the NBA finals rolled over the Stanley Cup by the wide margin, in Chicago the Blackhawks easily rolled over the Lakers-Celtics matchup with a 26.0 household rating. However, the basketball game did produce a rather decent 7.3 HH rating locally, a strong number against the Blackhawks.

Nationally, it was a different story. The NBA game drew a 10.9/18 share in household overnight ratings, while the Stanley Cup Final drew only a 4.0/7 (final ratings for both were not available at the time this was posted.)

Chicago led the nation with the 26 rating, followed by Philadelphia (WCAU) with a 19.7 rating and a 28 share. Other markets HH rating/share scores' were: Buffalo (WGRZ, 10.6/15 - Patrick Kane's home market); Pittsburgh (WPXI, 5.8/9); Detroit (WDIV, 4.2/6); Minneapolis-St. Paul (KARE, 3.8/7) and Milwaukee (WTMJ, 3.6/6).

In Minneapolis-St. Paul market however, the NBA Finals easily outdrew the hockey game with a 6.5/12. Ironically, the market's NHL team (Wild) outdrew the NBA team (Timberwolves) in the ratings this recent season by a wide margin (both teams appear on FSN North and Twin Cities independent KSTC. Neither made the playoffs this year in their respective sport.)


Despite going up against basketball, the Stanley Cup game drew the largest audience for an non-overtime Game 5 since 2002, when the Detroit Red Wings beat the Carolina Hurricanes to win the Stanley Cup.

The Stanley Cup Final returned to NBC after Games 3 and 4 were on cable channel Versus. In Chicago, ratings were markedly lower. However, the two contests were the highest-rated programming on the respective nights they aired (For example, Game 4 last Friday night averaged a 14.7 household rating.) Game 6 and Game 7 (if necessary) are both airing on NBC.

The Blackhawks did win the game 7-4 over the Flyers and now are one win away from the Stanley Cup, which would  blow the ratings door right off the joint. The last time the Blackhawks won the Cup was in 1961.

For the record, the last time any major league won hardware was the Chicago White Sox's 2005 World Series Championship. The Chicago Bears played in Super Bowl XLII on February 4, 2007, but lost to the Indianapolis Colts 29-15.

Dr. Demento ends long radio run

The Doctor is no longer in as far as radio is concerned.

In a move that doesn't really come as a surprise, Dr. Demento has pulled the terrestrial radio plug on his show after 40 years on the air and just a month short of his anniversary of airing his first show over a Pasadena, Calif. radio station, Chicagoland Radio and Media reported on Saturday. Dr. Demento's show will live online -  but with a paid subscription model. And if you want to download the show as a podcast, it'll cost you $3 - and is only available in mono.

The move came after WLUP-FM in Chicago dropped the show three weeks ago, after deciding not to renew its contract. With the exception between 1995 and 1998, WLUP has carried the show on Sunday nights since the station's inception. 

Chicago was Demento's largest market, with the show not airing in New York or Los Angeles, where the show is produced.

Dr. Demento - whose real name is Barry Hansen - specializes in novelty music, featuring mostly offbeat songs, comedy music, and weird material you wouldn't hear anywhere else. One of the more notable artists to come from the show was one Weird Al Yankovic, who came to prominence in the 1980's with his parody of  Michael Jackson's Beat It called Eat It, which went to #14 on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1984.

At its peak, Demento was syndicated to over 100 radio stations in the U.S. When Westwood One stopped distributing the show in 1992, Demento took over syndication himself. But the number of affiliates carrying the show declined throughout the 1990's, which impacted barter ad sales (where stations gave up some commercial time to the syndicator to sell to national advertisers in exchange for airing the show for free - basically the same manner many television shows are sold in the syndication business.)

In a rather unusual move for radio - and for a bid to keep the show on the air, Demento switched his show's terms from an all-barter format to an all-cash basis without barter, where stations had to pay for the show - something unheard of for a first-run weekly radio program, and is extremely rare these days for a first-run show in the TV syndication business, where deals are made either on a cash/barter or all-barter basis.

Because of the online paid subscription model, Demento forbid stations from streaming the show, which reduced the affiliate count even more - to the point where as of June 1, 2010, only six terrestrial stations remained.

