LOOKING AT THE FUTURE OF LOCAL TELEVISION THROUGH ROSE-COLORED GLASSES
We can’t help but wonder if they know their audience
Category: Finger-Wagging
DISNEY CEO WALKS BACK HIS COMMENTS ABOUT ABC
Robert Iger’s loose-lipped comments caused heart palpitations at the network and its O&Os
ENABLING TUCKER CARLSON’S LIES EARNS FOX “NEWS” ANOTHER DEFAMATION LAWSUIT
And this one is coming from a onetime Trump supporter!
SHE HAS “MORE TO TELL”
And her former bosses at KSTP probably won’t like it.
CONSULTANTS INSIST THAT WE KEEP THINGS LOCAL
"Local, Local, Local"
COVERING STREET CRIME IN FRISCO LEADS TO….STREET CRIME
It seems to be happening with depressing regularity
THIS JUST IN: TROUBLEMAKERS GET MORE PRESS THAN EVERYBODY ELSE
In other news, the sun rises in the east and dogs bite people
NEWSNATION BRINGS ON THE BLOVIATORS
It takes a lot of gas to run an all-news channel
NEWSMAX’S SHAM ARGUMENT EXPLAINED…AND DEBUNKED
The struggling cable outlet demands money it doesn’t deserve
IS A POLICE DEPARTMENT BLOCKING A TV STATION’S WEBSITE?
Columbus station calls it retaliation for critical stories
AS FOR WWJ IN DETROIT….????
No firm launch date has been set…..still
WE’RE NOT ALONE
As the T.J. Holmes-Amy Robach mishegoss gets sillier, we’re happy to see some rationality survive
TABLOIDS 1, ABC NEWS 0
Yes, the Amy Robach - T.J. Holmes is as dumb as you think it is
UMMMM…YOU DON’T FEEL A BIT COMPROMISED?
Yes, we’ve enjoyed covering people, some more than others, but…..
LOG-ROLLING IN OUR TIME
The station appearing to suck up to Oklahoma’s governor may surprise you.
WE’RE JUST GONNA LEAVE THIS RIGHT HERE…
And we hope the word spreads…the media needs to be MUCH better
“I CAN TRUST THIS GUY.” BUT WHAT ABOUT YOU?
Former Chicago tv reporter ruffles some feathers
USING A 10-YEAR-OLD’S EXCUSE TO AVOID A FINE
Those of you who ever had to contend with the misdeeds of a ten-year-old child whose sole excuse was a wailed “It was an accident!” will appreciate this. The FCC is proposing to smack ...
WHITHER CHUCK TODD?
Washington media watchers seem to be rubbing their hands in anticipation of what MIGHT happen to longtime “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd in the wake of an executive shakeup at the venerable (75 ...
NEWSROOM TURMOIL ALLEGED IN NEW JERSEY
TV Newscheck reported Thursday that the recent or impending departures of the news director, assistant news director, two executive producers and a senior producer point to an unhappy situation at Altice’s News 12 New ...
FORMER NASHVILLE REPORTER NOW IN HOUSTON
Gerald Harris has joined Tegna s/t/b/ Standard Media’s KHOU in Houston, TX Harris spent just over a year as a Capital Bureau reporter for Nexstar’s WKRN in his hometown of Nashville, TN. Interestingly, Harris ...
AHHH…BUT THERE IS ALWAYS FOX NEWS
At least the primetime circus (Tucker Carlson, surprisingly, excepted) and the Three Dumbest People on Television© in the morning are still there for the deniers of the current public health crisis. This led “Washington ...
NO CREDIBILITY? MEH….
If you thought the findings of an exhaustive internal report warning Fox News talent and bookers not to trust some of the network’s top commentators’ claims about Ukraine would be taken to heart… What ...
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Another reach for 2020 political money comes today as FOX O&O WAGA in Atlanta adds “The Road to November,” a weekly half-hour at 7 PM. The FOX O&O division is already seeing record levels ...
