Continue reading "Video: A tearful Oprah saying the show must end" »
The Sarah Plain "Shill, Baby, Shill" November sweeps book tour looks like a certified TV triumph.
After handing Oprah Winfrey her highest rated show in two years, Palin rolled into Sean Hannity country on Fox News Wednesday night and delivered his second-highest rated show of the year with 4.2 million viewers.
Hannity always dominates the time period, but this week the Hannity-Palin tandem absolutely steamrollered the competition: 958,000 viewers for Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, and 836,000 for Larry King on CNN.
Continue reading "Palin's 'Shill, Baby, Shill' tour a sweeps TV triumph" »
"The Oprah Winfrey Show," one of the most successful franchises in TV history, will come to an end in September 2011, as the former Baltimore talk show host commits her energies to launching a cable channel with Maryland-based Discovery Communications.
Winfrey, who got her talk show start at WJZ in Baltimore TV, will make the announcement on her show Friday, according to WABC, the ABC-owned New York station that carries the show in the nation's largest TV market.
The syndicated program, which debuted in 1986, has been a gold mine for the owned and affiliated stations that use it as a lead-in to their early evening newcasts. The program airs here on WBAL (Channel 11), the Hearst-owned NBC affiliate.
Ending in 2011, will give Winfrey's landmark show a run of 25 years. It is the most lucrative and highest-rated show in syndication.
Continue reading "Oprah Winfrey ending show in 2011, moving to cable" »
After 21 years on-air at Baltimore's WMAR-TV, Mary Beth Marsden, the face of Channel 2 news, is leaving the station, the veteran anchorwoman said Thursday.
Marsden, who now anchors the station's 5, 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts, said her last day will be Dec. 2.
The 48-year-old newscaster said the reason for her departure now is that she is taking a buyout offer made to union employees at the station.
"It's probably in the end as mutual a decison as you can get," Marsden said Thursday morning. "I would call it an amicable divorce -- if there is such a thing. Thank God, we don't have any children together."
Marsden's departure from Channel 2's anchor desk will mark a major changing of the guard in local TV, with Sally Thorner's already announced retirement from WJZ-TV on Dec. 18. Marsden was the anchorwoman tapped to replace Thorner as the lead anchor in 1993 when Thorner jumped to WJZ in a highly publicized move.
The University of Maryland, College Park graduate has provided a solid and steadying influence on-air at WMAR as the station goes through a major downsizing and realignment of its news product. The station is without a dedicated sports anchor or reporter and has cancelled Saturday and Sunday night newscasts in recent months. Marsden, who been anchoring solo for months, has been reading sports news herself on-air.
Continue reading "After 21 years, Mary Beth Marsden leaving WMAR" »
Even with all of "the end is near" hype from TLC, "Jon & Kate Plus 8" series failed to find any kind of significant ratings surge Monday.
TLC aired two episodes of the troubled series back to back on Monday. The first drew 1.9 million viewers. The second attracted an audience of 2.3 million. So the average audience for the hour is 2.1 million or only 2 percent of the TVs set in use from 9 to 10 p.m.
By comparison, "WW II in HD," a documentary on the Second World War drew 2.6 milllion to the History Channel Monday night. "Little People," the TLC series that precedes "Jon & Kate" was seen by 1.65 million viewers -- and "Little People" costs TLC a fraction of what it costs to make "Jon & Kate" this season.
Continue reading "'Jon & Kate Plus 8' - No ratings surge as end looms" »
The Sarah Palin November sweeps TV roadshow, a.k.a. the Audacity of Hype Book Tour, is in its Barbara Walters-ABC News phase today. And the former governor of Alaska is still getting an easy ride from ratings-hungry interviewers to sell her books, try to re-write her controversial history and take cheap shots at those she sees as opponents. And now, that she is past Oprah Winfrey, a supporter of President Barack Obama, Palin is taking some hard shots at the White House.
Bob Thompson, the Syracuse University pop culture scholar and decades-long friend, called Winfrey's interview with Palin "an informercial for the book" in a conversation we had Monday night after it aired. Even by Oprah's schoozy standards, it was softball chat. I was disapppointed in Winfrey.
And now comes Palin with Barbara Walters saying this about President Obama's Afghanistan deliberations: "[General Stanley] McChrystal gave the president the advice and said, 'We need essentially a surge strategy in Afghanistan, so that we can win in Afghanistan. And that means more resources, more troops there.' It frustrates me and frightens me -- and many Americans -- that President Obama is dithering around with the decision in Afghanistan."
Continue reading "Palin uses TV book tour to rip President Obama" »
Is the Great White House War on Fox News finally over?
