|
|
|
Topic Archive: Television
Q: What's more bizarre than the Los Angeles Times having a blog for the paper's most inveterate staff animal lovers to talk about pets, animal causes and, of course, dogs...
Posted November 6, 2009 4:49 PM
As Lifetime's "Project Runway" nears the end of its season in Los Angeles, tonight's final challenge was held at the Getty. The surprise guest greeting the contestants on the terrace...
Posted November 5, 2009 10:18 PM
ABC has begun rolling out Diane Sawyer's interviews with Rihanna about the attack by Chris Brown in Hancock Park last February and her relationship with the violent singer. She talks...
Posted November 5, 2009 9:20 AM
The top story on tonight's SoCal Connected makes the case that homeowners in South Los Angeles are being forced to buy expensive flood insurance based on flawed FEMA maps. Check...
Posted November 5, 2009 12:03 AM
Barbara Walters maybe? Larry King? At least Jon Stewart? No, ex-LAPD chief William Bratton is Thursday's guest with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report....
Posted November 4, 2009 9:13 AM
Longtime channel 4 reporter Doug Kriegel is hanging up his microphone tomorrow. The note circulated in the Burbank newsroom today calls together his colleagues "to tip a glass in Doug's...
Posted October 29, 2009 6:20 PM
Gawker can't contain its sarcasm about Sam Zell's bankrupt Tribune's latest gift to America's airwaves. Instead of just flying his prop job around the Midwest to have unhealthy lunches on...
Posted October 28, 2009 3:29 PM
The duopoly is celebrating Channel 9 anchor Pat Harvey's 20 years this week. The photo of Pat with the late Jerry Dunphy came with the invitation below to everyone in...
Posted October 28, 2009 12:05 PM
Born Milton Supman, Soupy Sales became one of the enduring comic faces of 1950s and '60s television. His show, first in Detroit then in Los Angeles, was a hit with...
Posted October 22, 2009 10:14 PM
The lobby of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center downtown stood in for the Rome Hilton, circa early 1960s, on a recent episode of "Mad Men." Spotted by...
Posted October 20, 2009 5:34 PM
Venting in depth for the first time about official prying into his personal phone records, TMZ editor Harvey Levin tonight called it an illegal abuse of power — "a brutal...
Posted October 19, 2009 9:05 PM
Reporter Eric Spillman of KTLA finally got the data he has been seeking on the public cost of providing security for Mayor Villaraigosa's trips to Africa (with Spillman's Channel 5...
Posted October 19, 2009 10:35 AM
It's Martin Miller, says Variety's Michael Schneider in a tweet. Miller is listed currently as an assistant entertainment editor in Calendar....
Posted October 14, 2009 4:19 PM
One of our helpful readers emailed the evidence that KNBC is asking its readers to rate the station's staffed-up, big-deal but news-lite website alongside little old us: Thought you might...
Posted October 12, 2009 12:48 AM
I joined some media and blog folks at the KCET studios the other morning for a preview of the second season of "SoCal Connected," the PBS station's weekly news program....
Posted October 8, 2009 11:20 AM
Channel 5 confirmed that weekend anchor Jason Martinez resigned abruptly on Sept. 29 after just nine months at the station. Martinez had been tapped to anchor during the week at...
Posted October 6, 2009 11:25 PM
One feature, so to speak, of the new KNBC website lets readers vote on what emotion they feel about news stories. Just so you know, on the tsunami news out...
Posted September 29, 2009 11:28 PM
Long checked out Friday as news director and VP at KNBC Channel 4. He's headed to Istanbul to teach a class in journalism ethics at Bahcesehir University. Long had previously...
Posted September 26, 2009 2:58 AM
Fox 11 reporter John Schwada used to be a print guy, and recently spent two weeks on a reporting fellowship in Germany. So I guess he feels comfortable exposing the...
Posted September 22, 2009 8:44 AM
The city's grant to keep Channel 36 on local television was negotiated back into the City Hall budget a few months ago, but now apparently the whole operating budget —...
Posted September 21, 2009 8:56 AM
Dodgers' post-game show host Ken Levine lets the city's least favorite cable provider have it with both blog barrels after a late-night phone exchange with the, so to speak, help...
Posted September 17, 2009 4:49 PM
Mayor Villaraigosa's gal pal (at least the last we checked) is now a field reporter for KTLA, moving from the weekend anchor/general assignment slot. KTLA News Director Jason Ball tells...
Posted September 10, 2009 9:47 AM
See more by Steve Greenberg in the LA Sketchbook archive....
Posted September 8, 2009 8:13 AM
Mark Sudock, a senior editor at Fox 11, is chagrined enough at the station's deep layoffs to send me an open letter asking Fox owner Rupert Murdoch to intervene. The...
Posted September 7, 2009 4:17 PM
The new episode of Vista LA that airs Sunday at 11:30 a.m. on Channel 7 focuses on recent improvements to MacArthur Park — led by the Levitt Pavilion — and...
Posted September 6, 2009 12:40 AM
Firefighters from Tuolumne and Calaveras counties knew well the history and scientific treasure that was at stake when the Station Fire threatened the Mount Wilson Observatory. They made it their...
Posted September 5, 2009 1:25 PM
KTLA senior producer Erik Candiani swears that in the following promo, new Channel 5 anchors Micah Ohlman and Victoria Recaño really do meet for the first time. Watch them get...
Posted September 5, 2009 9:55 AM
Weird story. Melanie Patton Renfrew, a geography professor at Harbor College, has pleaded no contest to violating a judge's order to stop harassing KNBC weather caster Fritz Coleman. That, as...
Posted September 3, 2009 8:32 PM
The newest iteration of "At The Movies" debuts this weekend with A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips installed as hosts — they both filled in a lot for Roger Ebert when...
Posted September 2, 2009 5:54 PM
While other local TV stations have been skimping on fire coverage, PBS station KCET is doing more than it ever has before: as of 1:30 p.m. today, Channel 28 is...
Posted August 31, 2009 4:55 PM
Channel 9's fire coverage in the 9 o'clock hour included several minutes with reporter Dave Lopez on the battle by firefighters to save the La Cañada Flintridge home of the...
Posted August 29, 2009 9:53 PM
The local Emmy awards were handed out tonight at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in North Hollywood, and KNBC came away with more than any other station. Channel...
Posted August 29, 2009 9:35 PM
The former Fox 11 anchor reports on his website that he accepted a job anchoring the 5-7 and 11 am newscasts at WGRZ-TV in Buffalo. He writes: The station has...
Posted August 26, 2009 12:52 PM
More transitions at Channel 4. Longtime TV news figure Bob Long has announced his retirement as VP and News Director at KNBC. There are lighter and more serious versions of...
Posted August 26, 2009 12:20 PM
So yesterday's news about the new anchors at Channel 5 left unresolved what would become of the current 10 p.m. anchors Leila Feinstein (a holdover from the Hal Fishman era)...
Posted August 25, 2009 3:10 PM
Ever since Micah Ohlman left Channel 7 last spring there has been talk of him landing at KTLA. Well, now he has. Ohlman, the nephew of ex-KNBC anchor Paul Moyer,...
Posted August 24, 2009 3:11 PM
© Steve Greenberg. May not be reused without permission of the artistThis is only a guess, but I suspect KNBC's hiring of East Coast tabloid favorite Alycia Lane spurred Steve...
Posted August 23, 2009 10:33 PM
When "Hung" star Thomas Jane showed up at the KTLA studios this morning, he got out of the limo in bare feet, says a Channel 5 insider who adds he...
Posted August 21, 2009 11:37 PM
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and the L.A. Times' Andrew Malcolm, who increasingly seems like a Fox News embed writing the paper's main politics blog, are going at each other. I have...
Posted August 21, 2009 10:05 PM
After yesterday's initial wave of clucking over Channel 4 hiring Alycia Lane as weekend anchor, KNBC came back with a statement saying "We're aware of her background and have looked...
Posted August 19, 2009 5:27 PM
Channel 4's new website is a real piece of work. The lead story up now is about model Jasmine Fiore being killed and left in a dumpster. Look how they...
Posted August 19, 2009 11:55 AM
The New York Times obituary says Hewitt "changed the course of broadcast news by creating the television magazine '60 Minutes,' fusing journalism and show business as never before, and who...
Posted August 19, 2009 10:23 AM
KTLA reporter Eric Spillman stayed on his minor obsession with Mayor Villaraigosa's trip to Africa with Channel 5 colleague Lu Parker and has some new details. The eight-day trip, which...
Posted August 19, 2009 10:10 AM
Alycia Lane is coming to Channel 4 on August 19 as a weekend anchor and general assignment reporter. She takes over as the weekend evening anchor from Kim Baldonado, who...
Posted August 18, 2009 3:59 PM
KCET's website has discovered the time-tested method for getting more attention from L.A. bloggers: profile them. Up this week is Cindy Mosqueda, writer of the venerable Loteria Chicana, which dates...
Posted August 12, 2009 10:36 AM
Video of the newsroom celebration from reporter Eric Spillman's blog at the KTLA website....