“FAKE NEWS” ON FOX NEWS? WE’RE SHOCKED!!!
With headlines like “Fox News warns Fox News about spreading pro-Trump ‘disinformation’ on Ukraine,” “Internal Fox News Research Reportedly Warns About Fake News … On Fox News,” and “Fox News Criticized Its Own Guests ...
THE KING KERFLUFFLE
By now we should be accustomed to overblown headlines that don’t really reflect the story – headlines that are more about generating clicks and views than in conveying any factual information. It’s always been ...
A LITTLE MORE INFORMATION IS IN ORDER
For a news organization, Sinclair’s KVII in Amarillo, TX was a bit cryptic over the weekend with the following release on its website: “KVII regrets to report that our morning anchor, Anthony Pittman, ...
ACOSTA VS. TRUMP LATEST
In case you missed it last week, President Donald Trump reprimanded CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta for attempting to cut in during a news conference in the Oval Office last week. During ...
“PI**ING INSIDE THE TENT”
This might be construed at biting the hand that feeds James Murdoch and his activist wife Kathryn. In response to the Australian wildfires that have devastated the country, Murdoch, the younger son of Rupert ...
IN 2020, WE’D LIKE TO SEE…
The death of “bothsidesism” in journalism and its less-educated social media cousin “whataboutism.” And what is “bothsidesism?” To quote conservative American Enterprise Institute scholar Norm Ornstein it’s “a larger ingrained journalistic habit that tries ...
THE BUSINESS OF LOCAL TV NEWS WILL ENTER ITS DOWNWARD SLIDE
How is that for a provocative headline? It is the title of a piece published by Nieman Lab, part of a series of predictive pieces on journalism in 2020. It wastes no time in ...
GOODBYE TO A GRANDIOSE SELF-IMAGE
The Newseum shutters at the end of the month. We’ve not been shy with our criticism of what could have been a valuable archive but instead turned out to be a money-gobbling vanity project ...
SPEAKING OF FOX
A Fox News spokesperson on Monday denied former FBI Director James Comey’s claim that he was booked to appear on Tuesday’s broadcast of Fox & Friends, only for the president’s favorite morning show to cancel the ...
FORMER SINCLAIR EXEC CAUGHT UP IN IMPEACHMENT
He was COO of Sinclair‘s now-shuttered Circa “news” website. Most recently he was a columnist for “The Hill” and still another Fox News contributor. Now, John Solomon finds himself mired in the House impeachment ...
REPORTER RUFFLING SOME FEATHERS
People either love their Starbucks or hate the Police. That seems to be the case after a Tulsa reporter was grilled by viewers while reporting about a local police officer receiving a receipt that ...
FACEBOOK SHUTS DOWN SITES RUN BY FORMER FOX NEWS EXEC
A “New York Times” expose has revealed that a former Fox News executive paid writers in Macedonia to create click-bait that prompt Americans to fight more about issues. “The sites are the work of ...
THE ACTUAL ABC NEWS LEAKER COMES FORWARD….SORT OF
“Project Veritas” has posted what it says is a missive from the CURRENT and still anonymous ABC News employee claiming credit/blame for the leaking of the hot mic criticism by network anchor Amy Robach ...
THE ABC NEWS-AMY ROBACH STORY GETS REALLY WEIRD
That off-mike, gone-viral comment by ABC Newser Amy Robach in which she seemed to criticize her bosses for sitting on a Jeffrey Epstein-related story she had developed, taken another bizarre turn. It was first ...
TURMOIL AT FOX NATION? (CONTD)
A NewsBlueser tells us that Fox Nation evp John Finley is under the executive microscope of FNC president Suzanne Scott, in large part because of the ongoing drama concerning Fox Nation hosts Britt McHenry ...
CAN FACEBOOK BE TRUSTED?
We know it’s tough times for much of the media these days, and the search for an audience of readers and watchers can lead down some interesting paths. But we’re still wondering why so ...