This marks the second time a major name with a long-running radio show decided to depart from terrestrial radio over the last year. In July 2009, Casey Kasem retired from doing his American Top 10 and American Top 20 Adult Contemporary-based countdown shows, five years after he stepped down from hosting American Top 40.  While Demento and AT 40 both began in 1970, Demento would not enter national syndication until 1974 (Both shows would actually interconnect in 1975, when an AT40 staffer was nearly fired after a controversy erupted over who was the lead singer on Shaving Cream, a 1946 song regularly played on Demento's show, whose re-release hit #30 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1975. AT 40 was duped by Benny Bell, who claimed he sang the song on the re-released version, but turned out it was recorded by Paul Winn and was mistakenly credited to Bell when the record was re-released - something Bell really did not fess up to at first.)

Like Demento's show, AT 10 and 20 - and AT40 late into the Shadoe Stevens-hosted era of the show in the early to mid-1990s, each had their fates decided in part due to affiliate defections and dwindling station counts.

Dr. Demento's achievements include induction into the Comedy Music Hall of Fame in 2005 and the Radio Hall of Fame in 2009.  .

T Dog's Think Tank: Poker face

Welcome to the Tribune Company stag party with poker, liquor, and smokes galore.

The only things missing were the hookers, drugs, and Lady GaGa performing.

Yes, this what took place at Col. Robert McCormick's old office (now used as a conference room) at the Tribune Tower in spring 2009 with Court Jester Randy Michaels - who hasn't found a company he can ruin in the last ten years - partying and getting his groove on. Other Trib execs from the new regime were there as well, including CIO Lee Abrams sitting there gambling the company's money away while hundreds of people who worked for the company lost their jobs and their pensions over the years.

During the party, detectors were covered with plastic wrap so they can smoke, which is a violation of the city's fire code (and this being Chicago, they'll get away with it too, because those "meddling kids" - a.k.a. investigators - are probably going to get paid off.)

And yes, this is the same fools who are getting bonuses from a bankruptcy judge while hundreds of people were laid off from Tribune since Sam Zell took over.

The photos first surfaced on Facebook and later on Robert Feder's blog Thursday at Vocalo.org. Phil Rosenthal also mentioned the party on his Tower Ticker blog at Chicago Tribune's website.

Comments on Feder's blog were mixed, from outrage to who cares (yours truly's is #86 - nice for Sam - commenter #92 - to equate my take on the matter to the downfall of civilization.)

But what bothers yours truly is the "who cares' reaction to all this from some - the pictures clearly show what's wrong with Corporate America. But you wonder if these are the same humanoids who usually turn a blind eye to corruption in Chicago and in state government - which has made Illinois a national laughingstock. And the media business in Chicago is no different - it too is a national laughingstock.

It's this same indifference that's made this Comcast-NBC merger go from a impossibility just a few months ago to a near slam-dunk (with a little help from those who have been successful turning the villain from Big Media to Big Government.)

And for those of us who care about stuff like this, we are being dismissed as "whiners".

Look, we're not whining. We just want accountability from our media outlets and from the companies who pipe content out to the airwaves, whether its through television, radio, or the internet - the same kind of accountability we expect from our politicians - and for those who work for these companies to be treated fairly - from the camera operators working at a TV station to the writers of a hit network show - and for our communities and the people who live in them to be treated with respect - something our local media outlets (like the Tribune) don't even bother to do.

For example, Fox-owned WFLD was hit with a lawsuit by a Cook County Judge Friday for defaming him by claiming he was home on a weekday afternoon with his vehicle parking in his driveway. The only problem was, it wasn't his vehicle and wasn't even his house! (and you see why they are in last place in the ratings.)

This is one of the reasons why people should care about what goes on in the back offices of those who are in charge of distributing content such as news and information into our homes.

How odd that the Tribune - whose paper constantly talks about how much we should get rid of corruption in Chicago and in Cook County and in Illinois - is corrupt itself? The media tells us about how sleazy politicians are and how we should vote them out of office because of their ethical lapses and yet these same people who run media companies engage in the same sleazy conduct they do. 

And some people don't have a problem with that?
 
I guess ethics isn't important to these people. I guess the real problem of corruption and lack of ethics in Chicago media is not only coming from the politicians - it's also coming from the humanoids who are calling us "whiners" whenever Comcast or Tribune or Fox does something unethical.

Well, I have one word for them - and it also describes the people currently running the Tribune into the ground:

Hypocrites.

WGN-TV gets Nov. 18 Chicago Bears game

For the first time since being affiliated with the DuMont network way back in the 1950's, WGN-TV will be airing a regular-season NFL football game.