Posted August 11, 2009 6:13 PM
The Asian American blog Epicanthus posts three videos of the Burbank arrival of Laura Ling and Euna Lee that has footage beyond what most of the media showed. Noted: Producer...
Posted August 7, 2009 11:12 PM
GiGi Graciette was just on Fox 11 live from Burbank's Bob Hope Airport, talking to Laura Ling's husband and setting up the arrival of Ling, Euna Lee and former President...
Posted August 4, 2009 10:06 PM
The LAT's Richard Rushfield has posted his final entry on the Idol Tracker blog where he's been spending most of his time the past couple of years. He's headed to...
Posted August 4, 2009 11:10 AM
Former President Clinton is engaged in talks aimed at bringing home Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the Los Angeles journalists for Current TV held in North Korea since March 17,...
Posted August 3, 2009 8:58 PM
Manny Ramirez and his Boston Red Sox teammate David Ortiz were among the 100-plus major league players who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2003, the New York Times...
Posted July 30, 2009 10:28 AM
Yesterday on Twitter I re-tweeted this affectionate parody of Huell Howser on a road trip of another sort, but forgot to post it here. The creator calls it California's gold...
Posted July 28, 2009 2:10 PM
The Washington Post has a new TV critic in Stuever, whose job will be "exploring the medium across the many platforms and in the many ways it now traverses our...
Posted July 27, 2009 1:51 PM
Synthesizing the emails I've received and comments I've seen about Time Warner Cable cutting to commercial and missing Manny Ramirez's sensation of a home run last night, it sounds as...
Posted July 23, 2009 11:24 AM
Manny Ramirez just hit his most dramatic home run as a Dodger, a first-pitch gand slam coming off the bench in a tie game on Manny bobble-head night — and...
Posted July 22, 2009 9:29 PM
Channels 2 and 9 will be known, as of the fall, as CBS 2 NewsCentral and KCAL 9 NewsCentral. Behold the joint logo. Release is after the jump....
Posted July 22, 2009 2:37 PM
The cable sports giant will announce plans Monday for a website devoted to covering Los Angeles sports teams. It has worked for ESPN in Chicago, but L.A. Times sports boss...
Posted July 19, 2009 9:39 PM
Remember Sam Zell's chief innovation officer, the irrepressible Lee Abrams? Turns out he has been a pilot since he was 17, and like many hobbyist pilots across the U.S. he...
Posted July 19, 2009 9:11 PM
Cronkite passed away Friday at age 92. Here's our earlier link. More from LA Sketchbook by Steve Greenberg...
Posted July 18, 2009 5:17 PM
Media sites are saying that the longtime CBS News anchor has died, according to his family. Cronkite announcing the assassination of President John Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963:...
Posted July 17, 2009 5:20 PM
Los Angeles and New York both make great settings for police dramas on TV. But why, over the last decade or more, are most of the better ones located in...
Posted July 13, 2009 8:27 AM
Live in Los Angeles on channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 34 and 52 (translated), MSNBC, Fox News Channel, CNN. And on many L.A. radio stations, as well as...
Posted July 7, 2009 10:44 AM
Dodgers manager Joe Torre is on Fox Business Network today talking with David Asman about, of all things, the Yankees he used to manage. Some highlights from FBN: On Roger...
Posted July 6, 2009 4:44 PM
Channel 11 reporter John Schwada blogs that the recent layoff of 99 staffers cost his newsroom "a lot of good young people, with energy and dreams (fortunately, not all of...
Posted July 6, 2009 12:14 AM
Channel 5 reporter Eric Spillman posted the photo on Twitter of his KTLA colleague, the mayor's girlfriend, in the invited crowd at Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's pre-swearing-in church gathering this morning....
Posted July 1, 2009 9:43 AM
"Minutes after our 10pm liveshot, FOX News Channel Correspondent Craig Boswell was the victim of a hit & run," Fox 11's Hal Eisner reported on Twitter about half an hour...
Posted June 29, 2009 11:25 PM
They're still coming down, over 99 by one source's unofficial count — in all newsroom departments. "Editors, writers, shooters, promo people, our chief helicopter guy, the entire chyron department, most...
Posted June 26, 2009 6:57 PM
Fox 11 anchor-reporter Susan Hirasuna is a busy Twitter user. She just posted regarding what you'll see on tonight's news: Just finished editorial meeting for the 10p &11p news. Tribute...
Posted June 23, 2009 6:55 PM
Doug Davis, whose Urban Scrawl cartoons run in the Downtown News, envisions the damage done to the image of Los Angeles television reporters by Lu Parker turning up as...
Posted June 8, 2009 12:33 PM
From here on, I'll probably post tweets o' the day only occasionally. They seem better suited to Twitter itself, where I'll keep retweeting media postings on the LA Observed feed....
Posted June 2, 2009 5:01 PM
Phil Willon, who covers Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for the L.A. Times, posted at L.A. Now that Channel 5 reporter-weekend anchor Lu Parker told KTLA officials that she and the mayor...
Posted June 1, 2009 5:23 PM
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa dropped in Saturday at the opening of actress Melissa Joan Hart's store Sweet Harts in Sherman Oaks. He's getting a hug from Valley restaurant and real...
Posted June 1, 2009 1:55 PM
No, it's not a law firm. It's Huell Howser and Jacob Soboroff meeting for coffee at Intelligenstia 2½ years after they first circled each other on video at the Cornfield...
Posted May 19, 2009 3:12 PM
Channel 4 devoted ten minutes on its 5 p.m. newscast yesterday to saying goodbye to retired anchor Paul Moyer, despite the memo last month saying there would be "no...
Posted May 13, 2009 9:05 AM
Live the glamorous life of a TV news per diem field reporter — meaning you work day to day and do whatever they say, just as if you actually have...
Posted May 7, 2009 8:34 PM
Sean Harrigan, president of the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pensions board, resigned today a month after receiving a letter from the Securities and Exchange Commission asking him to identify...
Posted May 7, 2009 3:28 PM
Mary Beth McDade is no longer part of the news team on the duopoly's website, and a station source tells me she's gone. No further details. Here's her former bio....
Posted May 1, 2009 6:08 PM
There will be no final swing of the bat on Channel 4 for longtime news anchor Paul Moyer. His retirement was announced earlier this month, and now KNBC news chief...
Posted April 24, 2009 4:58 PM
The former Fox 11 and Channel 13 news and sports anchor starts tonight as co-anchor with Pat Harvey of KCAL's news at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Release after the...
Posted April 23, 2009 3:52 PM
My post yesterday on NBC closing its bureau in Sacramento should have pointed out that ABC still maintains a fulltime presence in the state capital. Nannette Miranda, of course, has...
Posted April 21, 2009 9:21 PM
The NBC bureau in the state capital is shutting down. It fed stories to KNBC Channel 4 and the other California stations. Here's an email going around from reporter Mike...
Posted April 20, 2009 5:48 PM
The myth of the lizard people who dug tunnels under Downtown gets a new retelling on Fox 11 News' "fringe segment," featuring Los Angeles Public Library maps expert Glen Creason....
Posted April 15, 2009 9:17 AM
Dan Miller anchored at Channel 2 in the 1980s and was the sidekick on Pat Sajak's late-night show, as well as a frequent guest host for Tom Snyder on radio....
Posted April 9, 2009 11:23 AM
NPR's "Morning Edition" carried a piece today that made the point that ethnic media are faring better than more traditional newspapers, radio and TV stations. It cited Univision's KMEX and...
Posted April 7, 2009 11:56 PM
The speculation has been correct — longtime KNBC anchor Paul Moyer told the newsroom today that he's hanging them up after being on L.A. television since 1972. (He jumped to...
Posted April 1, 2009 2:40 PM
Here's what Channel 5 has to say about the new shows and hours. 'News at 1' begins today....
Posted April 1, 2009 11:45 AM
Channel 4's Jennifer Bjorklund went to high school in the Bay Area with one of the four Oakland police officers killed in that shootout with a parolee. I'm told her...
Posted March 27, 2009 10:43 AM
Staffers in the Los Angeles Times newsroom expect the the next wave of forced departures to come down today, along with revelations of colleagues who choose this moment to retire...
Posted March 23, 2009 12:42 AM
While in Pomona today, President Obama met with students from the Village Academy High Schoool who had made a video about the recession. KCET's SoCal Connected has a story on...
Posted March 19, 2009 5:24 PM
The Occidental College alum will be here Wednesday for the first time as president — in Long Beach, Costa Mesa in OC and Pomona. He's also going to tape a...
Posted March 16, 2009 9:10 AM
Channel 4 plans to air a half-hour investigative piece on Sunday night at 11:30 examining LAUSD oversight of an ambitious library renovation program called Wonder of Reading. I'm told the...
Posted February 13, 2009 5:05 PM
It wasn't just Channel 4 -- all L.A. TV stations covered last night's low-speed Bentley chase, probably hoping it was Chris Brown or that the audience would assume it was....