THIS WEEK IN BUTT-DIALS
Over the weekend, a lot of airtime and print space was devoted to the exploration of a butt-dial. It seems that Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, left two apparently unintended voicemails on a ...
TARGET: NBC NEWS
The heat setting is now on “High” for NBC News and it’s directly under the division’s executive suites. Megyn Kelly, Gretchen Carlson, Greta Van Susteren, Linda Vester, Addie Zinone and Eleanor McManus, the founder ...
MORE ON SHEP’S DEPARTURE
A Fox News insider tells The Daily Beast that Shep was sick of being attacked by his primetime colleagues and asked for a way out of his contract. An effort was made to appease him, ...
“WE DESERVE ANSWERS”
After the midweek allegations that disgraced former “Today Show” host Matt Lauer raped a co-worker, a contentious staff meeting took place that was described as “heated” and “disastrous.” The latest Lauer news came in ...
C’MON BRISTOL!
ESPN reporters and program host have once again been issued a memo in which Chuck Salituro, the senior news director of the sports network, directed them to stay the hell out of any current ...
FORMER ND FILES SUIT
The ex-news director of a Cox owned Charlotte, North Carolina station has filed a federal lawsuit for firing her and replacing her with a younger, less experienced man—an act that she says the station ...
KEEP ‘EM SEPARATED
Looks like the guys at Fox News aren’t all marching to the same beat. Seems there is a flap brewing between Tucker Carlson and Shepard Smith over the President Trump-Ukraine story. Maybe just a ...
SOT OF THE YEAR
KYW (CBS) was on the scene of a big Apartment fire early Monday. Reporter Steve Lindsay got the soundbite of century. Philly football fans are brutal. The most Philly soundbite goes to this guy ...
LIMBAUGH SUED AGAIN?
Krystal Ball, co-host of the ‘Rising’ Show on the Hill TV said she hasn’t ruled out a lawsuit against Rush Limbaugh for his false claim that she posed for naked photos when she was ...
SCAMMER TRADES ON FLORIDA TV METEOROLOGIST’S REP
There are always bottom feeders looking to profit off other people’s misery and they have no compunction about stealing the reputation of someone honest to accomplish their dirty deeds. As Hurricane Dorian bore down ...
“THIS COUNTRY LOOKS LIKE YOU AND ME”
Roop Raj has been a reporter and anchor with Fox-owned WJBK in Detroit for well over 10 years, but that didn’t stop a bonehead from trying to school him, in a most ungraceful and ...
BILLY BUSH LATEST
It doesn’t sound like Billy Bush and Tamron Hall will be exchanging cards this holiday season. Earlier this week Billy Bush did an in-depth interview with the New York Times. He “still holds some ...
NAHJ TO FOX NEWS: NO THANKS
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) is sending back a $16,666 sponsorship check to Fox News and rescinding the invitation to Fox News to appear as a sponsor of the organization’s Excellence in ...
DON’T CALL ME FREDO
CNN‘s Chris Cuomo was filmed in a heated altercation with a man who called him Fredo, a character from the Godfather, with the host comparing the insult to a racial slur. A CNN spokesperson ...
POT, MEET KETTLE
Let’s say it right up front. Ratings don’t equal credibility. Never did. Now, with that out of the way, let’s address a story being pushed by foxnews.com, the same place that brought you the ...
RETALIATION?
NY1 anchor Roma Torre has a lot in common with her mother, the late Marie Torre. The 61-year-old newswoman, who last month accused NY1/Charter Communications of gender, age and equal pay discrimination in a ...
AND HERE WE GO AGAIN
We rather enjoy on-air people snapping back at social media boneheads who, for some unexplained reason, feel they have a right to insult the appearance of reporters and anchors. The latest to “clap back”, ...
TURMOIL AT FOX NATION
Fox News’ streaming service Fox Nation is only 9 months old and is already proving to be a worthy offspring of the empire that Roger Ailes built. There’s the Britt McHenry misconduct complaint against ...
NEW PRESS SECRETARY. SAME RESULT?
