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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

WJBK: Let It Bleed Edition

Channel 2 tonight continues their slant on the story. They had the mother of the accuser on absolving channel 2 (and herself) of any wrongdoing. Good job there, channel 2, good job. On the plus side, we can now say it was Taryn Asher who was responsible for the story. Legal analyst Charlie Langton is conservative about how to proceed, making him the most sensible person paid by WJBK, and Brian Dickerson is raking them over the coals for doing a crappy job of protecting their source, and actually is bringing up the unsubstantiated forcible rape issue. Huel Perkins seems like he's about to cry while whispering "we didn't do anything wrong."

Oh, and they were dangling more "someone else we won't identify is coming forward to accuse the accused for the same thing", without explaining what they mean by "same thing", and without any sort of substantiation. It seems to be at best a rumor. Channel 2 hasn't learned a damned thing. Detroit tv still sucks.