NEWS
By Frederick N. Rasmussen | June 8, 2009
Burnett Roane, a retired bricklayer in Waverly, figured he'd be watching a sporting event or a classic Hollywood movie by evening on his newly converted TV. Gone would be the days, he hoped, of jiggling rabbit ears sitting above his back bedroom TV in order to get a sharp picture. It didn't happen. Roane, a 63-year-old widower and great-grandfather, was anticipating a free, in-home converter installation by AmeriCorps volunteers who were to switch his TV from analog to digital television signal reception.
NEWS
By David Zurawik and Jill Rosen | May 28, 2009
A small Maryland-based cable channel and a large Pennsylvania family have improbably teamed up to supplant Hollywood starlets such as Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton as the new epicenter of our celebrity-obsessed pop culture. TLC, which began in 1980 with the educational mission implied by its title as The Learning Channel, has a megahit on its hands with the fifth season of Jon & Kate Plus 8, a no-holds-barred reality TV series about a suddenly unhappily married husband and wife, Jon and Kate Gosselin, and their eight children (sextuplets and twins)
NEWS
By DAVID ZURAWIK | October 13, 2008
Ted Koppel retired from ABC News a few years back, but he certainly hasn't stopped delivering thoughtful and serious journalism. And he continues that tonight with a new documentary, Koppel on Discovery: The Last Lynching. There is a warning that some viewers might find scenes and language "disturbing." Consider whether you want your children seeing images of lynchings of black citizens in 20th-century America and hearing the "n" word. Discovery is airing the program at 10 p.m., as late as possible to keep it from young children, but still in prime time when the greatest number of viewers are available.
NEWS
By Paul West | September 27, 2008
Going into last night's debate, some argued that Barack Obama would come out ahead unless John McCain clearly dominated their faceoff, largely over foreign policy, his area of expertise. By that standard, Obama may have gained an advantage. McCain didn't blow him off the stage and, at least at the outset, when the audience may have been largest, McCain was somewhat less focused than his Democratic rival. But overall, the 90-minute encounter was a lot like the exceedingly tight 2008 election: a nearly even contest between two closely matched candidates, each of whom had his moments and avoided obvious blunders.
NEWS
By From Sun news services | August 27, 2008
Stars - and a blue-haired boy - land in Venice You'd think George Clooney and Brad Pitt making two appearances at the Venice Film Festival this week would be enough of a stir. But no, Us magazine went to the trouble to report on its Web site that Maddox Jolie-Pitt, the 7-year-old son of the actor and Angelina Jolie, was spotted sporting a blue mohawk as he and brother Pax were boarding a speedboat with their dad. The Clooney-Pitt appearances include a visit to the red carpet tonight when the Coen brothers film, Burn After Reading, in which they star, opens the festival.
NEWS
By David Zurawik | August 24, 2008
Next week, Katie Couric will celebrate her second anniversary as anchor of the CBS Evening News. Given the nature of that tenure, however, "celebrate" might not be quite the right word. "Can't win for losing," is the phrase Couric used to describe parts of the past two years in an interview last week. "It's been, quite candidly, pretty tough some of the time for me in my new job," she says. After a cosmic build-up in the summer of 2006 and a huge, first-night tune-in of about 13 million viewers to see the popular star of NBC's Today show assume the chair once held by Walter Cronkite, the wheels quickly started to come off Couric's new show.
NEWS
By Chris Kaltenbach | May 26, 2008
The Hollywood writers' strike safely behind them, Baltimore's TV watchers are flocking back to the network affiliates, with viewing levels up 2.3 percent over last year, according to figures released this week by A.C. Nielsen, a national ratings firm. The increase marked the first time since May of last year that overall ratings had gone up during the "sweeps" months of February, May and November, when stations traditionally put on their best programming and set advertising rates. In February, for instance, the overall audience was down 3 percent from a year ago. In November, the audience was down 5 percent.
NEWS
By Chris Kaltenbach | March 19, 2008
The news division at WMAR, Channel 2, has spent nearly a generation in Baltimore's ratings basement. But this month's newsroom shake-up suggests management still believes it can pull the station out of the hole it has been in for the better part of two decades. "My focus is 100 percent on trying to get those ratings up," says WMAR Vice President and General Manager Bill Hooper, who this month has fired the station's news director and decided not to renew the contract of veteran anchor Brian Wood.
NEWS
By David Zurawik | March 12, 2008
The premiere of Sunday night's series finale of HBO's The Wire was seen by 1.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. That represents about 4 percent of homes that subscribe to HBO - or less than 1 percent of the American TV audience. By comparison, the June 10 finale of HBO's crime drama The Sopranos drew 11.9 million viewers, according to Nielsen. The cable channel's surfer series John from Cincinnati was seen by 1.2 million viewers Aug. 12 - the last night it aired before being canceled at the end of its first season.
NEWS
By David Zurawik | January 27, 2008
One of the most disturbing media trends of the past two decades has been the continuous cutback in TV coverage of presidential politics. Nowhere was this more apparent during the last two election cycles than in the networks' dearth of national convention coverage. The reason most often given by news executives: lack of viewer interest. But this year, news outlets on the Internet and long-established cable TV channels have greatly expanded the amount of coverage, and viewers are responding in record numbers.