Wjz

WJZ-TV, which angered many fans in May when it cut away from a dramatic 17th inning win by the Baltimore Orioles to go to "60 Minutes," found itself in the same kind of programming crunch Monday. The CBS-owned station cut away from the men's finals of the U.S Open tennis championship at 6:30 Monday night to go to its Baltimore Ravens pre-game show. The station started running a crawl about 6:10 p.m. telling viewers they could follow the men's finals by going online to the station's website, wjz.com.

For the first time in two decades, WJZ-TV (Channel 13) is not the leader in morning news. Baltimore's new favorite station to wake up to is WBAL-TV (Channel 11), with its team of Stan Stovall, Mindy Basara, Neal Estano and Sarah Caldwell. The end of the morning reign of WJZ's Don Scott and Marty Bass is the big news of the January Nielsen ratings race, which ended this week. WBAL didn't beat WJZ by much in the morning - 20 percent vs. 17 percent of the audience from 5 a.m. to 6 a.m., and 24 percent vs. 22 percent from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. But Bill Fine, president of WBAL, is right in calling the win a "historic moment" for WBAL.

The decision wasn't in a league with the infamous one NBC made in 1968 to cut away from the ending of an incredible AFC football game to show a rerun of the film "Heidi," but some Baltimore area viewers were feeling a "Heidi Bowl" kind of pain Sunday night when WJZ (Channel 13) left a extra inning Orioles game to carry the top-rated newsmagazine "60 Minutes. " "Epic" might be too strong a word for what was going on in Boston, but it was pretty great. The Orioles, after winning a 13-inning game Friday against the Red Sox and a regular 9-inning game Saturday, were locked in a duel with the Sox that had depleted both bull pens.

For WJZ, Baltimore's CBS affiliate, the July "sweeps" were cause for celebration yesterday, the station said. New ratings numbers showed that its 4 p.m. newscast had beaten powerhouse The Oprah Winfrey Show, aired by its chief competitor, WBAL, for the first time since February 2003. WJZ, Channel 13, said the viewership of the newscast had grown last month by 14 percent over July a year ago, for a total of 55,000 households, 2,000 more than were watching Oprah on WBAL, Channel 11. WJZ said Oprah lost 27 percent of its ratings from the corresponding period last year.

Baltimore's long-running tug-of-war continues, as WBAL, Channel 11, and WJZ, Channel 13, once again staked competing claims for TV dominance in November. For the November sweeps period, which ended Wednesday, WJZ emerged as the region's top-rated TV station for total viewers, thanks in no small part to the large number of football fans who continue watching the Ravens, in spite of the team's five-game losing streak. Measured from 6 a.m.-2 a.m., the average rankings for each quarter-hour were: 1. WJZ: 5.7 rating, 13.3 share 2. WBAL: 4.7 rating, 10.9 share 3. WMAR, Channel 2: 2.5 rating, 5.9 share 4. WBFF, Channel 45: 2.3 rating, 5.4 share.

An audience of 849,000 area viewers tuned into WJZ-TV Sunday to see the Baltimore Ravens beat the Houston Texans in the divisional playoff game, station managment said Monday. That is 3,000 viewers more than the audience that saw the the Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers in a regular season game on Nov. 6 in prime time on WBAL, Baltimore's NBC affiliate. But that game, which the Ravens won 23-20, was in Pittsbugh. And that means most of the 70,000 people who were at M&T Stadium Sunday were at home in front of TV's in the Baltimore area for the Steelers game.

The Baltimore Sun and WJZ-TV, Channel 13, will share content and promote each other, representatives from two of Baltimore's leading media companies announced yesterday. Under the agreement, details of which were made available to employees at both WJZ and The Baltimore Sun yesterday afternoon, video shot for the TV station will be made available on the paper's Web site, baltimoresun.com. In addition, the TV and print newsrooms will share information and work together on future projects.

WJZ (Channel 13) yesterday named Atlanta newsman Vic Carter to fill the seat at its anchor desk that has been vacant since the death of Al Sanders in May.The station reached an agreement with Carter, 39, that will bring him to Baltimore, possibly by Dec. 1, to join Denise Koch as co-anchor of the station's 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts."

In the new world of endless channels and multiple ways to watch TV, you almost never see as dramatic a change in viewing as the one unfolding in Baltimore this fall. After a year of speculation about how the end of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" would affect the fortunes of local stations, the October "sweeps" ratings period shows WJZ surpassing longtime ratings champ WBAL in the afternoon and early evening. Call it the aftereffect of the legendary Oprah Factor. Even if she hasn't yet found a way to translate her ratings magic to her new cable channel OWN, Winfrey still has an impact on local TV. Last October, WBAL, Baltimore's Hearst-owned NBC affiliate, was drawing 74,700 total viewers from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.

Only two weeks after unleashing a racially offensive tirade at a West Hollywood comedy club, actor Michael Richards appeared in blackface at a celebrity roast for Whoopi Goldberg over the weekend, drawing gasps from the audience, according to WJZ-TV, Channel 13, the CBS affiliate in Baltimore. Except that he didn't. WJZ's story, broadcast at least twice yesterday afternoon in breaking-news style by anchor Sally Thorner, was attributed to DatelineHollywood.com. But WJZ's news department was apparently unaware that every story on the Web site satirizes Hollywood.