Some News About The News And The People Who Report It

It’s been an interesting week in television.  If rumors are any indication of anything – there will be one less female anchor hosting a network newscast in the not too distant future.  There have been rumors this past week – although no official confirmation – that CBS would like to buy out the remainder of Katie Couric’s contract with CBS News and replace her as anchor.  Would it surprise me if something like that happened?  Not really – especially with all of the rumors swirling around the internet and news blogs of some sort of deal being worked out to combine CBS News and CNN.  The other question is – who would CBS hire to fill the anchor chair if something like that did happen?  I dunno!  Maybe the news and entertainment division could work up a new program and call it something like “Who Will Be The Next CBS Evening News Anchor?” and have a bunch of reporters competing against each other for the position.  You could even have CBS/Viacom’s Chairman Sumner Redstone in the boardroom telling one reporter each week that they can “turn in your reporter’s notebook and go home’. 

Along with the talk of CBS wanting to buy out Katie Couric’s contract is the report that NBC’s Jeff Zucker (the man responsible for Jay Leno at 10) would like to have Katie Couric back home on NBC’s “Today Show”.  C’mon Jeff – do you really think that Katie is going to come back and be the perky one on the “Today Show” with Matt and Al after she has being the evening news anchor at CBS?  Jeff – Katie coming back to the “Today Show” wouldn’t exactly be a forward career move – that’s unless you have another brilliant idea – maybe something like “Today At Night” – a prime time hour of news and information and can use every Monday through Friday at 10pm.  Jeff Zucker could try and convince the affiliates on how cost effective a move having the “Today Show” on at night would be.  It would be less expensive that those pesky hour long dramas that you have to buy and schedule and what’s a more perfect lead-in to the late night local news that a network newscast.  Katie could report the news and do those hard-hitting interviews (like asking Sarah Palin what she reads) and the premiere show could feature one of Katie’s always entertaining colostomies.  Hell…maybe Zucker could be the one that the person that Katie chooses to insert a camera to go where cameras aren’t meant to go.  I know it all sounds pretty far-fetched – but nothing is impossible or far-fetched in the TV news business these days.

When I say noting is impossible or far-fetched in the TV news business these days – all you have to do is look at what’s happening at CNN.  Once known as the most trusted name in news -- CNN is quickly becoming the most desperate cable channel in America today.  When Campbell Brown resigned, CNN finally came to the realization that they couldn’t compete against the other channels with news and nothing but the news.  So, what does CNN do?  They are about to combine the news that you need to know with the equivalent of the kind of theater you’d expect to see on a prime time wrestling show.  If a bell is going off in your head that it sounds vaguely like “Crossfire”— the old CNN show where they pitted a liberal against a conservative and let them go at it – then you get a gold star for your forehead for having a good memory.  But they don’t stop there…the hosts that they have hired for this new program will be conservative columnist Kathleen Parker and Eliot Spitzer, who was once the governor of New York until news came out that he like to hire hookers.  Don’t expect a lot of respectable polite political discussions on this show – be prepared for a lot of shouting and attention getting theatrics or, in other words, a reason for you to tune in to CNN instead of the other cable “news” networks.

And the hits don’t stop there – CNN is looking to replace Larry King – who’s turning in his suspenders after twenty-five years of softball questions to some of the most powerful people in the world.  It’s pretty much a forgone conclusion that CNN will hire British TV personality and hack journalist Piers Morgan to fill the 9pm slot.  Most Americans know Piers from the Simon Cowell produced “America’s Got Talent” and from his appearance on “Celebrity Apprentice”.    Hiring Morgan will be the dumbest thing that CNN has ever done.  Trust me – before six months time – Piers Morgan will do something and say something to embarrass the network and give CNN critics fuel to burn the whole house down.  Piers Morgan is an ass and there’s no way in hell that he should be allowed to do an interview with a serious newsmaker – if my memory serves me right – Morgan once asked a British Prime Minister if he and his wife are members of the “mile high club”.  So, brace yourself for CNN’s new prime time line-up of Parker and Spitzer followed by Piers (I know Sharon Osborne) Morgan.  It’s a line-up like that that might have Anderson Cooper seriously consider taking the evening news spot on CBS.