The administration confirmed that President Barack Obama will do an interview Wednesday with Fox News White House correspondent Major Garrett. Team Obama had gone out of its way to exclude Fox News in a recent round of interviews with the president and initially in a Treasury Department press pool opportunity.
Anita Dunn, who is leaving at the end of the month as acting communications director, launched the White House campaign against Fox last month by declaring that it was not so much a news channel as a tool of the Republican Party.
Watching the next-to-last episode of TLC's "Jon & Kate Plus 8" felt like you were going through a dumpster. You felt soiled the minute it started, and things got worse the deeper into it you went.
TLC labeled the episode "Broken Dreams, Broken Promises, Broken Episodes." The half hour was made up of scraps of episodes that didn't pan out during Season 5. Talk about throwaways.
I am going to ask some of the core bloggers here to pick up the baton and help out as Kelly did last week with detailed critiques of their most hated moments.
One of mine, of course, involved the segment called "Dog Training," which was about the training that those two poor dogs didn't get. I was also struck by how obvious TLC was in including film that showed Jon in the worst possible light. See Jon. See TLC trash Jon. See Kate laugh at TLC trashing Jon. Kate and TLC really do deserve each other.
Continue reading "Next to last 'Jon & Kate -- a new low for TLC" »
In his first TV interview since resigning abruptly Wednesday night, former CNN anchorman Lou Dobbs told Bill O'Reilly Monday that it was the presence of President Barack Obama in the White House as much as a commitment to fact-based, objective presentation at CNN that led to his troubles with management in recent months.
While pointing out that Dobbs had criticized both the
(Photo Fox News)
Continue reading "Dobbs to O'Reilly: White House 'tone' shifted on him" »
Starting at 3:30 p.m., click below to submit questions and comments. At 4 p.m. chat live with Baltimore Sun critic David Zurawik about former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, her book and her appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."
Okay, fellow bloggers and commenters. We're going to kick it up a notch here at Z on TV and try a live chat today at 4 p.m. during the Oprah Winfrey interview with Sarah Palin.
I know it is short notice. But we're doing it on the fly, so anything goes. And if it works out, I am told we might be able to do a live blog next Monday for the finale of "Jon & Kate Plus 8." That will be something.
So, here is the plan for today. Stop back to the Z on TV blog at 3:30, and we will have directions on how to sign in. And then, all we have to do is deconstruct the conversation in real time -- "chatting" back and forth. Let's give it a try.
Even if you don't have strong opinions about Oprah or Palin -- right -- join the live chat today, so that we get clearance to do the "Jon & Kate" takedown next week.
If you don't watch Sunday morning TV because you think it is dull, check out this video of a discussion about Lou Dobbs, the anchorman who abruptly resigned from CNN Wednesday night on-air.
The conversation took place yesterday on CNN's "Reliable Sources." At the table: host Howard Kurtz, St. Petersburg Times media critic Eric Deggans, WMAL radio show host Chris Plante, and me.
Plante, a conservative talk show radio host in Washington, argues that Dobbs was fired for his opinions, which Plante characterizes as being at odds with what he sees as a mainstream liberal bias in the media. Deggans and I could not disagree more with Plante.
Continue reading "Charges of media bias fly in debate on Lou Dobbs" »
With only two weeks to go for the show, and tabloids saying Jon is using cocaine, while Kate says she wants her own TV show, it seems reasonable to wonder where it will all end.
So, the question this week for the official Z on TV "Jon & Kate" Poll: What will become of these two self-absorbed and immature fools?
Will Jon continue to seem to make really bad life choices -- or is he the victim of courtroom enemies who are feeding tabloids a seemingly endless supply of dirt on him? Will he overcome it, or will TLC break him financially? Will Kate pick up the phone one day and hear the "old Jon" on the other end? Or will she become the movie star she says she could be and marry Brad Pitt?
Continue reading "A Poll: What will become of Jon and Kate Gosselin? " »
Whatever you think of Lou Dobbs, you have to admit a show host resigning on-a-dime on-air after almost three decades on the job is a pretty remarkable turn of events -- even in the insane world of cable TV news.
I will be on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday at 10 a.m. (ET) discussing the Dobbs resignation. This story is far from over.
Monday night, Dobbs will be interviewed by Bill O'Reilly at 8 p.m. on Fox, and that is one conversation I want to hear. I'll be watching and writing. Ditto for Wednesday when he will be on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."
Continue reading "More Lou Dobbs on CNN, Fox, Comedy Central" »
The actual interviews have yet to even air, but already the Sarah Palin spin-o-rama is in high gear.
In the excerpt released from the Oprah Winfrey interview that airs Monday, Palin tries to re-write the script of her ill-fated interview last year with Katie Couric, anchor and managing editor of the the "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric."