Thanks to a deal made with eight of Tribune's stations, the NFL network will make those games available to those over-the-air outlets involving their home market's teams. 

For Tribune-owned WGN-TV, the station is airing the Chicago Bears-Miami Dolphins game from the NFL Network on Novemeber 18 (but not WGN America.). The game is also airing on sister station WSFL-TV, which is also owned by Tribune (assuming they can sell out Sun Landshark Robbie Memorial Stadium - or whatever the stadium's name is these days - on game day in Miami.)

The following week (Thanksgiving night), Tribune's WPIX in New York City plans to carry the Cincinnati Bengals-New York Jets game. And the week after that, Houston Texans-Philadelphia Eagles game will be shown on Tribune's Houston outlet (KIAH) and Philadelphia station (WPHL), respectively.

The Thursday night airing of the Bears game is no doubt going to cause headaches for fans of CW's Vampire Diaries, which has become a popular hit among young audiences. The program will likely be delayed until 11 p.m., or delayed to another night. Fans in other cities where a Tribune station is a CW affiliate will face the same problem.

For the past three seasons, NFL Network games featuring the Bears were simulcast over WPWR-TV.

This marks the first regular-season Bears telecast on WGN. Even though they carried NFL games when they were a DuMont network affiliate from 1951-55, DuMont never carried any Bears games.

Rue McClanahan dies

I guess celebrity deaths come in threes. Just a week after Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper passed away, now comes word on the death of Rue McClanahan, who died this morning after complications from a stroke. She was 76.

McClanahan's TV credits include Maude, Apple Pie (a two-episode ABC sitcom clunker from 1978), and Mama's Family, but McClanahan is best known for playing Blanche on the top-rated NBC sitcom Golden Girls, which ran from 1985-92. She also appeared on the short-lived spin-off Golden Palace, which ran on CBS in the 1992-93 season.

Before hitting it big on the small screen, McClanahan regularly appeared on Broadway.

Blackhawks rock the Stanley Cup house

Who would've thought the Chicago Blackhawks would be this hot? They're so hot, they're melting the ice!

Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Philadelphia Flyers, set an all-time ratings record for a Blackhawks game, with local ratings reaching a zenith not seen since at least the Bears' 2006 Super Bowl run.

Locally, the game earned a 25.1 household rating and a 39  household share for the entire game , up tremoundously from Game 1's 16.8/35, which took place on lower HUT-level Saturday night.

Courtesy of Phil Rosenthal's Tower Ticker blog, here's how Game 2 fared in key demos in Chicago:

- 20.8/46 in adults 18-49
- 21.4/45 in adults 25-54
- 17.3/40 in women 18-49
- 17.7/39 in women 25-54
- 24.3/52 in men 18-49
- 25.2/51 in men 25-54 (the target audience)

Between 9:45 p.m. and 10 p.m, the game peaked locally with a 32.7/49.

In Philadelphia, the game did a HH 18.5/28.
Nationally, the game earned a 4.1/7 HH rating in 56 metered markets, marking it as the most-watched Stanley Cup Final game ever. Among adults 18-49, the matchup earned a 2.4 adults 18-49 rating and 5.9 million viewers.

Meanwhile in Canada, CBC drew 2.8 million viewers for Game 2, also up from last year. But year-to-year comaprisons are difficult because of a new ratings system implemented in Canada at the start of the most recent television season.

Not bad for a team who was all but written off for dead just four years ago, but experienced a rapid resurgence in the last two years.

Games 3 an 4 now shift to Versus, which could hurt the ratings a bit, given its limited reach and many cable systems offer it as a subscription-only in a sports tier (Comcast subscribers in Chicago can find Versus on Channel 48 on their cable system.) If there are any Games 5, 6, or 7, they will air on NBC.

Thought: Quick take on the controversy at the end of Game 2 last night between the Flyers' Chris Pronger and the Hawks' Ben Eager. Bad call on NBC's part for not showing the arguement the players had each with each other when Pronger picked up and stole the puck - intended for winning goalie Antti Niemi  - and Eager gave him plenty grief (Pronger later the the puck in the garbage!)NBC didn't show this, but CBC did- and you can watch how it unfolded by clicking here.

As for Pronger, what he did was clearly a bush-league act for an veteran player. If this were baseball, the next time he'd come up to the plate - he would be drilled. Let's hope Pronger gets drilled repeatedly into the boards tomorrow night in Game 3. The asshole better keep his head up!