Memories Of Norm Perry, WTAC's Chief Engineer

It takes a lot of people to run a radio station – you need sales people to sell advertising, traffic people to place the advertising on the broadcast schedules, announcers to voice the commercials and do an air shift and it also helps if you have a good chief engineer on staff to make sure that your station stays on the air and sounding good.  Before deregulation hit the broadcast industry – a good chief engineer was as valuable to your radio station as the top rated morning and afternoon drive-time air personalities.  I am lucky to have been able to spend some time and to have known one of Flint and the Tri-Cities’ best chief engineers – the late Norm Perry from WTAC. 

I think of Norm Perry every so often – especially when I’m just goofin’ off on the Internet listening to my favorite Internet radio station or playing a game or two of Sudoku.  Norm Perry died just as computers were coming into being and long before the Internet.  He had a computer chess game that he loved to play and he was beside himself when he would win a game or two against the computer.  I think it was that primal man against machine and man actually beat the machine – thump thump thump the chest – kind of thing. 

I think Norm owned a one of the early Commodore computers, but he had no idea of how advanced that computers would become and how big it would become in homes and businesses around the world.  He was more interested in challenging the computer than to harness it to do things for him.

Norm Perry lived just as Timex started making LCD watches and people were playing Pac-Man and Frogger on Atari game machine.  Imagine what kind of things someone like Norm Perry could do today with computers as powerful as they are today and of the ideas that he could connect with and grow just by harnessing all that the Internet has to offer.

Another thing that I can remember about Norm is that he loved to shop the garage sales.  Norm would check out the pickings – maybe see a television set that didn’t work for fifteen bucks and would end up convincing the owner that it wasn’t worth more than five bucks.  He’d give the person a fiver….take the TV set home….fix it with a turn of a knob or a touch of his soldering gun and get the TV working like it was brand new and sell it for seventy-five bucks. 

The same kind of skills that he used in profiting from garage sales he put to use in his daily job as a chief engineer.  Even though the chief engineer was a valuable person to the existence of a radio station – back when Norm was a chief engineer management at radio stations were pretty tight with a buck and they didn’t really give people like Norm the kind of budget that they needed – so you had to be creative in how you solved problems. 

When Dave Barber came over to WTAC from WTRX to do “Flint Feedback” – Norm was called upon to devise a tape delay so that we could “bleep” anything that needed to be bleeped.  Naturally, a professional tape delay device wasn’t in WTAC’s budget, but you can’t have someone doing a daily talk show and not have some sort of delay device.  Well…it didn’t take long for Norm to access the problem and come up with a solution of a long tape loop between two huge broadcast reel-to-reel players with a “dump” button in Barber’s studio and at console where the producer (yours truly) sat.  It worked and it cost the station next to nothing and it prevented more than a few obscene words from going out over the air.

Norm and I did talk about things other than radio.  At least once a week, we would both venture to the Ponderosa Steak House on Hill Road (no longer there) and feast on that $2.99 lunch special – which was the ground steak patty, baked potato, salad bar and drink.  We could have spent more for lunch – but we loaded up a lot on the salad bar and the rolls and it was enough for us.

During lunch we’d talk about cable television – which was just taking its infant steps.  ESPN existed of only one channel and I remember reading how they were on shaky ground financially as was CNN.  Neither of us had any solutions to how these stations could survive – but we were both intrigued by what they were going to do to survive.

There’s one thing that I will always remember about Norm – and it wasn’t how creative he was in his job or how smart he was – nope – I like to remember Norm as my friend.  I miss those Saturday nights – when Norm would visit me at my apartment on Richfield and Averill carrying a six pack of cold ones that we would enjoy as we watched the fights on HBO.  Neither of us were boxing aficionados, but we knew enough to make watching the fight enjoyable and it gave a chance to just be friends.  Norm….I miss ya!

I've Had It Up To Here....

Blame it on a around-the-clock cable news, cell phones that allow us to capture a moment and publicize it to world instantly via the internet and a general pop culture overload – we, as a people, tend to get burnt out on a lot of things quicker than we use to. 