Posted February 10, 2009 9:47 PM
Rich DeMuro was let go as the tech reporter at channels 2 & 9 after CBS acquired CNET. (Somewhat ironically, he left CNET about a year ago to come work...
Posted February 5, 2009 10:07 AM
Telemundo's new lifestyle cable network for Latinos, mun2, has posted a video with the guys behind the Kogi Korean barbecue taco truck. The video was shot during a stop at...
Posted February 5, 2009 9:17 AM
The House voted to delay the implementation of the digital TV changeover until June 12....
Posted February 4, 2009 1:18 PM
Channel 2 & 9's Bryan Frank takes us behind the scenes of another glamorous night in the TV news business. Frank, Sharon Tay and a trainee camera guy make ready...
Posted February 3, 2009 11:14 PM
The Radio and Television News Association of Southern California handed out the year's Golden Mike awards on Saturday night. No time to go through them all, but here's the list...
Posted January 26, 2009 11:15 AM
The difference being, apparently, the huge numbers of people who took in the Obama festivities on line rather than on television. Then last night, "American Idol" beat the top inauguration...
Posted January 21, 2009 11:28 AM
Laurel Erickson has been a familiar face on Los Angeles television for three decades, most recently as a rotating co-host of KNBC's "Newsconference" and holding down an anchor chair on...
Posted January 18, 2009 11:32 AM
Furnell Chatman guests on KPCC's Off-Ramp to talk about leaving KNBC Channel 4 after 35 years and moving back to New Orleans. I'm told he also shares quite a personal...
Posted January 16, 2009 3:10 PM
Variety columnist Brian Lowry is now blogging about television at the trade's new BLTv — "Good TV; reasonable prices." He posts that the current TV critics tour feels more pointless...
Posted January 15, 2009 11:29 PM
A scenario as imagined by Joe Flint, the former WSJ, Entertainment Weekly and Variety reporter who is now director of industry programs at the Paley Center for Media. It helps...
Posted January 15, 2009 11:05 PM
KNBC plans to air Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's State of the State speech live at 10 a.m. The station's Mekahlo Medina says they will post text messages from viewers on the...
Posted January 15, 2009 9:49 AM
Channel 4 plans to air a special about itself this Friday night and again on Super Bowl Sunday. Here's a blog preview from Franklin Avenue: Paul Moyer and Colleen Williams...
Posted January 12, 2009 5:54 PM
KTLA reporter-blogger Eric Spillman calls President George W. Bush's session with the media today "the most interesting of his Presidency. President Bush is not known for public self-examination, but in...
Posted January 12, 2009 5:51 PM
Americans who watch TV don't watch the Golden Globes any more, even if the newspapers, blogs and celebrity cable channels continue to insist they are a big thing. An average...
Posted January 12, 2009 5:41 PM
Confirming speculation that's been around since he left Channels 2 & 9 last summer, Don Corsini has been named president and general manager of KTLA Channel 5. The job has...
Posted January 5, 2009 12:09 PM
For a sizable chunk of the television audience, the proper world order was restored on KTLA's broadcast of the 2009 Rose Parade: Stephanie Edwards back in the booth gabbing with...
Posted January 2, 2009 5:53 PM
The veteran Channel 4 reporter and weekend anchor — usual signoff: "Thanks for having us in" — has left the building in Burbank. He's calling it retirement to the Big...
Posted January 2, 2009 11:06 AM
Bob Benoit, photographer Mr. Blackwell, fashion figure Manuel Bogran, Breeze carrier Bernie Boston, photographer P.J. Corkery, editor Elmer Dills, TV restaurant critic Bill Drake, radio executive Clay Felker, editor...
Posted December 30, 2008 8:22 PM
Los Angeles author Howard Rosenberg (the former LAT critic) and his co-author Charles Feldman were booked on KRON TV in San Francisco on Jan. 3 to talk about their new...
Posted December 29, 2008 5:54 PM
My post this morning about adulterer matching service AshleyMadison offering $1,000 to a satisfied customer willing to appear in disguise on Channel 5's Morning News brought an email update from...
Posted December 16, 2008 8:39 PM
Word out of KCBS/KCAL is that there have been layoffs today, including assistant news director Jim Hattendorf. Also, the copy desks of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, San Bernardino...
Posted December 16, 2008 5:01 PM
The president of AshleyMadison.com, the love match service that urges clients to have affairs, is offering $1,000 to a satisfied customer to appear with him on KTLA Channel 5. KTLA...
Posted December 16, 2008 11:12 AM
Charley Steiner will only do radio on next season's Dodger games, pushing former pitcher Jerry Reuss out of a job and opening a vacancy for a TV play-by-play announcer for...
Posted December 12, 2008 9:30 AM
Patrick McClenahan has been promoted to President and General Manager of KCBS-TV and KCAL-TV, effective immediately. He has been senior VP and station manager since the stations combined into a...
Posted December 10, 2008 11:29 AM
The life of a local television news cameraman involves a lot of hurry up and wait. Case in point: this afternoon's (yawn) Grammy nominations concert, as Channel 2's Bryan Frank...
Posted December 3, 2008 6:09 PM
"KTLA Morning News" anchor Frank Buckley chose not to sport an AIDS ribbon on today's show, got an email from a viewer about it, and decided to address the issue...
Posted December 1, 2008 3:54 PM
Rick Garcia and Lauren Sanchez will no longer offer a lighter alt version of the news at 11 p.m. on KCOP channel 13. The new plan is for Fox 11's...
Posted December 1, 2008 12:50 AM
The Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists will honor Paul Pringle of the Times, John Schwada of Fox 11, Frank Stoltze of KPCC and Terri Vermeulen Keith...
Posted November 24, 2008 11:50 PM
Alan Colmes, the liberal half of "Hannity & Colmes" on Fox News Channel, will leave the show at the end of the year. Colmes will remain as a commentator on...
Posted November 24, 2008 3:48 PM
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa today appointed Stephanie M. Rodriguez to the city Board of Transportation Commissioners. Rodriguez, director of public affairs at KCAL/KCBS, fills the unexpired term of Paul Kim. Also...
Posted November 19, 2008 12:10 PM
First, some good news. Remember Lauren Beale, who edits the Times' real estate section? Though her name made the list of the 75 editorial employees cut from the newsroom last...
Posted November 16, 2008 1:00 PM
Politics reporter John Schwada blogs at Fox 11 about studies showing that many people found the news media too blatantly favoring Barack Obama during the campaign. Actually, I find all...
Posted November 7, 2008 12:17 AM
Franklin Avenue's Michael Schneider was stunned when Channel 2 traffic reporter Vera Jimenez described last week's fire-caused snarl in Sepulveda Pass, then segued to her test drive of a Lincoln...
Posted October 26, 2008 9:18 PM
On tonight's NBC Nightly News, my ears perked up when anchor Brian Williams introduced a story by saying a world-famous museum came "dangerously close" to being burned by fire today....
Posted October 23, 2008 6:54 PM
Former Channel 2 weatherman Maclovio Perez, in Texas the past six years, has left his station in San Antonio to take a job as spokesman for a school district there....
Posted October 20, 2008 11:25 PM
The longtime Channel 5 anchor and reporter emailed colleagues and friends. For nearly 24 years, KTLA has been my second home. I have loved my career here at KTLA and...
Posted October 17, 2008 9:09 AM
This time only Sacramento was worse than Los Angeles, among the 56 Metro areas that Nielsen meters. But then, the Dodgers were on and, as usual, the debate did not...
Posted October 16, 2008 9:23 AM
KDOC, Orange County's only commercial TV station, has dropped its morning news show "Daybreak OC." From the Orange County Business Journal report: The move comes a year after KDOC launched...
Posted October 14, 2008 3:36 PM
A friend of longtime Los Angeles sportscaster Gil Stratton emailed the news that Stratton died this morning at home in Toluca Lake. He was 86 and had suffered heart problems....
Posted October 11, 2008 6:22 PM
PBS Channel 28 has soft-launched KCET Local with original web stories, video, reader comments, calendar items and blogs by author D.J. Waldie, KPCC reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, former LAT columnist Erin...
Posted October 9, 2008 8:55 PM
Another familiar figure from 1950s and '60s TV in Los Angeles has died, the L.A. Times reports. Charles Runyon portrayed Chucko the Birthday Clown on Channel 7 from 1955 to...
Posted October 8, 2008 12:44 PM
Lloyd Thaxton created and hosted a popular dance show for teenagers in the 1960s, later produced segments for NBC's "Today" and directed “Fight Back! With David Horowitz,” and most recently...
Posted October 7, 2008 5:42 PM
Nielsen says that last night's Biden-Palin debate drew a much larger television audience — 45% of households in the 55 biggest metered metro areas — than the earlier McCain-Obama debate....
Posted October 3, 2008 11:03 AM
Fox 11 crime reporter Chris Blatchford is out with "The Black Hand," which Dominick Dunne calls in a blurb, "A gripping, powerful, chilling inside look at a criminal organization that...