Now comes an excerpt from her interview with Barbara Walters that is scheduled to start airing Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America" and appear all over the ABC schedule straight through to "20/20" on Friday night. Palin, who is indeed the big November sweeps attraction this week on American TV, tries in this conversation to re-write the script on how she and the Republican Party received and handled the news of the teen pregnancy of her daughter, Bristol. Again, Palin tries to re-write another part of her story that didn't play so well -- and blame any and all mistakes on others.
Continue reading "The Sarah Palin interviews: Shill, baby, shill" »
It might be hard to believe, but things are getting even uglier as the saga of "Jon & Kate Plus 8" moves from the TV screen to the courtroom -- and, hopefully, approaches denouement. On Tuesday, I wrote about Jon Gosselin planning to countersue the Maryland-based TLC cable channel. The papers were officially filed in Montgomery County (Md.) court at the end of the week.
The suit asks $5 million in damages, and the most damning allegations involve Gosselin claiming that TLC knowingly violated child labor laws in the use of his eight children in making the show. He also claims TLC took advantage of him with its inititial contract, which paid the family of 10 only $2,000 per epsiode and locked him into a set of restrictions that denied him the right to photograph members of the family or speak about the show without TLC's permission.
"I do not believe we were paid a fair amount for the overreaching and overly restrictive contract — my family was initially paid $2,000 per episode for all 10 members of my family and the use of my family home for filming," Jon Gosselin says in his suit.
Continue reading "Jon Gosselin files TLC suit - drug use alleged" »
How did this happen? In one day, my world went from Sarah Palin as an abstraction somewhere out there in moose country writing a book, to yesterday when suddenly I could not turn on my TV without seeing her face and hearing her voice. Not only is she baaaackkkkk, she's bigger than anything any network has for November "sweeps" programming.
I know how it happened, of course. TV has edmbraced its role in national life as The Great American Sell Machine like never before, and she has something to sell -- something that will sell lots of copies, her new book. That and the fact that the High Mistress of Talk TV, Oprah Winfrey, released a clip of her taped interview with Palin, and everyone kept showing it over and over and over.
Fox's Sean Hannity, Palin's most devoted TV acolyte, sounded almost breathless Thursday night on his show when he told viewers, "We also have the first clip of the governor's interview with Oprah Winfrey." That came after his fourth or fifth mention that he was going to have the "first cable interview" with her.
CNN President Jonathan Klein wasted no time replacing Lou Dobbs with one of TV's finest journalists as he named John King the host of a new 7 p.m. hourlong show devoted to news and politics starting early next week.
“The program will reflect what CNN is all about: straight facts from our anchors and the widest range of opinions from across the political spectrum,” Klein said Thursday in a statement. “John has enthralled CNN viewers with his vast political knowledge, and he has spent the past year reporting from beyond the Beltway on pressing policy issues and the real people they impact. Every night, he’ll share his passion and his insights about what is really going on in Washington and across America.”
“I’m thrilled to have the opportunity, at this busy and consequential time, to have a platform to discuss and explore the big issues of our time,” said King. “There is a lot of noise and conflict in our political discourse, which is fun to cover, but I’m convinced from my travels that people also thirst for more details as well as insight and context. I’m looking forward to combining those conversations with top newsmakers, smart reporting and expert analysis.”
Continue reading "CNN names John King to replace Lou Dobbs" »
It was a wild night on CNN Wednesday.
First, Lou Dobbs resigns on-air after some 30 years at the network. Read my post here.
And then, Carrie Prejean decides Larry King's questions are "inappropriate" and stops the interview by taking off her microphone. Only making it even stranger, she doesn't walk off the set. She just sits there. Take a look.
Continue reading "Carrie Prejean stops Larry King interview on-air" »
Only 1.6 million viewers accompanied Kate Gosselin on her trip down memory lane Monday night on a cut-and-paste "Jon & Kate Plus 8" purporting to feature viewers' favorite moments from the show's five seasons. The audience was one of the show's smallest in the last two years.
More than 10 million viewers tuned in for the season premiere in June. Last season's average audience per episode was 3.7 million.
With only two weeks to go on the beleaguered TLC show, it looks as if the one-time pop culture pheonomenon is going to end with a whimper, unless the Maryland-based cable company can pull a rabbit out of the hat and reunite these battling parents. That does not seem likely with all the legal prodedures underway. They range from divorce proceedings to TLC suing Jon Gosselin -- while the father of eight says he is going to countersue TLC. What a ugly mess.
Continue reading "'Kate & Kate' memory-lane show sinks in ratings" »
