Friday, August 26, 2011

WJBK: Kiss WIth a Fist Edition

January, 2009. WJBK, Fox 2's morning show was running fluff re: Obama's forthcoming inauguration. It's a morning show, it's not news. And Deena Centofanti is in the segment, and that helps me give things quite a lot of slack usually. But then we get this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoReNb4Yhec&fmt=18

The trouble isn't the funnyness. That was awesome. I actually saw this live, and it was jaw on the floor funny. The trouble lies in Dr. Terri Orbach, The Love Doctor. While she was being touted as a relationship expert, not a sex doctor as such, the idea that you could be promoting someone as a relationship expert who is so distanced from sexual knowledge that she doesn't know what fisting is constitutes a slap in the face to the idea that relationships involve sex. That Detroit television was promoting such a person as a relationship expert was what sucked.

On the plus side, Deena obviously knew the score, and made sure to clarify by bumping fists later in the segment (which was also funny, but doesn't seem to be in the YouTube clips).

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

WDIV: A Guy From Survivor Can Bump Network Programming Edition

WDIV's Marla Drutz was proud to ditch network programming December 2009 for a film from Keith Famie (that Detroit area chef from Survivor) called "Detroit - Our Greatest Generation".

http://www.mibuzzboard.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=375589#p375589

The impression I get from that post is it was decided over a weekend in October 2010 to bump a Wednesday's prime time programming for a repeat of the show. But perhaps that was spin somewhere along the line.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

WJBK: Disgraced (Journalist?) Edition

The trouble with Fanchon Stinger was not that she was a corrupt journalist. It's that Detroit television (and print) treats a news reader as a journalist.

http://www.mibuzzboard.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=30274

Saturday, June 4, 2011

WXON: The Babylon Project Was Their Best Hope to Not Suck

Today we have a blast from the TV past. Channel 20, WXON at the time (now WMYD), ran the syndicated Babylon 5. It was the only worthwhile show on the station in the mid-'90s. It ran Tuesdays at 8... for awhile.

In September 1996, they moved it to 1Am Saturday nights. This wasn't a problem for me at the time; it followed Saturday Night Live, and I wasn't old enough for that to be a problem. Plus, the VCR could catch it. It wasn't about to get any new viewers at that time slot, of course, and that was sad, but it was workable.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated/browse_thread/thread/a48f86ccd50e4b5a/2eba2fea1fc71706?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22babylon+5%22+detroit+channel+20#2eba2fea1fc71706

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.tv.babylon-5/browse_thread/thread/7432dbc86867b2cd/350e943b373ea05c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22babylon+5%22+detroit+channel+20#350e943b373ea05c

And then, without warning, for the climactic episodes of a season of war, before anyone at all had DVRs and programmable channel guides that followed their shows, before people had YouTube or Hulu or even torrents, WXON changed the show to 4AM Friday night/Saturday morning. That's right; changed it, without notice, to a time before it would normally have aired, to a timeslot that no one was likely to check. For a key episode. The episode was even named "Endgame".

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated/browse_thread/thread/3ecdaafbaef3cd62/442d09da16e8fa8f?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22babylon+5%22+detroit+channel+20#442d09da16e8fa8f

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.tv.babylon-5/browse_thread/thread/1158df9d2db61e2/35ce7537495f2fad?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22babylon+5%22+detroit+channel+20&pli=1

I guess programmers expect no one to remember that kind of treatment of viewers.

It's 13 years on, and I still remember it.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

WDIV: Not Mad About You Edition

The Paul Reiser Show premiered last week. But WDIV is pre-empting the second episode with a weather fear mongering special hosted by Chuck Gaidica. Chuck sounds like he's never read text out loud before.
Hope Paul Reiser wasn't hoping for any momentum in Detroit. Because Marla Drutz's reign certainly won't allow it.

Monday, April 11, 2011

WDIV: If You're Young, We Hate You Edition

Chuck should be on at 8PM tonight with a new episode. At least that's where it is in the rest of the country. WDIV would prefer to have a half hour car ad for the new Ford Focus (possibly). Because... well, because if you like Chuck, they don't care about you. Cetainly not as much as if they can get a few bucks for a prime time infomercial.
Channel 4, you know you're making people hate you, right?

Thursday, February 10, 2011

WDIV: We Think You Need A Heart, But We Have No Brain Edition

Ah, the miserable folks (maybe that should just kinda sound like folks) at WDIV have once again decided to pre-empt Community in favor of their worthless local programming. "All 4 Valentines Day". Community's on at 2:05 AM instead, after theyve shown a half hour if infomercials after Fallon.
I hope their lovers leave them Monday.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

WJBK: Because You Can't Completely Manufacture Quotes On Video Edition

So Fox 2 has foisted a print reporter (he has claimed he's not a journalist, because journalists don't keep it real) on to Detroit's airwaves. On paper, this sounds like a good idea; tv news is not very newsy, the reporter has won a Pulitzer, and has worked for the NYT and the Detroit News.

But paper and practice aren't the same thing. The reporter is Charlie LeDuff, who comes across as a noir caricature of a hard hitting reporter, from his spectral junkie look to his dime novel narrative style to a completely non-news feature story beat where he appears to be trying to create the appearance of sincerity and to be "of the people" which comes across as smarmy at best and always strikes me as simply a function of the role he's trying to play (and I mean that in the sense that it's melodramatic acting).

His big local story? Homeless guy frozen in ice. But there is controversy about how the situation was presented by him.

That Pulitizer? It was given to a series of articles on race in the NYT that LeDuff contributed to. Which doesn't mean it's a false claim, but it's not quite so rosy as it sounds.

And after that Pulitzer? Questions were raised about issues of plagiarism and fabricated quotes in Charlie LeDuff's stories, similar to the NYT's Jayson Blair fiasco. Then even more issues were publicly pointed outafter the NYT era issues were raised from a January 1995 article he wrote for the East Bay Monthly called The Last American Hobo, wherein passages were lifted from Ted Conover's 1984 book Rolling Nowhere.

None of which would matter too much if his work was solid on channel 2. But there he is, appearing like an annoying parody of something I'm not sure ever existed in a real form. It's like a "problem solver" with a different mask. I'm not sure it's any less annoying.