Posted September 27, 2008 1:46 AM
KCET's replacement for the late, lamented "Life and Times" premieres on Channel 28 at 8 pm. Val Zavala is the anchor of SoCal Connected, as she was on L&T. The...
Posted September 25, 2008 12:25 AM
AEG has shopped around a proposal to partner with a Los Angeles TV station on a digital channel to feature events at Staples Center and the Nokia Theater. They would...
Posted September 23, 2008 10:54 PM
When Conan O'Brien began a bit last night (this morning actually) about trains crashing together, KNBC Channel 4 cut in with anchor Colleen Williams introducing footage of Sen. John McCain's...
Posted September 23, 2008 10:41 PM
She's getting $50,000 to make nice and sit in the KTLA Rose Parade booth with Bob Eubanks again, says columnist Frank Mickadeit at the Register. A couple of weeks ago,...
Posted September 18, 2008 12:28 PM
Sam Zell's Channel 5 may be trying to distance its news from the Hal Fishman legacy, but the station announced yesterday that it's going back to the future with Rose...
Posted September 17, 2008 9:52 AM
L.A. Radio.com reports that George Putnam died this morning, citing Putnam's long-time friend and producer Chuck Wilder. Putnam moved to Los Angeles in 1951 and quickly became the city's dominant...
Posted September 12, 2008 8:25 AM
I finally listened to the whole interview that Los Angeles Times Editor Russ Stanton gave the Daily Sundial at Cal State Northridge, linked in Monday's Morning Buzz. He drops a...
Posted September 10, 2008 12:03 AM
KNBC Channel 4 led with eight local Emmys at last night's awards ceremony at the Leonard H. Goldenson Theater in North Hollywood. The trophies included Mary Harris for outstanding news...
Posted September 7, 2008 11:45 AM
Don Corsini has run the two CBS-owned channels since 2002. He will stay until the end of the year, when Patrick McClenahan will be promoted to president and general manager....
Posted August 20, 2008 8:26 AM
Leroy Sievers is the former "Nightline" executive producer who has been commenting on the air and blogging about his cancer for National Public Radio. Sievers had previously been the CBS...
Posted August 16, 2008 11:30 PM
A generation of Los Angeles kids grew up watching cartoons on Channel 9 and drinking their milk when Engineer Bill or his announcer said "green light" — and stopping...
Posted August 14, 2008 11:44 PM
This week's piece by Kelefa Sanneh starts out exploring TV and radio commentator Tavis Smiley's criticism of Barack Obama's candidacy and looks into Smiley's enterprises, which are based in Leimert...
Posted July 31, 2008 8:52 AM
The "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" drills down on the closure of newspaper book sections, pegged to the L.A. Times situation. Here's the email blast at Romenesko: This past Sunday, the...
Posted July 28, 2008 3:00 PM
O'Brien takes over from Jay Leno next June 1, NBC announces. AP Also: Ebert and Roeper quit "At the Movies."...
Posted July 21, 2008 1:05 PM
Robert Abele at the LA Weekly wonders if the new character introduced in "The Closer" this season would be Sam Zell's idea of a model reporter. What’s with the inane,...
Posted July 17, 2008 9:05 AM
SoupCans is a TV blog that runs a recurring Jackie Johnson Fashion Watch, so the blog was thrilled she talked to them. The Channel 2 and 9 weathercaster talks about...
Posted July 15, 2008 8:37 AM
In today's LAT, reviewer Leslie Brenner absolutely savages Gladstone's Malibu, the Pacific Coast Highway goldmine where former mayor Richard Riordan is the largest shareholder. The food is "abominable" and the...
Posted July 9, 2008 3:49 PM
ERS News says that seven Channel 5 news staffers got the pink slip today, including on-air reporters Walter Richards, Bill Smith, Willa Sandmeyer and Janet Choi. Two long-time executive producers...
Posted June 30, 2008 8:55 PM
KNBC's News Raw channel, which is branded as Digital 4.4, announced today that as of Monday, pre-Olympic programming from Universal Sports would take over many of the channel's hours. News...
Posted June 28, 2008 12:12 PM
Journalists of the year announced at last night's Los Angeles Press Club awards: Big print: Melissa Healy, L.A. Times Small print: Anat Rubin, Los Angeles Daily Journal TV: Antonio Valverde,...
Posted June 22, 2008 12:22 PM
I really like this photo of Venice from 1957, showing the lineage of the ocean-front condos and converted beach shacks that are now so desirable. It's by Charles Brittin, the...
Posted June 19, 2008 9:12 AM
The longtime moderator of "Meet the Press" and chief of NBC's Washington bureau collapsed this afternoon in the bureau and could not be resuscitated. He was 58. Here are links...
Posted June 13, 2008 2:29 PM
Two of the lawyers featured prominently in the HBO documentary on Roman Polanski that debuted this week have issued a statement disputing the Superior Court's allegation that the film was...
Posted June 11, 2008 12:23 PM
Weather reader Jackie Johnson was out last night with Channel 9 colleagues Mary Beth McDade and Melissa McCarty, but it was Johnson who got all the personal attention from Girls...
Posted June 10, 2008 11:54 PM
Telemundo had another bad day on Friday, dropping the network's national morning show "Cada Dia" and making some executive changes. Host Maria Antonieta Collins, who joined Telemundo from Univisión, had...
Posted June 2, 2008 1:59 PM
Veronica Villafañe at Media Moves reports that Azteca América Channel 54 is dropping its Los Angeles production and will host the Spanish-language newscasts in Mexico. Layoffs of 29 staffers came...
Posted May 27, 2008 10:25 PM
Lucia Navarro is out as anchor at Telemundo-52 after seven years, according to Media Moves, a blog that charts the movement of Latinos in the media business. Navarro was on...
Posted May 25, 2008 10:19 PM
I'm told that staffers at Channel 5 were gathered together for two all-hands meetings yesterday and told that ND Rich Goldner would exit today for that new job in San...
Posted May 20, 2008 12:15 PM
LiveNewsCameras.com offers a wall of live news video from dozens of U.S. cities, and a "moderator" who monitors the hottest stories of that minute. At least, she's there during the...
Posted May 19, 2008 11:42 PM
California Supreme Court chief justice Ronald George gives a two-hour interview to the LAT's Maura Dolan and talks about the court's milestone same-sex marriage ruling: "I think there are...
Posted May 18, 2008 12:25 PM
With its television revenue down $2.8 million already this year, Playboy Enterprises plans to offer 20 hours of softcore gay male programming to Time Warner Cable subscribers, XBIZ.com reports. The...
Posted May 12, 2008 12:32 AM
Councilwoman Hahn responds on her blog to the Fox 11 report that sided with two cops suing the city and tied Hahn to the mother of a Grape Street gang...
Posted May 9, 2008 5:25 PM
The host of the long-running "Connie Martinson Talks Books" gave nearly 3,000 tapes of her cable show to Claremont Graduate University. "It's a pretty extraordinary gift," said Rick Wartzman, director...
Posted May 7, 2008 9:20 AM
Today's slash of 80-90 employees, or 5% of the staff, is the third round of layoffs in a year at the Register's parent. Declining advertising revenue is to blame, President...
Posted April 28, 2008 5:28 PM
Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon will guest on Sunday's "KNBC News Conference," hosted by Laurel Erickson at 9:30 am on Channel 4. She wants to ask him about the...
Posted April 25, 2008 3:12 PM
Now in the anchor chair at Fox 11, Carlos Amezcua blasts his former station in the May issue of Tu Ciudad. "When Hal Fishman died, so did the KTLA News,"...
Posted April 24, 2008 12:10 AM
KNBC anchor Ana Garcia, producer Rebecca Nieto, VP/News Director Robert Long and (not shown) web managing Bonnie Buck talk about how the station covers news and their relationship with PR...
Posted April 22, 2008 1:10 PM
Pete Noyes, 77, has worked behind the camera in influential roles at, I believe, Channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 13 and most recently 11. A former print reporter, producing investigations...
Posted April 19, 2008 1:10 PM
I scanned past this in my initial quick read of the Mirthala Salinas interview by Shawn Hubler in the new issue of Los Angeles magazine. Salinas talks in some detail...
Posted April 16, 2008 8:59 AM
Fox 11 reporter John Schwada has posted quotes from a video where Sheriff Lee Baca tells a mostly black audience in Compton that some Latino youths are indeed killing African...
Posted April 15, 2008 2:29 PM
Veteran Fox 11 reporter Christina Gonzalez filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city and the police department, saying she suffered "shock and injuries to her nervous system" and "severe...
Posted April 14, 2008 10:06 PM
He still makes appearances and will be talking about "KTLA's News at Ten: Sixty Years with Stan Chambers" tonight at 7:30 pm at the Beverly Hills City Hall. Info...
Posted April 14, 2008 7:24 AM
An LA Observed regular emails: Hey Kevin, It’s 8:35. For the past half hour, KCET is having a meltdown with Antiques Roadshow telecast (interspersed with pledge segments.) Screen just went...