I don’t know how you feel….but I have had it up to here with news that Larry King, CNN talk show host and certified geezer, is getting a divorce.  Let’s be realistic – Larry King getting a divorce for the seventh or eighth time really shouldn’t qualify under the category of   news.  Larry King staying married longer a double run of his night time TV show is news.  You see, Larry gets a divorce just like he buys suspenders.  When Larry’s favorite suspenders don’t hold up his pants anymore he just throws them away and gets himself a new pair -- when his marriage starts to tank, he gets a divorce.  

It wasn't news when Larry King was able to sweet talk a beautiful woman into marrying him, but when that beautiful woman and Larry conceived a child together  that was news – only because the thought anyone having sex with Larry is so repulsive.  (Close your eyes and imagine Larry doing ‘the wild thing’ with a woman that’s young enough to be his first son’s girlfriend – are you choking on your own vomit at that thought?). 

Anyone who marries Larry King knows that like day leads into night -- marriage leads into divorce and I’ve had it up to here with people trying to convince me his divorce is news.  It’s not…I don’t care and I’ve had it up to here.

Next subject:  Jesse James

Let’s state the obvious:  Jesse James is an asshole.  You don’t marry America’s sweetheart, Sandra Bullock, and then cheat on her with some cheesy ass dancer/former model from an adult nightclub who has huge “factory installed air-bag boobs” and Nazi swastikas tattoos on her body.  You just don’t do shit like that, Jesse.  On top of that – you could have done something to prevent all this news coming out about you and your crazed sexual libido long before one of the biggest nights of Sandra’s life happened  – the night she won her first Academy Award.  C’mon Jesse, where’s your class! 

It’s not the fact that Jesse James cheated on Sandra Bullock that pisses me off – it’s a miracle that news of it didn’t come out any sooner – because when you look at his choice of mistresses – discretion wasn’t something he was concerned about and  it’s obvious that he will do the ‘nasty’ with just about anything.  His marriage to Sandra Bullock gave him a free pass in to a world of respectability, but he's done kissed that ‘respectability pass’ good-bye because of  his love of “Nazi F---king” 

The person that I feel sorry for in this whole ordeal is Sandra Bullock.  What did Sandra do to have to be humiliated by such as low-life cretin as Jesse James?  Absolutely nothing.  Bullock has literally been in hiding since the news of Jesse’s cheating came out and you know that one day she’s going to have to face the cameras and speak about this ugly mess that her “loving husband” has put her in.  She shouldn’t have to do it, but there’s not a whole lot she can do to avoid it. 

Meanwhile – there’s Jesse James and the stories of him being in some sex rehab in Arizona.     From me to you , Jesse – the Dr. Drew’s of this world can’t save your ass on this one.  You remind me of Nixon’s henchmen during Watergate era who used God and being “born again” to cleanse them from all of their crimes.  It didn’t work then and it’s not working now.  I’ve had it up to here on this one, Jesse, don’t go blaming screw-up on an addition -- own up that you’re an asshole and fall off the planet, ok?

I’ve also had it up to here with John McCain’s gift to the world that just keeps on giving and giving and giving – I’m talking about none other than Sarah Palin.  It’s nice to see a failed Vice-Presidential candidate go back to her home state and resign from her elected job as governor half-way in her term go make twelve million dollars last year talking how our elected representatives in Washington need to be booted out of office.  Yet, her supporters will tell us that it isn’t fair to criticize Mrs. Palin for not completing her term as governor, but she sure does love criticizing those politicians who work out the terms that their constituents elected them to.  

I also find it funny that Sarah Palin is always blaming “the mainstream media” about this and that – but when is she going to put two and two together and realize that her employment by Fox News now makes her part of the mainstream media.  If Fox News is the most popular news network (that’s what they call themselves) and they have the ratings numbers to back them up that they are more popular than MSNBC or CNN (two organizations that I consider “mainstream media”) then her employment by Fox makes mainstream just by association. 

