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Southeast Toyota Pulls Ads From WPLG, All Other ABC Affiliates

‘Southeast Toyota Distributors’, a consortium of 173 Toyota and Lexus dealers has told their ad agency to pull all commercials from every ABC affiliated station in the Southeast region of the United States.

ABCNews.com Blotter Blog says the dealer group’s ad agency informed affiliated stations the ads were canceled because of “excessive” coverage of Toyota’s gas pedal problems. The dealers instructed their ad agency to divert the advertising to other local affiliates. ABCNews quotes a station manager as saying that the move is designed “as punishment for the reporting,”

According to their website, Southeast Toyota Distributors is the world’s largest independent distributor of Toyota and Scion automobiles. They represent over 173 dealers in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina. The company’s headquarters are in Deerfield Beach, FL in the same building as JM Lexus and accounts for about 20% of Toyota’s sales in the United States.

Is WFOR BossLady Considered To Rule KTVT?

BossLady has turned the ship around and CBS is noticing. Dallas-based TV critic Ed Bark reports on his site that WFOR news director Adrienne Roark a.k.a. the @CBS4BossLady, is the frontrunner for KTVT’s vacant news director job.

Former KTVT vp/general manager Steve Mauldin, who was also the WFOR GM until 2003, was recently transfered again by CBS to their Los Angelis duopoly and he took KTVT news director Scott Diener with him.

Someone at CBS must have noticed BossLady plucked WFOR out of the ratings muck rather fast. Under her guidance the station has become a lot more consumer oriented and now has one of the largest investigative teams in the TV news business. WFOR is now often vying for the #1 ratings spot with WSVN we are told by some who have seen the latest ratings results.

CBS is also considering KTVT interim news director Scott Keenan, and KENS news director Kurt Davis

WPTV Gets New News Director

Jeff Brogan, currently assistant news director at Cincinnati ABC affilite WCPO, will soon take over WPTV’s news director position. Scripps owns both stations and is moving him down here

WPTV’s previous news director Peter Roghaar left the station late last year for a job at ABC affiliate WTSP in Tampa, Florida

Jeff Brogan’s first day at WPTV will be on or around February 23rd

WPLG Airing Haiti Special Tonight

WPLG is pre-empting ABC’s Supernanny at 8pm tonight to air a special one-hour program titled ‘Haiti: In Our Own Words’.

The program will feature WPLG staffers sharing what it was like to cover the devastating aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. It will also be commercial-free. Instead of ads, WPLG will encourage viewers to contribute to the Haiti relief effors.

Sun Sentinel Reporter Scuffles With Rothstein Bodyguard

WSFL/Sun Sentinel reporter got into a scuffle today after a press conference by the wife of self-admitted scammer Scott Rothstein.

As Kim Rothstein left for her SUV one of her bodyguards, identified by the Miami Herald as former Plantation police officer Joe Alu, and a WSFL reporter got into a scuffle for allegedly getting too close to the entourage.

Video recorded by a WFOR photog shows the Sun Sentinel reporter running toward Kim Rothstein to ask her a question when her bodyguard puts his hand on him and both start to fight.

Another man in a black shirt then rushed toward them and was seen pushing, shoving and threatening Sun Sentinel’s reporter yelling at him what sounds like “you’re dead”. When another cameraman tells the man not to touch him again he yells back “he’s a fucking a cop, there’s a cop behind you, he’s a fucking cop” presumably referring to Kim Rothstein’s bodyguard.

In September 2009 a Sun Sentinel/WSFL reporter was hit, and WTVJ and other crews, were shoved and blocked as a crooked politician and her family tried to run away from the cameras.

A few days before that incident, a WSFL/Sun Sentinel reporter Alex Zequeira was kicked in the stomach while covering a story

SunSentinel’s vantage point of what happened is after the jump. WFOR also has video of the scuffle showing better who did what Continue reading ‘Sun Sentinel Reporter Scuffles With Rothstein Bodyguard’

Get it? He was talking about his penis.

Kinda.


Update: …Or was he?

Chief Meteorologist Pete Bouchard of WSVN’s sister station, WHDH, is getting a lot of unwanted attention the past few days around YouTube, because of an off-color joke he made. While presenting the weather, Bouchard made a joke that came off as comparing his penis size in relation to the 9 inches of snow that fell. View the video after the jump.

Continue reading ‘Get it? He was talking about his penis.’

WFOR Now HD; New Set

New CBS4 Open; Credit to TMBTD; CLICK to enlarge.

WFOR is now broadcasting in High Definition and from their newly built set. They premiered it on a delayed version of their 6:30PM news.  Updates and video soon…

Update: This looks like a soft-launch of a type. According to this article on CBS4.com, they are not broadcasting weather in HD.

“More work has yet to be done. In the coming months, you will see CBS4’s weather department broadcast in high definition. Eventually, the reporting done throughout South Florida communities will be in high definition as well.”

Update: WFOR has posted a video about the switch to HD here.

After the jump, an HD video montage by TMBtD.

Continue reading ‘WFOR Now HD; New Set’

Breaking: WFOR to go HD TONIGHT

Just as SFLTV.com told you FIRST, the long-awaited CBS local news affiliate, WFOR, is finally going HD… Tonight!  According to multiple anonymous tipsters, and finally confirmed by CBS4 reporter Gio Benitez via Tweet, “CBS4 News goes HD tonight at 6:30!” This not only means that they will be transmitting in HD, but will also debut their new graphics package and news studio. Check out the new CBS4.com logo; a possible hint to the on-air graphics.

CBS4 is the last English news affiliate in the Miami/Ft.Lauderdale market to make the switch to High Definition. View Gio Benitez’s Tweet after the jump.

Continue reading ‘Breaking: WFOR to go HD TONIGHT’

WSVN’s Carmel Cafiero Wins DuPont Award

Long-time WSVN investigative reporter Carmel Cafiero and producer Anthony Pineda have won a DuPont award for their 5-part investigative series called “Pill Mills”.

The investigation uncovered prescription drug abuse enabled by Miami-Dade area pain clinics. WSVN’s hidden cameras captured video of addicts legally buying and abusing prescription pain killers on the parking lots of area shopping centers.

Carmel Cafiero and Anthony Pineda’s excellent work helped pass a bill into law to control these pill mills. Previous efforts to control these clinics had failed.

Other winners are CBS and Katie Couric for her Sarah Palin interviews, HBO, WGBH the PBS affiliate in Boston and others

NBCMiami.com is Homophobic…

NBCMiami.com

NBCMiami.com

Kinda. Damn “Miami Locals” and their close minded views. Though, this isn’t the first time something controversial has been posted on the “Locals Only” websites. Countless times these opinionated websites have shown locals laughing about animal abuse, murders, and reckless driving. The moods feature is a cool idea for a gossip website, not for a “credible” news source.

Edit: I’m aware that NBCMiami.com is not homophobic. Just satire.