Archive for the 'Media Headlines' Category
In May ‘The Early Show’ surprised Maggie Rodriguez for their ‘Positively Prom Week’ segment with a performance by Gloria Estefan who appeared live from Maggie’s school ‘Our Lady of Lourdes’ in Miami.
Gloria sang a little bit of her song ‘Here We Are’ for Maggie and husband Mike.
Are they so cute or what!
Before I forget thanks to Brandon to sending the video
And here’s the whole segment from CBS News
Maggie talks about her prom
Wayne who lives in the area sent a few shots from the DTV test most of Orlando’s stations performed in sync on Wednesday evening at 7:59pm. All stations except FOX affiliated WOFL and another smaller station turned their analog channels off for about 10 seconds in a bid to inform viewers about the impending TV doom transition to digital in February of 2009.
WKMG Chief Engineer explaining DTV transition:
WESH Chief Engineer explains dtv:
WKMG tells those watching the digital channel via antenna they passed the test
NBC Meet the Press Moderator died of a heart attack this afternoon. He was just 58 years old.
Update 6.15.08: Campbell Brown now at CNN remembers Tim Russert. Between MSNBC’s Friday coverage and this clip I now understand why NBC is doing such an expansive coverage of Russert’s death.
As far as the amount of coverage from NBC going overboard - maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. Maybe it’s just their way of dealing with it. Let them. There’s the remote and the 300 channels and the internets.
From Tampa’s ABC affiliate:
“According to Tampa Police Linger and the other suspects formed a ring
around the officers, and then Linger and the others exposed themselves.”!
Other news organizations say Linger and the other 5 creeps weren’t just waving their wangs at the undercover officer(s), they boxed the cop in and started masturbating!
Of course since it’s one of their own WTVT isn’t making a big deal out of the news, and I couldn’t find their report just by going to their website but there was a link on WTSP’s web site. It says
FOX 13 is aware of the matter and is currently reviewing it
Linger was released on $750 bond early Saturday morning, he’s charged with exposure of sexual organs and lewd and lascivious acts. Both charges are misdemeanors.
All Central Florida stations, with the exception of Fox-owned WOFL and WRBW, are joining together to perform a DTV test.
On June 25 at 7:59pm the participating TV stations will turn off their analog signals for one minute. During this time the screen will be black, without sound, for a few seconds followed by an on-screen graphic telling viewers how to get more information about the digital transition.
The stations will begin promoting the test after the May sweeps end May 24 and repeat it in September and December.
/hat tip Wayne/
Four months after leaving WFOR CBS 4 for Colombia Brian Andrews has landed a permanent gig with Colombia’s largest TV network RCN.
He’ll produce a series called “Colombia through my eyes” and will be “basically driving all over the country for the next two months, stopping off in small towns along the way, telling unique stories”.
Also, in a few months Brian will begin anchoring “Colombia Now” RCN’s first daily English-language newscast.
He’s also freelancing for Al-Jazeera and says on his blog Colombia’s Semana Magazine is interested in a daily web-based English newscast.
Big news coming from Tampa.
Media General’s parent company Florida Communications Group which oversees the operation of WFLA-TV, TBO.com, The Tampa Tribune and other smaller newspapers in the area is offering half of their 1,326 employees voluntary buyouts.
663 select employees from all news operations will have an option to accept either 1 week pay for every year employed up to 26 weeks or 2 weeks pay for every year employed up to 39 weeks.
Florida Communications Group president John Schueler says if not enough employees accept the severance offered there may be layoffs because the “cost savings needed are significant”
They say people tune in to local newscasts to get their weather and traffic information, that’s why you see weather and traffic reports every X minutes during morning newscasts.
But now Microsoft has given everyone another reason to tune in the internet for instant traffic information before heading out than wait for the traffic reports on TV.
The new technology called Clearflow integrates into the traffic reporting of Microsoft’s Live Maps service (maps.live.com) and will help drivers to avoid long traffic jams by directing them to not only major highways but also side streets using artificial intelligence algorithms and traffic data.
Microsoft worked on Clearflow for nearly 5 years creating the artificial intelligence algorithms from scratch and integrating traffic conditions data from road censors, weather information, even taking into account if there’s a big sports game in town.
