Old shot of me in newsroom, years ago

Old shot for logo, with previous arts editor and other employees. I still have this shirt, of course.

NBC changes coming

Here's the plan for January, when football is done.
New reality series "Grease: You're the One That I Want" airs January 7 (8-9 p.m.) and the season premiere of "The Apprentice" will be at 9, followed two weeks later by the return of "Crossing Jordan" on January 21 at 10.

January 3, NBC's Wednesday-night lineup will have a new look with the game show "Deal or No Deal" shifting to 9 p.m. On January 10, "Friday Night Lights" will be broadcast from 8-9 p.m. starting that night. Both programs will precede "Medium," which continues at 10 p.m.

More Conan lines

The Fox network has canceled publication of the O.J. Simpson book and television special "If I Did It." When he heard this O.J. was furious and said, "What have I ever done to deserve this?"
President Bush is finishing up a trip to Vietnam. Yesterday thousands of cheering people lined the streets of Ho Chi Minh City to greet Bush on his arrival. But the cheering stopped in Ho Chi Minh when President Bush said, "Greetings, Hos."
This is President Bush's first trip to Vietnam. Afterwards, the President said, "It's nice here, I don't know what John McCain's talking about."
Senator John Kerry says he's thinking about running for president in 2008. In other words, Kerry is still telling bad jokes.
Bobby Brown has reportedly gotten a woman pregnant - even though he'd told her he had a vasectomy. The woman says she should have known Brown was lying - because he also said he had a car and a job.

Heroes on NBC

"Heroes" also had a pivotal episode Monday night in which much was explained. But can someone tell me whether the cheerleader's father is a bad guy or not? And what about the silent mind-scrubber guy who is always standing nearby? At least now I know that the blonde woman's ruthless alter ego is her dead pre-teen sister, killed by their father. I'm not sure how that makes her a "hero" but that's what we found out Monday. And Hiro was never meant to save the waitress. So why did Sylar kill her then? And why did Sylar go from a geeky and likable tall guy to a shadowy killer so quickly? It looks like he kills now to assume the heroes' powers for himself? Does he need to slice people's heads open? What does all this have to do with a bomb going off in New York? Wow, what a wacky story. Obviously the mystery is addictive.

Fall finale of Prison Break

Fox's "Prison Break" wrapped up its fall arc of shows with a typically over-the-top thrill ride. Favorite points:
The corrupt prison guardBellick being put in a cell with a giant creep.
Kellerman flipping sides and shooting Agent Mahone (who may or may not be dead).
Our guy Sucre bailing out of a plane and surviving.
Puzzlers:
T-Bag getting a woman to fall for him when he looks like walking death?? Are some women that dumb?
No word on Ben. Franklin, whose wife was arrested last week.
No word on the big dumb guy who is on the run.
No word on Linc's kid, who was left with a former CIA pal of the grandfather.
It was a quick hour, seldom believable but always a great ride. It returns Jan. 22 with a one-hour recap and one-hour new episode.

news from the tv world

SAINTS & COWBOYS "FLEX" INTO 'NBC SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL' ON DEC. 10, says NBC.

NBC will show 16 documentaries in December, including "To Catch a Predator" airing Fridays in December at 11 p.m. MSNBC airs the latest four episodes of the disturbing (and amazingly frequent) "Dateline NBC" series every Friday at 11 p.m. in December.

Sunday ratings:
November 26, 2006 - NSI Hartford/New Haven

Bears/Patriots - 18.1 rating/29 HH Share
Saints/Falcons - 6.7 rating/16 HH Share

*Bears-Patriots on FOX 61 nearly tripled the household deliveries from the competition:
*WFSB: Texans @ Jets (1p) - 6.7 HH Rating / 15 HH Share
*WVIT: Eagles @ Colts (815p) - 6.4 HH Rating / 10 HH Share

Goodsearch.com

I urge you to use goodsearch.com as your search engine, and please designate Cheshire Wildcats as your charity. Then every time you search for something, automatically you'll be helping girls from several towns to stay busy playing softball instead of getting in trouble or obsessing about stuff they can't control.

More Conan O'Brien jokes

Sunday night Kevin Federline was performing a concert when he went off on his divorce and said "F" Britney. Fortunately, no one in the audience was offended because there was no one in the audience.

This week President Bush is flying to Asia to meet with leaders of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Phillippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Or as Bush calls them, China.

Yesterday, Democrat Russ Feingold announced that he has decided NOT to run for President in 2008. Which finally answers the question no one asked.

President Bush just announced that next month he will host a White House conference on malaria. Bush told reporters, "I'm looking forward to meeting the Malarians."

Lawyers in Germany are trying to have Donald Rumsfeld arrested and tried for war crimes. You know things are bad when Germany is accusing you of war crimes.

The Bill O'Reilly hypocrite watch scores again!

O'Reilly Tries to Loofah Away Fox Stench
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2006/11/bill-oreilly-quite-naturally-got.php

Most offensive TV special of the month (year) (era)

Fox network is giving OJ Simpson a two-part special called “O.J. SIMPSON: IF I DID IT, HERE’S HOW IT HAPPENED." It will air Nov. 27 and 29. Obviously intended to sell OJ's book of the same name, this special brings up some interesting questions. If his victims' families haven't collected much of anything from their $33.5 million civil suit award, shouldn't every nickel from th is book and special go to them? There's no other potential advantage to running this garbage. A local TV official disagreed with me, saying he'd want it to be a well-done show in order to approve of it. But I don't see how it could possibly be inoffensive, even the program were to suggest ways to stop monsters like him in the future. Am I missing something here?