Posted April 7, 2008 11:57 PM
Spens reported in the 1990s for KNBC, KCBS and KNX Newsradio and was known for wearing a trench coat and walking while delivering his televised field reports. Pete Noyes, managing...
Posted April 6, 2008 7:36 PM
Sen. Hillary Clinton used her entrance on "The Tonight Show" (Channel 4, 11:35 pm) to defuse the mocking over her tale about dodging gunfire in Bosnia while First Lady. "I...
Posted April 3, 2008 9:08 PM
The Daily News and Variety report that Channel 2 anchors Ann Martin and Harold Greene are among the staffers who will leave the KCBS-KCAL stations as part of a big...
Posted April 1, 2008 5:13 PM
Bunch of people let go today. If I get details I'll pass them on....
Posted March 31, 2008 7:20 PM
CBS executives are moving to the Studio City complex from Television City this weekend. The influx of all those suits figures to disrupt the Radford lot culture, not to mention...
Posted March 26, 2008 12:25 PM
The news got out yesterday that Tribune would switch its San Diego affiliate to Fox from the CW Network. Now here's the memo explaining the move, and naming a new...
Posted March 25, 2008 9:35 AM
CEO Sam Zell enjoyed the little dig his Chicago Tribune got in on the rival Sun-Times, which held a contest to let readers' express their opinion on Zell's possible interest...
Posted March 24, 2008 4:31 PM
Once around: Child advocate and former L.A. first lady Nancy Daly Riordan guests with Laurel Erickson on a special edition of KNBC News Conference, airing Saturday at 4 pm. Councilman...
Posted March 21, 2008 3:53 PM
Note to KTLA: the TV station that Sam Zell's Tribune company owns in South Florida is moving in with the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel newspaper. Zell has said the company would...
Posted March 19, 2008 9:12 AM
KNBC Channel 4 has tapped David Markland, a "city captain" at LA Metblogs, to write a couple of items a day under the California Faultline banner. He will focus on...
Posted March 16, 2008 5:40 PM
It's been a while since LA Observed readers first met math-challenged weather babe Jackie Johnson. If you have always craved just a little bit more, the CBS2/KCAL website has what...
Posted March 4, 2008 10:55 PM
Channel 4's Ana Garcia began an undercover investigation tonight on veterinarians who take advantage of distraught pet owners to order unnecessary procedures and "hundreds of dollars in unnecessary expenses." Kind...
Posted February 25, 2008 11:21 PM
Vinnie Malcolm will be leaving the building at Channel 5. He may already be gone. Staffers aren't clear just how hard he was pushed, but the memo from new Sam...
Posted February 19, 2008 12:26 PM
Every network owned TV station in Los Angeles plus KTLA has switched live to the Simmons funeral. Channel 4 handled the bringing in of the casket nicely: no talking. Just...
Posted February 15, 2008 11:08 AM
Motorcycle officers working the route of the Randy Simmons funeral procession have marked their helmets with the radio designation of his SWAT unit: 41-D. Holy Geography, Batman: Furnell Chatman, holding...
Posted February 15, 2008 10:30 AM
L.A. author, humorist and kitschy snapshot collector Charles Phoenix will share his vintage Valentine's Day slides with Martha Stewart on her syndicated TV show on Thursday. I have no idea...
Posted February 12, 2008 11:27 PM
The talent at Channel 11 has been strongly encouraged to blog for MyFox LA, the branding given the station's website. Reporter John Schwada has taken to it easier than most...
Posted February 3, 2008 12:41 AM
Television reporter James Hibberd is leaving TV Week to take a newly created slot on the broadcasting beat at The Hollywood Reporter, I'm told. The path is getting familiar. Melissa...
Posted February 1, 2008 5:44 PM
While the battered denizens at the L.A. Times wait to hear whether their next editor will be a patsy for the publisher or an actual respected newsroom leader with independence...
Posted January 25, 2008 3:20 PM
As several KTLA staffers have emailed to remind me, the station had been blocking employees' access to LA Observed. Even while cooperating from time to time at the news level....
Posted January 22, 2008 1:23 PM
The post-9/11 sensation and defrocked global terrorism reporter with the square-rimmed Lafont eyeglasses — dumped by NBC after she bombed as an anchor and criticized Fox News in a speech...
Posted January 16, 2008 8:53 PM
The internal watchblog that began after Dan Rather's career meltdown has disappeared from the list of CBS News blogs, and Rachel Sklar at the Huffington Post is disappointed. It's a...
Posted January 3, 2008 3:32 PM
KNBC Channel 4 leads the TV stations with six Golden Mikes from the Radio Television News Association, including best newscast writing, documentary ("On the Verge") and investigative story (for its...
Posted December 27, 2007 11:15 AM
The Kings held a moment of silence before tonight's game to honor Stu Nahan, the former sportscaster at channels 4, 5 and 7 and sports talk host on KABC and...
Posted December 26, 2007 10:57 PM
I'm told by KCET that "Life & Times" will hold down its 7pm time slot until Dec. 28, then give way to Tavis Smiley. Stories this week will include a...
Posted December 17, 2007 5:45 PM
Tonight's show at 7pm on KCET has Tom Brokaw looking back at the 1960s, Vicki Curry checking in on the Orange County Museum of Art's "Birth of the Cool" exhibit,...
Posted December 14, 2007 6:24 PM
Veteran anchor-reporter Linda Alvarez is taking her leave of Channel 2 at the end of the month, concluding 14 years at the station. Here's the so-long email and invitation she...
Posted November 18, 2007 11:36 PM
L.A. County Supervisor Mike D. Antonovich adjourned the Supes meeting with a motion to mourn the reduction of live news coverage at Channel 5. It apparently got his goat that...
Posted October 24, 2007 11:48 PM
Now that Rebecca de Mornay is on HBO all the time, it figures somebody would ask, "what became of the old Wally George 'Hot Seat' shows on Channel 56?" That...
Posted October 19, 2007 12:49 AM
I missed this in the news last week. Or rather, let's say it got way underplayed — just a brief buried in the LAT Calendar section. The news is that...
Posted October 18, 2007 11:33 PM
The big three local network TV stations will still be in the Valley, but NBC made official what's been talked about for awhile: the station is moving most of its...
Posted October 11, 2007 9:32 AM
L.A. broadcasting fixture Gary Franklin died at 79, at home in Chatsworth. He first became known as a street reporter on KFWB, ending his reports with a signature sign-off "Car...
Posted October 4, 2007 8:56 AM
KCAL9 and CBS2 anchor Dave Clark starts November 1 as anchor of the top-rated morning news at Channel 2 in San Francisco. His email to friends says "I have spent...
Posted September 29, 2007 9:45 PM
Blogger and former Daily Journal reporter Daniel Evans and his wife walked down to the corner store in Burbank tonight and spotted two TV news trucks. As they feared, the...
Posted September 25, 2007 11:55 PM
If Mirthala Salinas stays with Telemundo Channel 52 it will be as the station's general assignment news chaser in the Inland Empire, not as the star political reporter and sometime...
Posted September 24, 2007 8:13 PM
At a Radio and Television News Association panel of news directors last night at UCLA, Bob Long of NBC 4 got most of the laughs — and sounded the most...
Posted September 20, 2007 10:16 PM
He claims the network ruined his career. (You want to laugh, right?) Mark Lacter strikes the right tone: As defendants, the suit names CBS and its CEO, Leslie Moonves; Viacom...
Posted September 19, 2007 4:08 PM
Reporter Chip Yost simply asked if the self-professed pedophile Jack McClellan wanted to talk after his release from UCLA custody last night — and he did, says Channel 5 executive...
Posted August 14, 2007 11:35 AM
Channel 5's Prime News plans to run selected old commentaries by the late anchor Hal Fishman all week. Tonight it was Hal weighing in on Snoop Dogg being arrested a...
Posted August 13, 2007 10:29 PM
KTLA reporter Eric Spillman writes on his official blog that "My colleague Hal Fishman died prematurely. If he had gone in for some routine tests, he might still be with...
Posted August 8, 2007 11:10 AM
KTLA's Prime News team remembered and praised their late anchor and managing editor Hal Fishman for the first half of the broadcast tonight. When they finally broke for the news,...
Posted August 7, 2007 11:00 PM
Anyone who has watched the regular KOCE reports from the Register newsroom in Orange County knows it's hard enough to get print schlubs to give good television. It's even more...
Posted August 7, 2007 5:25 PM
The face of KTLA news died this morning at home, the station announced. Fishman was 75 and had suffered from colon and liver cancer and an infection. He last anchored...
Posted August 7, 2007 8:12 AM
Doctors treating Fishman for yesterday's collapse found colon cancer that has spread to his liver, according to KTLA interim news director Rich Goldner on the Times website. "Hal is awake...
Posted August 3, 2007 4:42 PM
Republicans in Los Angeles are being offered $15 to show up at an upcoming taping of the "Half Hour News Hour" on Fox. From the email: The Half Hour News...
Posted August 3, 2007 4:24 PM
KTLA announced at the top of its 10 pm news — and on its website — that anchor Hal Fishman was in the hospital suffering from a serious infection. He...