We’ll soon find out. It’s been 100 days since there was last a press briefing in the White House press room. These days it’s used to herd reporters into whenever the Secret Service deems ...
BITING THE HAND THAT ONCE FED HIM
Carl Cameron was one of the charter members of the Fox News Channel crew, among the first to sign on to the Ailes dream machine. After more than two decades, he took his leave ...
FOX NEWS IS READY FOR SOMEONE ELSE TO GO TO WAR
Fox News is all in for someone else’s sons and daughters to head for the front in yet another war. The graphic look fairly screamed “Let’s Get It On” last week at the home ...
SPEAKING OF LAWSUITS
Five newscasters at NY1, a New York City news station, are suing parent company Charter Communications over age and gender discrimination. In a lawsuit obtained by the Associated Press, the anchors allege NY1 “blatantly marginalized ...
CAN 2016’S MISTAKES BE AVOIDED?
We think it can be generally acknowledged that the coverage of the last election was pretty awful. Will the MSM make the same mistakes again? (Hint: Early signs indicate that some individuals are certainly ...
OH, PLEASE
More brave talk from the promo department. Fox-owned WTTG wants the D.C. area to know they’re launching a 4 p.m. show – and giving fair warning the NBC o&o WRC in the process. News ...
NOTE FOR NEXT YEAR:
If you, at any time over the past four days, have wished your viewers a “Happy Memorial Day Weekend,” you’re doing it pretty damned wrong. Judging from our email, far too many folks don;t ...
TRUMP ORDERS WHCA BOYCOTT. THOUSANDS SIGH IN RELIEF
The event you love to hate, the annual self-satisfied pat on the back known as the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner is back this coming Saturday – but the glory days, thankfully, appear to ...
YEAH, POLITICIANS KNOW ALL ABOUT ETHICS
When politicians start spouting off about ethics – more today than in any other time in history, it seems – the BS detector goes off the charts. So when a group of Georgia state ...
“THEY OUGHT TO CHANGE THEIR NAME TO THE ‘CUT AND RUN NETWORK’”
Attorney Mark Geragos isn’t holding anything back about his firing from CNN. Geragos, who bloviated largely on legal issues for the cable network for 20 years, was unceremoniously dumped after being named as a ...
“THE TRUTH IS WORTH IT”
We’re not saying local newsrooms should be sending crews overseas. We’re not even saying they should be sending them to Washington, DC for more meaningless photo ops (and the attendant gaseous promo spots). But ...
A CONSERVATIVE BANISHED FROM FOX NEWS
Something that slid right past us in the wake of Jane Mayer’s explosive (and heavily-sourced and researched) piece about Fox News’ cozy White House relationship was the almost-simultaneous departure of long-time Fox News contributor ...
CARLSON ADVERTISER EXITS ARE GROWING
We’re now told that the number of advertisers who have moved their inventory off the hour hosted on Fox News by professional twerp Tucker Carlson in the last few months due to Carlson’s repeated ...
FOX WATCHES ADVERTISERS TRICKLE AWAY FROM CARLSON & PIRRO
Some advertisers are starting to put some distance between themselves and the two latest centers of controversy at Fox News. The programs fronted by Tucker Carlson and Jeanine Pirro have seen some advertisiers heading ...
FORMER LOCAL TV EXEC NABBED IN COLLEGE CHEATING SCANDAL
The same FBI probe that nailed actors Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin also snapped up the former owner of KFMB in San Diego, CA. Check out our “video of the day” in the right-hand ...
HAVE YOU NOTICED THIS ON YOUR SINCLAIR STATION?
We think it’s safe to say that the hiring of Van Susteren far outweighs the Sinclair sycophancy exemplified by the hiring of Administration PR flack Boris Epshteyn. A sharp-eyed Newsblueser shared with us some ...
LOGAN STILL GRABBING HEADLINES
Lara Logan, former correspondent for “60 Minutes,” caused a stir last week when, on a podcast called “Mike Drop,” she said that too many in the media have become “political activists.” She explained to The ...