Clearflow launches today in 75 cities
Adobe released today their new media player based on their AIR platform - flash something or other - called of course Adobe Media Player
The player streams select programs and podcasts including CBS CSI franchise, the latest Survivor, shows from FoodNetwork and MTV as well. And you can add your own content to it if it’s available via RSS in flash or MPEG-4 format.
Continue reading ‘Adobe Media Player: Another Way to Get Free CSI Miami’
A story that will run in tomorrow’s New York Times claims CBS has been in talks with Time Warner to outsource at least some of it’s news gathering to CNN. Either to pair up CBS reporters with CNN crews or altogether use CNN feeds.
Why? Cost cutting. Of course. So far though no deal has been made. Speculations about CNN teaming up with either ABC or CBS has gone on for years and often when talks were held they’d fall apart soon after.
Someone made a prediction that by 2010 we’ll see the disappearance of a major TV network. Right now NBC and CBS look to be the front runners
The never ending saga the of FCC’s indecency crusade against FOX just got longer.
FOX is refusing the pay the $56,000 fine the FCC slapped it with for airing a naughty 10 second video during ‘Married by America’ reality show. In 2003. A pixilated video too!
Fox appealed the decision but the FCC rejected it because they went 14 pages too long! Can’t waste tax payers dollars now can they.
FOX in turn pouted lips and stomped their feet saying they won’t pay because FCC is picking on them. The commission’s spokeswoman went out and crowed about protecting children and how Newscorp is so evil and hates kids. That didn’t scare NewCorp so now the DOJ has gotten involved to make them care.
The new lawsuit means that the whole case is starting from scratch!
All this hoopla for some pixilated tits and ass. Sheesh
SeattleTimes: DOJ Sues Fox Over Indecency Fines
Equity Media Holdings is selling 5 low power stations. The stations air either Univision,Telefutura and LATV programming.
Luken Communications picked up the stations - WBSP, WUVF, WTLE WLZE, and WEVU for $8 million
Equity Media Holdings Corporation Announces Sale of Five Television Stations
In light of the rather large layoffs sweeping CBS stations across the US this Boston Globe article says the days of the high-salaried news anchors are numbered. Bad economy, the internets and cable TV are to blame for presumably ratings and profit challenged TV stations. So the prediction is that everyone will be following WHDH’s model of hiring young (and some say dumb) and cheap(er) people to lead their newscasts.
Media analysts say they expect WBZ and other stations to increasingly follow the model of frontrunner WHDH-TV (Channel 7), which consistently depends less on celebrity anchors and more on cheaper, younger reporters to deliver the news.
And it seems like at least one former big-money anchor agrees the future ov local TV news is about “reasonably attractive” people with less demanding salaries.
Media analysts say the fragmentation in the TV industry won’t create local news celebrities which is probably true but then there’s the internets which is about as fragmented as it gets and there are some so called celebs. Albeit in more niched online broadcasts.
One of my personal favorites Natali DelConte from Cnet comes to mind as well as Veronica Belmont formerly of CNET’s Buzz Out Loud. And some of these web shows can have a mid-market audience so they’re not that small
While WFOR managed to keep main anchors and all but one reporters in other cities the pink slips went out to some of the big shots too.
In LA KCAL/KCBS shed at least a dozen people including two longtime anchors - Harold Greene and Ann Martin probably the longest running anchor team in local TV news being together 3 decades - who will leave the station in May.
San Francisco’s KPIX CBS5 shed 14 staffers including two long time reporters who were with the station for 28 and 17 years. MercuryNews story
Boston’s WBZ CBS4 fired 32 people including veteran sports anchor Bob Lobel who started in 1979, entertainment reporter Joyce Kulhawik since 1981 and anchor Scott Wahle since 1989. BizJournals article Boston Globe story Continue reading ‘CBS Layoffs Bite More in Other Cities’
This is gonna get bad…
I don’t often say this, but this looks bad. Hurricane Gustav stares down the Gulf Coast looking to be a category five and make landfall as a category four. I’m not going to go all religious on you, but just keep all of the residents and families in your thoughts. This feels different then Katrina. We know how strong this is and the general direction it’s going. We 100% know it’s going to be bad. Again, keep them in your thoughts.
On to what forecasters are calling “Gustav’s little sister”, Tropical Storm Hanna. Who the heck knows where this thing is going. Basically every forecast model shows it going in a different direction. I guess we’ll worry about that when our local weather guessers can tell us where it’s going.
Here we go again…