Posted August 2, 2007 11:54 PM
Mirthala Salinas gets two months without pay for reading the news stories about Mayor Villaraigosa's marital breakup, but will keep her job at Telemundo 52. She apparently informed superiors about...
Posted August 2, 2007 11:48 PM
Earl Ofari Hutchinson blogs at Friendly Fire: Telemundo officials say that they will make a decision within the next few days whether to fire Mirthala Salinas or not. They shouldn’t....
Posted July 22, 2007 12:59 AM
KTLA News Director Jeff Wald informed his department this morning that he's leaving the station to spend more time his family. Wald's wife died suddenly last December, and he has...
Posted July 17, 2007 11:25 AM
Telemundo has been covering the mayoral affair and media ethics dust-up involving its own reporter, and seems very interested in hearing what listeners think. At the bottom of the web...
Posted July 4, 2007 10:15 PM
CBS2 anchor Paul Magers' former home in the Minneapolis area — called by one blogger a "grand-to-ostentatious Lake of the Isles mansion" — is in the news back there because...
Posted June 11, 2007 9:21 AM
The Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills (and New York) becomes the Paley Center for Media today. The New York Times reports: By no longer calling itself a...
Posted June 4, 2007 11:37 PM
KNBC's undercover camera has caught more car repair scammers. This time, Grover's web snared EZ Lube, "California's fastest growing lube and tune chain." Says the Channel 4 website: Under the...
Posted May 17, 2007 2:58 PM
Fans of "The Sopranos" spent all day Monday comparing notes on what an exultant Tony Soprano screamed at the end of Sunday night's intense episode. The LAT's television writer Paul...
Posted May 16, 2007 10:54 AM
Bret Marcus, displaced by the cancellation of "California Connected," becomes Vice President of Programming, Publicity and Promotion at the local PBS station. Release after the jump....
Posted May 15, 2007 11:16 AM
Since January, KMEX here has been blanketing its Spanish-language audience with encouragement for green card holders who are eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship. Now the project is going nationwide...
Posted May 10, 2007 11:21 AM
Turns out that the Saturday night movie showcase that KCET launched recently — and that has been advertised over there on the right side of this page — was just...
Posted May 9, 2007 5:25 PM
Those are reporter Christina Gonzalez's words on Fox 11 after she was shoved and laughed at by LAPD riot cops while coming to the defense of the station's camera operator,...
Posted May 2, 2007 11:22 AM
PBS has picked up the first season of the series to be produced by KCET in association with Wired magazine. It premieres nationwide on October 3. From the flackage: "The...
Posted May 1, 2007 2:58 PM
Tonight's show is the last, at least for now. "After five seasons and 154 shows from Yreka in the north to Baja in the south to the Eastern Sierras of...
Posted April 27, 2007 3:12 PM
A local television legend of sorts, and LA Observed oldie but goodie, returned tonight to the Los Angeles airwaves — and now to the blogosphere. Sharon Tay co-anchored the "KTLA...
Posted April 25, 2007 11:52 PM
It's Adam Gorfain, a 41 year old senior producer for "Dateline NBC" at the NBC News studios in Burbank, according to sometime NBC ABC independent investigative producer Eric Longabardi on...
Posted April 24, 2007 8:59 AM
Now that channels 2 and 9 reside in their new shared newsroom in Studio City, news director Nancy Bauer-Gonzales has removed the ban on eating and drinking at desks. But—staffers...
Posted April 23, 2007 3:22 PM
Channel 2 staffers are buzzing about their new entertainment reporter, Christina McLarty, being the girlfriend of Girls Gone Wild bad-boy Joe Francis. He's been in the news lately for his...
Posted April 13, 2007 7:12 AM
The Chicago Tribune calls it an "epic corporate drama" that ends with the paper's parent company — owner of the Los Angeles Times and KTLA — being taken private by...
Posted April 2, 2007 7:09 AM
We told you last week that radio personality April Winchell had blown Bill O'Reilly's cover as a man of the people by exposing his rant about croissants that were not...
Posted March 25, 2007 8:44 AM
Bob Woodward is the Washington Post editor who was not on the 4 o'clock news yesterday on ABC 7. Bob Woodruff is the former ABC News co-anchor, severely injured by...
Posted March 22, 2007 2:02 AM
Channel 7 morning news anchor Phillip Palmer goes under the knife tomorrow at St. Vincent's to donate a kidney to a friend, former KCAL news editor Dale Davis. Palmer talks...
Posted March 13, 2007 5:35 PM
Joseph Russin joins KTLA News as executive editor of planning. "Russin's responsibilities will include overseeing news coverage on-air and on the web, planning feature stories and supervising the work of...
Posted March 13, 2007 9:08 AM
Channels 2 and 9 news director Nancy Bauer Gonzales has gone on the warpath before against perfume and cologne in the office (as well as against messy desks.) But with...
Posted March 9, 2007 1:49 PM
An LA Observed reader asks: "Why are there seven jobs for ABC 7 listed on JournalismJobs.com?" Dunno, but it's true and they are all for freelancers or part-time work. The...
Posted March 8, 2007 9:05 PM
Tavis Smiley scores an interview tonight on PBS with Bruce Gordon, who resigned Sunday after just nineteen months as head of the NAACP. "A 64 person board under any scenario...
Posted March 5, 2007 9:31 PM
Excerpt at the Rip Post: Co-Anchor Michaela “Free Home Makeover” Pereira: This girl clearly needs help. I mean, she is not exactly de-icing the cool bus! Kriski: De-ice the cool...
Posted February 22, 2007 11:42 PM
Time Warner will begin carrying KCAL 9 HD on Friday with the 5:30 pm broadcast in high-definition of the Lakers game at Indiana. It's channel 409 in the new Time...
Posted January 31, 2007 11:24 AM
Bob Carroll Jr. worked with writing partner Madelyn Pugh Davis for more than 60 years, including on all the television series that Lucille Ball starred in. Carroll and and Pugh...
Posted January 30, 2007 2:48 AM
KFWB and KPCC-FM each won six Golden Mikes to lead the pack at Saturday night's banquet of the Radio & Television News Association of Southern California. Channel 4's 5pm newscast...
Posted January 29, 2007 10:53 AM
She actually calls it La-La Land on her Today Show blog. Later, the host fills in fans on a trip to Universal Studios and guest shots on Jay Leno and...
Posted January 25, 2007 12:35 PM
I watched Channel 5's "Prime News" at 10 pm to see how long they would go with real news before veering away to report on this morning's star ceremony on...
Posted January 24, 2007 10:16 PM
LA Observed contributor Jacob Soboroff caught up with local TV news legend Stan Chambers in Hollywood at KTLA's 60th anniversary bash. Click on the pic to watch the short video...
Posted January 24, 2007 4:11 PM
In a recent interview with FilmStew, Aaron Sorkin complained about the less-than-cheerleading coverage of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" by writers at the Times' Calendar section. He named Maria...
Posted January 16, 2007 9:52 PM
California Connected, produced at KCET, received the Alfred I. duPont award from Columbia University for "War Stories from Ward 7-D," called a "sobering report on the range of brain injuries...
Posted January 15, 2007 11:16 AM
The PBS series "Edens Lost and Found" does Los Angeles tonight at 10 pm on KCET. Jimmy Smits hosts the episode, which features TreePeople's Andy Lipkis and his crusade to...
Posted January 11, 2007 10:50 AM
Noted, since it hasn't been included in the mentions here of Jim Lampley's arrest: "I am innocent of the charge of domestic abuse that has been leveled against me and...
Posted January 5, 2007 12:09 PM
Michael Goodwin was convicted of murdering his former business partner, Mickey Thompson, and the racing legend's wife in 1988. Prosecutors will not seek the death penalty. CBS2 Alleged details...
Posted January 4, 2007 3:50 PM
By last night's web stats run, more than 2,200 visitors had found their way to LA Observed by searching on Google for Stephanie Edwards. That's in just the first three...
Posted January 4, 2007 9:30 AM
Ax falls at Channel 2/9: veteran reporter Paul Dandridge has been taken off the bio page, though his blog remains — last updated in August. Newsroom sources say that Inland...
Posted January 3, 2007 5:20 PM
KTLA's own viewer forum filled up today with more comments about the Rose Parade broadcast than on any other topic in months. Most are strongly pro-Stephanie Edwards and vent at...
Posted January 1, 2007 11:56 PM
Ron Fineman lost his battle with colon cancer today. The founder of the television news website Ron Fineman's On the Record was taken off his respirator Dec. 21 and told...
Posted December 30, 2006 6:52 PM
Stephanie Edwards tells the Pasadena Star-News that she took the hint and declined KTLA's offer to reprise her limited role in KTLA's Rose Parade coverage. According to Edwards, it was...
Posted December 28, 2006 10:45 AM
Longtime local news figure Ross Becker is leaving NBC4 and the on-hiatus daytime show he anchored, The Local Story, for an anchor slot at KTVX, the ABC-affiliated Channel 4...