ZUCKER HAS TROUBLE TALKING ABOUT CONTROVERSIAL HIRE
CNN honcho Jeff Zucker is still dealing with internal and external blowback over his decision to hire political operative and former DOJ flack Sarah Isgur as a political editor at CNN, just in time ...
CNN HIRES RANK AMATEUR TO OVERSEE 2020 COVERAGE
To say that CNN staffers are upset and more than a little pissed off about the network’s decision to hire a partisan political operative to oversee its 2020 campaign reporting might be the biggest ...
NEWS CREW CAR KEYS STOLEN
Police were called to R. Kelly’s studio after the keys to a rental car belonging to an Atlanta TV news crew were stolen Sunday night. Just before midnight, Chicago police responded to the theft. ...
DESPITE BLACKFACE PIC, RHODE ISLAND PBS STICKS BY HOST
Jim Hummel, host of the long-running “A Lively Experiment” on Rhode Island’s PBS outlet appears to have survived the appearance of a picture of him in blackface that surfaced on , where else? – ...
THE REVOLVING DOOR OPENS TO K STREET
There oughta be a law, but as long as former members of Congress and various government agencies can cash in big on their connections by running toward K Street, fat chance of such a ...
ANOTHER TALKING HEAD AT CNN?
Oh, FFS, this is just out of hand. CNN has hired yet another talking head, another politico-type who still has dreams of winning an election. This time, it’s Andrew Gillum, the Democratic wunderkind who ...
THINK OF IT AS A CAREER-SAVER
With all the recent tales of anchor gaffes when it comes to reading news stories about Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we offer up a fairly simple explanation of the problem and an even ...
THE YEAR SINCLAIR COULDN’T GET OUT OF ITS OWN WAY
We enjoy “The Baltimore Sun’s” David Zurawik for providing us with some of the most acerbic takes on local television and the corporate gnomes who pull the strings. And as the local guy with ...
PLEASE: NO HUMAN MIKE STANDS OR STENOGRAPHERS NEED APPLY
It’s called stenography and here’s how it works: You sit at the ready, until someone spits out a couple of sentences. You dutifully copy them down – presumably in shorthand – and then type ...
THE SINS OF FACEBOOK
OK, we get it. Social media, Facebook and Twitter in particular, are the darlings of TV executives from the corporate office to the GM office, through promotion and into the news director’s cubbyhole. After ...
WE’RE NOT THE ONLY ONES…
We’ve heard countless times over the past couple of years the empty vows of the Fox News PR machine that this program, that producer or those personalities will be punished for their blatant transgressions ...
FOX NEWS SAYS IT WILL DISCIPLINE BONEHEAD STAFFERS
You will barely know who they are and you won’t know what kind of punishment they’re receiving, but Fox News sternly proclaims it is punishing the “Fox and Friends” staffers who got a little ...
SPICEY’S BACK
Is anyone surprised that perpetually ineffective press secretary Sean Spicer needed to toss in his two cents worth in the wake of the Jim Acosta-White House dustup? Spicer, whose usefulness ended when Melissa McCarthy ...
HANNITY LECTURES ACOSTA ON INTEGRITY…WAIT…WHAT?
This is truly rich. With irony, hypocrisy and a healthy dose of arrogance. At the end of last week, Fox “News” prime time entertainer Sean Hannity conveniently forgot his election eve onstage appearance at ...
THE MURROW AWARDS BROUGHT TO YOU BY….WHO!?!?!?
Well the tuxes and cocktail frocks are being dusted off and, in some case, being let out a little for the big bash next Monday night, when RTDNA rolls out its 2018 Edward R. ...
TODAY’S BURNING QUESTION
The Columbia Journalism review went out on a limb and dared to asked: “Do journalists pay too much attention to Twitter?” In a word, yes – and you really don’t have to read any ...
THE JUDGE ADVISES THE WHITE HOUSE TO COOL IT
Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano finds himself swimming against the opinion tide at his network more and more these days – evidently because he takes his role as an ANALYST of the ...