Coming Sunday night on Nature: A preview

http://youtube.com/watch?v=l5YIa1NOByo

Another low-rated winner on TV, but one we like

NBC has given a full-season order to its solid freshman drama "Friday Night Lights" (Tuesdays, 8-9 p.m.), despite the show averaging just 6.7 million viewers. Kyle Chandler should get an Emmy, by the way.

full-season orders for shows we thought were dead

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip has received a full-season order, but expect it an annoucement that it will be moved soon. Even at its worst, the hour is still better than most shows. That doesn't mean it hasn't been disappointing.
Also defying predictions (mine in particular), Men in Trees (aka The Deadliest Heche) has been given a full-season order and will move to Thursdays at 10 starting Nov. 30.
Even worse? "What About Brian" has been picked up for the full season by ABC. I don't know why.

Speaking of NBC studios, a few "unfortunate" lines from Weekend Update on SNL:
POEHLER -- "Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman won re-election as an Independent, and is expected to be courted by both Democrats and Republicans. Though it remains to be seen which Lieberman will show up in the Senate: the dull and boring Lieberman or the boring and dull Lieberman."
MEYERS -- "A man in Florida survived a gunshot to the chest thanks to two small Bibles in his shirt pocket. So I stabbed him."
MEYERS -- "Today is Veteran's Day, so that won't affect anyone in the White House."

Kudos to another outlet on election night

From Dana Whalen of WTIC-AM:

The Connecticut Network, working with our news and talk staff here at WTIC NewsTalk 1080, and with Cable News 12 for video feeds, originated five hours of solid election coverage, starting at 7 p.m. and running through midnight. Cameras in our studio let them present hosts Ray Dunaway and Diane Smith as they brought in feeds from correspondents with all the major gubernatorial, senate and congressional candidates through the evening. Both the folks at CT-N and we here at WTIC have gotten compliments for our efforts. They were re-running it by the time I got home Wednesday morning, and re-running it again when I woke up Wednesday!
We dispatched members of the WTIC news, talk and sports staffs, used resources from the Connecticut Radio Network and CBS Radio, plus copy from the Associated Press to give the most up-to-date picture of events available. Sometimes we relied on telephone feeds, and CT-N had to use graphics showing the field reporters from locations with no video coming back, but the information was available. They even displayed changing bottom-screen graphics with the numbers from the Associate Press -- just like the network affiliates. Our reporters in the field talked to experts with various candidates, for an inside look at the way things were developing
WTIC listeners, CT-N viewers, and those tuning in to WTIC and CT-N via streaming audio and video -- including many in other parts of the country -- received the content. And aren't we told "content is king?"
Our two staffs worked together for both the August primary and this general election, and the experiment has universally been labelled a success.

Election coverage: With zero percent in, it's over.

What's cooler than CNN's "great wall" of touch-screen high-tech overstimulation?
I missed Katie Couric's show on election night, but I did tune in CNN about 8:15 to see the hyper-opinionated Lou Dobbs looking like a grown version of Hermie the dentist-wannabe in "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."
WVIT-30 called the race for Gov. Rell at 8:30.
Talking about how well the Dems would need to do to win the House and Senate, Jeff Greenfield said it was time to choose your cliche: "They have to draw to an inside straight. They have to run the table... You (Wolf Blitzer) and I should probably decide which cliche fits best."
Outgoing Joanne Nesti reigned with Gerry Brooks on WVIT-30 (someone in my office thought Nesti's outfit was a little green-loud but I didn't notice since I tend to focus on someone's face when they're talking).
Channel 30's numbers weren't making sense to me for a while. It was saying 0 percent in (reporting) but then below that it would split the available votes into percentage, so it looked like the early returns were adding up to 100 percent of the vote already. One reason I hate all the polling done in modern elections is that you had 0 or 10 percent of the vote in and winners declared by AP or the networks. That just sucks. Let the thing play out!
Seen too little during election coverage Tuesday night? Keith Kountz and Joceyln Maminta (at Rell and DeStefano HQs, I hear, although I missed them completely while switching around), Lisa Carberg (who was named on Wednesday to replace Nesti on the evening news desk next year) and Andrew Pergam of WVIT, who seems to have matured into a fine correspondent.

From this week's "The Office" on NBC

"Hey, hey, that is OFFENSIVE. Indian people do NOT eat monkey brains... and if they do ... sign me up!" -- Michael

Nesti leaving 30

As I wrote about in the Thursday Register, Joanne Nesti has announced she is leaving WVIT-30 at the end of the year. Nesti is 55, divorced, a classy and steady presence on 30 for so many years. She's the gold standard of CT. lady anchors. She will be leaving to find a new occupation eventually (semi-retirement for now). When you think of Nesti on the air for the same long time as smooth Denise D'Ascenzo on 3, agile Ann Nyberg on 8, Janet Peckinpaugh on 8, 3 and 30 and "newcomer" Susan Christensen on 61, it really was a remarkably steady stable of Connecticut women newscasters. Also great: Lisa Carberg on 30, who should be given any show she wants there.