Posted December 26, 2006 2:10 AM
KTLA's press release tries to make the upcoming coverage of the Rose Parade sound special: "Bob Eubanks and Michaela Pereira will be back as co-hosts of the Rose Parade....Grand Marshal...
Posted December 23, 2006 2:20 PM
KCAL-9 will once again air the yule log on Christmas morning, continuing a 40-year tradition (in New York — just three years here.) The log will crackle away in silence...
Posted December 22, 2006 5:34 PM
LARadio.com reports that Ron Fineman, the former TV reporter and producer whose On the Record is one of the original Los Angeles media websites, is near death at Henry Mayo...
Posted December 20, 2006 1:10 PM
This time it wasn't local, but still. While Paul Magers was reading a story last night about the heavy snowfall that blanketed New Mexico, the graphic carried the flag of,...
Posted December 20, 2006 12:43 AM
AmericanLife TV is a "network for baby boomers" showing up on the new channel alignment for Time Warner Cable. Its selling point is old series' like "The Honeymooners,” “The Man...
Posted December 14, 2006 2:33 PM
No, Michael Richards did not attend a celebrity roast for Whoopi Goldberg in blackface. Nor did he pour a bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup over Whoopi's head. That was satire...
Posted December 5, 2006 3:37 PM
Last night's showing of "Roy Orbison and Friends" on KCET — the concert was recorded live at the Cocoanut Grove in 1988 — prompted this anguished email from an LA...
Posted November 29, 2006 2:53 AM
Bob Baker envisions Michael Richards' next apology, exclusively at Native Intelligence: November 21, 2006 From: Elliot Forget, senior partner, Dodge & Retreat Consulting To: Michael Richards Re: Your follow-up apology...
Posted November 21, 2006 7:59 PM
Brian Stelter is 21, attends Towson University near Baltimore, and through his blog has the ear of just about everyone who matters in television news. Now he also has a...
Posted November 21, 2006 7:53 PM
Longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent Ed Bradley died today of complications from leukemia. The first black White House correspondent for CBS News, he reported on the network's Sunday night news franchise...
Posted November 9, 2006 11:36 AM
Contrary to speculation just about everywhere, The Hollywood Reporter's Ray Richmond blogs that Aaron Sorkin's show will run its full 22-episode season on NBC. The deal isn't official yet, Richmond...
Posted November 7, 2006 4:23 PM
Fox News shouter Bill O'Reilly is back on his Times kick, this time alleging that the real circulation is about half of what the ABC said it was this week....
Posted November 1, 2006 10:24 AM
This was the day that fans of the ABC soap "General Hospital" have looked forward to for a long time: the return of the female half of Luke and Laura....
Posted October 26, 2006 10:51 PM
TMZ says that a camera crew working for E! Entertainment Television entered an open gate at Brad Pitt's Hollywood Hills compound on Oct. 19 and was caught on videotape. The...
Posted October 25, 2006 10:50 AM
Ross Becker's "fluid format" half-hour news show "The Local Story" ran most of the summer on KNBC, then dropped back into a new life as a web-only production. Well, after...
Posted October 23, 2006 2:45 PM
Jacob Soboroff just got a new HD video camera and went over to the Cornfield state park downtown yesterday to try it out. Walking the grounds he saw Huell Howser,...
Posted October 18, 2006 5:39 PM
NBC 4 was first to go with the story last night, but today's Times and Daily News have many more details on the Grand Jury testimony alleging sexual favors paid...
Posted October 4, 2006 2:25 AM
Channel 4 got pretty excited tonight about an Ana Garcia investigative report that Troy Edwards, a deputy mayor under Jim Hahn, ran up $18,000 in bills for massages and sex...
Posted October 3, 2006 10:23 PM
"Being a TV host is the least of what I do," the Crenshaw district-based media force tells Patrick Goldstein in Sunday's LAT Calendar. The smooth-talking 42-year-old journalist and social activist...
Posted October 2, 2006 10:25 AM
FTVLive cites inside sources at KNBC saying layoffs are to follow a merger of assignment desks at the NBC newsroom in Burbank. Sources say that the NBC suits in New...
Posted October 2, 2006 9:54 AM
Ralph Story was a big deal on local television in the 1960s and 70s. He was the features reporter for "The Big News" on Channel 2 when the hour-long news...
Posted September 26, 2006 10:29 PM
Perhaps bracing for a premature end to his team's baseball season, Dodger Thoughts' Jon Weisman has launched Screen Jam. I'll let him explain: As readers of Dodger Thoughts may know,...
Posted September 18, 2006 5:39 PM
NBC 4's Joel Grover looks to have another installment of his Jiffy Lube expose coming tonight at 6 and 11 pm, according to the station's website. After Grover's two-part investigation,...
Posted September 18, 2006 4:44 PM
The guest list for Sunday's NBC4 Newsconference might seem like a non sequitur, but there is a theme to it: "courage, fearlessness and leadership" for the fifth anniversary of the...
Posted September 8, 2006 2:28 PM
Dan Rather's farewell retrospective on CBS couldn't even make the cut on the Friday evening before Labor Day. In Los Angeles and New York, the hour-long show is yielding to...
Posted August 31, 2006 4:23 PM
Looks like there's no room for "The Local Story: Summer Edition," which has been running at 3 pm on Channel 4 since July. It was billed as a temporary fill-in...
Posted August 31, 2006 2:17 PM
TVNewswer caught CBS giving Katie Couric a little help to look thinner. Compare her first official network photo at this year's TV upfronts from May (left) and the slimmer version...
Posted August 29, 2006 11:26 PM
NBC4 yesterday ran a half-hour special report on the political fight over the future of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Didn't see it, but the station's website has a...
Posted August 22, 2006 4:11 PM
Writers in the newsroom at KCBS and KCAL left their desks about 3:30 pm Wednesday and took an unscheduled break together in the courtyard before returning to their desks at...
Posted August 18, 2006 7:39 AM
The LAT announced in yesterday's TV Times that the weekly guide to what's on television will no longer come with Sunday papers. If you are a Times subscriber, and if...
Posted August 14, 2006 4:52 AM
On his blog over at TV Week, Christopher Lisotta is letting readers vote on the dumbest question asked during the the Television Critics Association pressfest going on in Pasadena. My...
Posted July 25, 2006 12:29 PM
The Hollywood Reporter's Ray Richmond generously blogs for newbies his ten unwritten rules for getting along at the Television Critics Association's group grope in Pasadena without offending your competitors, colleagues...
Posted July 19, 2006 9:28 AM
Channel 4 unveils "The Local Story: Summer Edition" at 3 pm., with L.A. news veteran Ross Becker anchoring. Toni Guinyard, formerly of KCET's "Life & Times" and KCAL, is the...
Posted July 10, 2006 11:35 AM
The television academy's new selection system had an effect. TNT's mini-series "Into the West" received sixteen Emmy nominations, followed by Jack Bauer and "24" with twelve and "Grey's Anatomy" with...
Posted July 6, 2006 10:17 AM
After losing out on Jerrold Perenchio's Univision auction last week, disappointed executives at Grupo Televisa said they would step back and reflect on their next move. Today they came up...
Posted July 5, 2006 10:44 AM
Channel 2 photographer Bryan Frank had one of those weeks where you drive and drive and drive, and never get anywhere. As he blogs it, he was sent to cover...
Posted June 20, 2006 2:53 AM
The longtime producer of Lakers broadcasts became a household name in Los Angeles through mentions on the air by Chick Hearn. She has been let go, but the two sports...
Posted June 16, 2006 11:34 AM
MSNBC is getting a divorce from the Connie Chung-Maury Povich team. The Saturday chat experiment "Weekends with Connie and Maury" didn't work out and will come to a merciful end...
Posted June 16, 2006 10:52 AM
Kate Aurthur has been writing for Calendar, Vanity Fair, Slate and the New York Times. Her father Robert Alan Aurthur was a producer and writer of All that Jazz and...
Posted June 8, 2006 1:18 PM
Some of you may remember the New Year's thread when KTLA dumped longtime Rose Parade host Stephanie Edwards out in the rain and gave Michaela Pereira her old seat in...
Posted June 5, 2006 11:16 PM
Seems to me that Michael Walker is doing the whole book-blog synergy the right way, and creating a readable and valuable Los Angeles neighborhood website. (I'd say this even if...
Posted June 1, 2006 7:05 PM
Channel 2 won't be number one at 11 much longer if they keep getting flummoxed by local geography. The picture pretty clearly shows you where Suzie Suh is reporting from:...
Posted May 30, 2006 3:07 AM
The congressman from the Valley who used to Jdate—and maybe he still does—turns up as a "Jeopardy!" question....
Posted May 25, 2006 3:14 PM
Not since the days of Jerry Dunphy has Channel 2's news topped the local ratings, but the station says that the new book out today fixes all that. From the...
Posted May 25, 2006 2:55 PM
Couldn't she be, I don't know, a little less happy? Billboard at Melrose and La Cienega, from Defamer:...
