Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Early Wednesday Update

We're catching up...albeit slowly.

Life has been anything but slow for yours truly's personal life recently, and Your Tri-State Media Watcher is about to hit another busy time.

As we've said, this blog is pretty much updated when we have time to do so... which lately, doesn't seem to be much. In any case, here's a couple quick items...

Bill Cunningham Show...On TV?: You may remember that a few months ago, WXIX-TV 19/Newport aired a pilot program featuring Bill Cunningham, the midday host on 700 WLW/Cincinnati. (This was BEFORE 19 and Clear Channel signed their major radio deal earlier this year.)

Now, Cunningham is taping another new show... but only five episodes at first.

John Kiesewetter has the full details... but the gist of it is that Cunningham is taping the first show tomorrrow in Dayton, then four more episodes in Chicago June 11 and 12.

There's no word on what will happen with Cunningham's radio program on taping days...but for the June tapings, we figure he'll be off. (Clear Channel does NOT have a talk station up there, though we know Tribune has WGN-AM 720, and Citadel has WLS-AM 890 [which syndicates his Sunday evening show].)

But, alas...if you think Cunningham will end his afternoon radio talkfest if this attempt at TV succeeds...think again.

Cunningham says he's planning to continue the afternoon show - but he'll do it from Chicago on Mondays through Wednesdays when he's taping the show, while doing it here in Cincinnati Thursdays and Fridays. He'll also do the Sunday show in Chicago. (Again, he has his ready affiliate for the Sunday program at Citadel's WLS-AM.) And he's about to sign an extension - but we have no word yet that he's done so.

Storm Fallout: By now, just about everybody already is aware of the fact that severe weather and tornadoes ripped through the Cincinnati area Friday night. (Yours truly was at a Relay for Life event in Florence, shortly after storms passed through...the event, and at least one other Relay in Campbell County, had to be moved indoors.)

The storms, of course, prompted the obligatory meteorologist cut-ins, which were good for people in Adams, Brown and Highland counties where tornadoes actually touched down. Many of those viewers were pleased to get some attention for their areas during bad weather...as they're not regularly covered by Cincinnati TV stations.

But for others, all that the cut-ins meant were that much of their favorite shows were cut off...including several season or series finales.

WKRC-TV 12/Cincinnati in particular took a lot of criticism on their facebook page...which was quickly followed by MORE criticism when it was announced the shows wouldn't be re-aired over-the-air.

Viewers who missed season finales of "Medium", "Ghost Whisperer", and "Miami Medical" can watch them from the CBS website. As far as we're aware, none of these are on hulu.com, but you should be able to watch FOX shows there, and NBC programs are available from NBC's website.

We don't make the programming decisions...but we'll be happy to let you sound off right here...

1 comment:

Unknown said...

i appreciate all 3 channels feeling that commitment to stay on the air during severe weather, but there was a little hype going on. WCPO was telling Hillsboro in Highland Co to take cover and it wasn't raining or even very windy out--i could see people strolling around out my window! i could have spent an hour in my basement for what turned out to be just heavy rain. the hurricane sirens were going off too.

Ghost Whisperer and Medium are my favorite shows, and i would have minded greatly to miss the series finale of the former and the season finale of the latter...but Dayton was not covering the weather! Dayton does not cover Highland County. the sound, however, on WHIO was awful, so i did actually rewatch both shows on the net.

i would be more irritated if the severe weather got nowhere near Hillsboro, but i also appreciate all 3 Cincy stations covering us this far out of town. i worry a little about them crying "wolf" too often but it is comforting to know they'll be there when the weather really is critical.