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Channel 2 is adding a new weatherman to its morning news, Ron Fineman reports at his site. It's John Elliott, formerly of MSNBC, and his arrival will mean some kind of as-yet unexplained job change for Lisa Joyner. Fineman is also conducting a poll among his mostly TV industry subscribers to choose the best local field reporter. Right now it's a runoff between channel 2's Dave Lopez and channel 4's Patrick Healy.
More TV: KCET (Channel 28) is shuffling the evening lineup next week. Locally produced "Life and Times" moves up a half-hour to 6:30 p.m. and the PBS stalwart "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" slides back to 7 p.m. For those keeping score at home, this pushes the folksy Huell Howser earlier to 6 p.m. L&T, incidentally, is preempted until Friday for the Democrats.
Still more: Bree Walker, who used to anchor on channel 2, will have a recurring role on "Carnivale" when the show returns to HBO in January. A Times story says she got the gig through a friend who is consulting producer. The story recounts Walker's local history: notoriety for having an affair with KCBS co-anchor Jim Lampley when both were still married to others, divorce and marriage to Lampley, then a talk radio-fueled controversy when Walker became pregnant. The radio host railed that since Walker was born with fused fingers, due to an inherited trait called ectrodactylism, she should not have babies. (In fact, her children also have the condition). When Walker was on Larry King recently, nobody in my house talked about her hands, but everybody commented on her lips. They appear to be considerably, uh, larger than when she did the news. (* Followup: The website AwfulPlasticSurgery.com compares before and after.) And as the sports guys say: oh by the way, she and Lampley are now divorced, but might get remarried.