And dear Mrs Palin – you don’t want your family criticized or attacked by the media – then do us a favor – don’t parade them on stage wherever you go like they’re part of the show.  If you use them to portray family values you better expect to be called out on it when that family of yours doesn’t live up to what’s being sold.

I have literally had it up to here – when it comes to anything and everything that is Sarah Palin – the sad thing is – Sarah Palin isn’t going to head into the political sunset for a long time – we can just hope that “gotcha” wink and a nod will catch up with her and she can live out her golden years in Alaska eating Moose fritters or something like that.  It's a nice thought -- until then...we're just gonna have to grin and bear it.  

Let's Talk TV: American Idol, Celebrity Apprentice and Larry King???

It’s been awhile since I have written anything – so, I thought that I might as well get off my fat ass and talk about one of my favorite subjects – TV!

American Idol

I was really looking forward to this season of “American Idol” for two reasons: 1) Ellen DeGeneres and 2) Paula Abdul was no longer was going to be on the show. I really thought that Ellen would boost the entertainment factor of the program with some of her comments – but she’s as bad as Paula when it comes to not wanting to hurt the performer’s feelings. When Paula Abdul was on the show, we could at least tune in to see if she was going to say anything coherent or if she was going to fall asleep on Simon’s shoulder from some prescription med bender the night before. Now, we have Ellen – America’s favorite Gay next door in the Idol judging seat and I feel like calling Dick Cheney to see if he’d send someone to water board me just so that I can stay awake though the whole show.

C’mon Ellen, do us all a favor and admit to everyone in the free world and those who might just give a damn that this year’s batch of Idols suck. I really can’t see very many of this year’s batch of Idols really ever having a career in music – with the exception of Bowersox with her Melissa Etheridge voice and Big Mike – the rest of the Idol tryouts might want to check out a career as a bun warmer at the Pinks hot dog stand in Los Angeles – because I really don’t see too many of them recording music that might actually made it on the radio. I mean, I have seen folk singers excite a crowd more than the American Idol 12 have so far this season and when that happens you know that things aren’t good in the world of Idol.

Celebrity Apprentice

Another season of “Celebrity Apprentice”, or as I like to look at it as, “The Return of the Comb Over Boardroom”, begins tonight (March 14, 9pm, NBC). If the promos are any indication of what this season of Apprentice is going to look like – then NBC has a winner on their hands.

You can’t lose when you have people like Sharon Osborne and Cyndi “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” Lauper trying to win money for their favorite charities while vying for the title of “Celebrity Apprentice”. Both Osborne and Lauper can be pretty intense when they set their minds to it and the rest of the cast of this year’s CA aren’t anything to sneeze at either. Talk on the blogs are saying that comedian Sinbad is going to surprise everyone on how tough he can be when it comes to trying to win the approval of The Donald. Keep a close eye on comedian Carol Leifer, too. Leifer, who was one of the writers on Seinfeld and is supposedly the person that character of Ellen was based on, is playing Celebrity Apprentice to win it!

Join Me In My Campaign To Find A Nice (Rest) Home for Larry King

What is it going to take for CNN to finally wise up and let Larry King stay home and collect his social security checks? CNN’s ratings have been taking a deeper and deeper toilet swirl and they aren’t going to improve as long as they keep King on the air. When Fox News has Sean Sanity ranting about Obama Care and what he perceives as Obama’s socialist agenda and MSNBC has Rachel Maddow putting her progressive spin on the news and making some sense of all of the madness in Washington, what is King doing on CNN? He’s holding a panel discussion on the overdose death of Corey Haim (a child actor who wasn’t relevant before he died and is even less relevant as he joins Michael Jackson in taking the perpetual dirt nap). Larry King was once a force to be reckon with on radio and television – but those days are long over – and the only thing holds him and his pants up are his suspenders.

That’s about it for now – and I hope that you didn’t forget to set your clocks forward an hour on Sunday night – you don’t want to miss anything that might be good on TV.

Fox Broadcasting vs Time Warner Cable: It's All About Money (ours)

There’s a battle going on as I write this entry to this blog between Fox broadcasting and Time-Warner cable. This battle really doesn’t affect me as a DirecTV subscriber and it probably doesn’t affect many of the people who are reading this – but eventually it will – and within the next couple of years.

The battle that’s going on all boils down to money and the money that these two media giants are fighting over will eventually come from you and me – the people who rely on cable companies for our television programming. What is happening in this battle is pretty simple – Fox broadcasting wants cable operators (such as Time-Warner) to pay them for the programming they get when they broadcast a Fox broadcasting owned and operated station (which the cable company is pretty much forced into carrying on their system due to FCC must-carry rules). Here’s the big rub in the battle that’s going on -- Fox Broadcasting is asking the cable companies to pay them around a dollar per subscriber – which is more than the amount of money that cable systems have to pay each month for such cable channels as USA, TNT, TBS, Lifetime, CNN, Fox News, etc.

What’s going to happen in this little battle between these two media giants is simple – they’ll reach an agreement and Fox is going to get their financial coffers filled with a nice sum of change by the cable-satellite companies. The people who own ABC, CBS, the CW, Univision, and NBC are going to see all the money that Fox is reaping from this agreement and they’re going to go to the cable-satellite companies and ask for their piece of the pie. The cable-satellite companies will pay, but they still want to make the big bucks – so – they’ll hike up the rates that they charge us for the programming we receive – and that’s where this whole deal sucks.

Many of our favorite cable channels are owned by the big networks:

NBC owns the Weather Channel, USA Network, Bravo, MSNBC, SciFi, Oxygen

CBS owns: MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TVLand, and BET

ABC owns: ABC Family, Disney Channel, Lifetime, Lifetime Movie Network, ABC Soap Net and ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic

Fox owns: Fox News, Fox Business, FX, Fox Reality, Fox Movie Channel, Fox Sports Channels around the country and they have an interest in other cable channels such as The Big 10 Network and National Geographic.

ABC and NBC jointly own A&E (and if I’m not mistaken – the Biography Channel)

Looking at all of these cable channels – these four companies alone get a good hunk of money from each and every one of us each month and now they want their broadcast signals to get paid the same at their cable counterparts. Well, it’s time that we said, ‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!’

It is a fact that of all of the monthly programming fees that cable and satellite companies pay – ESPN leads the pack in what they charge per subscriber. ESPN will justify their huge fees by saying that the major league sports packages that they carry cost a lot of money and somebody has to pay for it…so because ESPN is a basic cable channel (and they make sure they’re a basic cable channel) everyone who subscribes to basic cable pays for ESPN whether they watch it or not. It doesn’t sound fair to me -- but who are we – we’re just the consumer, right?

It wasn’t that long ago that a typical cable bill was somewhere around forty dollars a month and that amount included a pay cable channel such as HBO or Showtime. America’s cable-satellite companies knew that forty dollars a month was a breaking point for the customers and they did their best to stay as close to forty dollars as possible…but not anymore. I can’t tell you what the average cable rate is these days – but I know that each month I’m paying nearly seventy-three dollars – and most of the time all that I get are half-hour infomercials airing on one of the basic channels that I’m supposedly paying big bucks to be entertained by and then there are the round the clock shopping channels. It’s like the Bruce Springsteen song – “fifty-seven channels and nothing on.”

But, let me get back to this battle between Fox and Time-Warner cable and address the both of them. To Fox – if you want to get paid the same as your cable counterparts – allow the cable companies to 1) insert their own commercials in your over-the-air programming like they do on the basic cable channels that they pay for (and you own) that might prevent the cable-satellite program provider from hiking their rates , and 2) allow cable and satellite companies the right to sell your programming ala carte to their customers I can understand that everyone wants to make a buck – but why should I have to pay for something I never watch and could care less about. Hey, I don’t mind paying for your Fox broadcast signal – but why should I have to pay for Fox News when I don’t watch it? It makes sense to me, but I’m sure that Fox doesn’t see it that way.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Look for your monthly cable and/satellite bill to go up because Fox wants to charge you for NFL football, NASCAR, House and American Idol whether you watch them or not. And the bad thing is – it’s only going to get worse. Looking to be entertained? Buy a book – it’s a lot cheaper.