Posted May 24, 2006 3:40 PM
Earlier this month, NBC4's hidden-camera reporter Joel Grover aired "Is Your Mechanic Cheating?," a two-part series that showed Jiffy Lube mechanics charging for services they didn't perform. In response, this...
Posted May 24, 2006 10:55 AM
In addition to host Lisa McRee's web reports from the show's road trips, the "California Connected" crew at KCET is also posting to a newsroom blog that looks like it...
Posted May 23, 2006 2:31 AM
Channel 4 on Monday ran a news story about Diana York Blaine, a USC women's studies professor, posting three topless photos of herself in her Flickr stream. Yes, that appears...
Posted May 10, 2006 11:55 PM
♦ Answer: Mayor Villaraigosa, Sheriff Baca, Lakers owner Jerry Buss, Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, Magic Johnson, Natalie Cole, Johnny Grant and Councilman Tom LaBonge. Question: Who shows up when Channel...
Posted May 8, 2006 3:16 PM
The show backed and aired by California's public television stations returns for its fifth season tonight at 8:30 on KCET. Lisa McRee remains as "California Connected" host, but there's a...
Posted May 5, 2006 12:15 PM
Pay site FTVLive is reporting, based on unnamed sources, that KTLA's longtime Prime News executive producer Gerry Ruben has been replaced by Rick Goldner, currently executive producer of the KTLA...
Posted May 5, 2006 11:20 AM
Updated below The on-air feud that erupted during Monday's march coverage between KFI shout hosts John & Ken and Fox-11's Tony Valdez is heating up behind the scenes (at least—I...
Posted May 4, 2006 3:24 PM
Franklin Avenue points to a feature on the Channel 2 website detailing (in video and photos) the construction of a new broadcast center at the CBS Studio Center in Studio...
Posted May 3, 2006 9:18 AM
David Jackson is leaving the KCAL-9 news after tomorrow, says Ron Fineman's On the Record, citing sources: "One source says they are told that this was Jackson's decision, exercising an...
Posted April 25, 2006 12:07 PM
Dual get-tough memos to the staff from honcho-in-chief Nancy Bauer Gonzales hit desks today at CBS-2 and KCAL-9. The first responds to this week's criticism over the station's use of...
Posted April 12, 2006 11:57 PM
Tribune publishing chief Scott Smith sent out a reminder today that the company ethics code "applies to all Tribune editorial personnel—print, broadcast and interactive." They got it at the Times,...
Posted April 11, 2006 11:01 PM
Light posting this weekend, but first... ♦ Michael Sonnenschein exits as co-editor of FishbowlLA. He bids farewell on the blog, and Claude Brodesser gives marching orders for the new regime....
Posted April 7, 2006 5:57 PM
Three Los Angeles TV stations are fingered in a Center for Media and Democracy report out today critical of news operations that package video releases from sources and PR agencies...
Posted April 6, 2006 11:20 AM
We may never know if it was a missile, a flare or something else that the pilot of American Airlines flight 612 saw come up from the sea after takeoff...
Posted April 5, 2006 11:00 PM
Poking around the KNBC website I came across a story and videos about the coming launch of News Raw, "a new concept in news programming" that will let viewers watch...
Posted April 5, 2006 10:36 PM
Scary talk about bird flu, a third deputy sheriff dies, Cecelia Estolano for CRA chief, Los Angeles lawyers breaking away and a little online dust-up between CBS and the Times'...
Posted March 31, 2006 2:43 AM
NBC4 gave its website a new design, adding more video and simpler navigation. Local news also got a boost in emphasis, which is good for me. When I don't have...
Posted March 30, 2006 2:25 AM
Cary Baker of Sherman Oaks emails that his "KTLA Morning News" on Channel 5 this morning was replaced the first hour by a pitch for a workout video and the...
Posted March 28, 2006 1:35 PM
I just caught up to the official KTLA blogs written by four of the station's top news anchors. In theory they represent an admirable step in connecting the talking heads...
Posted March 20, 2006 12:03 PM
City News Service is reporting that Sam Chu Lin, a former CBS News correspondent who reported most recently for Fox 11, died Sunday in Burbank. Chu Lin began reporting in...
Posted March 6, 2006 10:26 PM
If nothing else, Christopher Arellano has found a way to deflect scrutiny from the $200,000 he has taken from UTLA. But the Times and Daily News miss a big chunk...
Posted March 2, 2006 11:52 PM
Two more developments on the ethics front involving Channel 5: Channel Island, the Los Angeles Times TV blog, reports that Morning News anchor Michaela Pereira "received a customized dining-room makeover...
Posted March 2, 2006 11:46 PM
James Gilden writes The Daily Traveler blog at LATimes.com, but being a Tribune cousin didn't inhibit him from taking a fair shot at the Channel 5 "Morning News" anchors who...
Posted March 2, 2006 10:21 AM
Channel 5 is promoing up close and personal time with Corina Villaraigosa on tonight's Prime News at 10 pm. They call it the first prolonged TV interview she has given...
Posted February 27, 2006 9:03 AM
When last we spoke of Desiree Horton, the former Channel 5 pilot who blogs at The Adventures of Chopper Chick!, she had requested that fans send Hooters t-shirts to her...
Posted February 10, 2006 1:59 AM
An exclusive on the new boss at "California Connected," a $15 million payday for three LAPD cops, Rocky's legal memo to the police commission and more Barry Munitz farewells—plus the...
Posted February 10, 2006 1:20 AM
Claude Brodesser at Fishbowl LA has the stats: Almost twice as many people watched "American Idol" (28.3 million) than saw the Grammy Awards (15.1 million) last night....
Posted February 9, 2006 5:57 PM
Los Angeles billionaire A. Jerrold Perenchio is apparently ready to put Univision Communications up for sale and cash out, the New York Times reports based on unnamed sources. Perenchio is...
Posted February 8, 2006 1:53 PM
⇒ Truthdig.com's Blair Golson contends that Times editor Dean Baquet would not meet with representatives of the United Farm Workers union to hear their challenges to the paper's recent investigative...
Posted February 6, 2006 5:14 PM
Eyewitness News goes hi-def, James Frey has a few words for the LAT, the Downtown News loses patience with Villaraigosa and a former mayor goes in for a tuneup—plus a...
Posted February 6, 2006 2:31 AM
Jack Weiss makes his ambition more or less official, Anthony Pellicano comes back to town, the Ambassador gets a proper send-off, Channel 13 News adds a comic, more bad news...
Posted February 3, 2006 8:56 AM
Ohhh, now I think I know why the county Department of Health Services suddenly switched gears and yesterday released the name of the popular Olvera Street restaurant where fifteen diners...
Posted February 2, 2006 4:20 PM
Franklin Avenue has further details, including that KTLA paid $5,000 for the video of that Chino shooting by a sheriff's deputy and managed to get some of the footage on...
Posted February 1, 2006 10:35 AM
Last night on "Prime News" Jamie Chambers went on and on about how difficult it was for him to watch a videotape showing a San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy shoot...
Posted January 31, 2006 10:55 AM
Ron Fineman.com has always had a bit of a thing about sexually provocative TV news shows and reporters, especially Channel 13 and Lauren Sanchez. The pay site now claims it...
Posted January 31, 2006 12:43 AM
Since the last time I looked, CBS 2/KCAL 9 has added The Reporter's Blog by veteran Paul Dandridge and In the Field by news photographer Bryan Frank. Dandridge is using...
Posted January 28, 2006 1:21 AM
Antonio maps out his war plan for conquering the school board, Rocky takes it on the chin (twice), gang war in Watts and every Oscar-eligible film of 2005—plus Byron Miranda,...
Posted January 27, 2006 2:54 AM
This morning's news that The WB and UPN will come together and spin off the new CW network (to air on KTLA here, apparently) caught the television industry and journalists...
Posted January 24, 2006 1:00 PM
The Radio & Television News Association of Southern California (RTNA) handed out the year's Golden Mike awards on Saturday night. Here's the full list. A small sampling of highlights: News...
Posted January 23, 2006 12:59 PM
Eric Lynxwiler and I are supposed to be in a segment of Channel 7's Eye on L.A. today at 6:30 pm. Hard to tell what they will use. They shot...
Posted January 21, 2006 12:28 PM
You can end the week with a Wall Street Journal look at Dave Dreier, a thousand Valleyites out of work, possible trouble for Ron Deaton at DWP, a new Times...
Posted January 20, 2006 1:59 AM
Steve Grace is retiring as president of Channel 36, the citywide educational access channel, and is being succeeded by new general manager Carla Carlini. She is the the News Manager...
Posted January 18, 2006 11:13 AM
In the morning news rodeo, op-ed newcomer Erin Aubry Kaplan dumps on Herb Wesson, what the Golden Globes could do to slow immigration, why you won't see many A380's at...
Posted January 18, 2006 1:32 AM
The Colin Campbell Network blog has some details: According to sources close to the production, a team of ESPN executives from the East Coast informed the staff of ESPN Hollywood...
Posted January 17, 2006 1:11 PM
My choice is Defamer. The scene, the parties and the gossip viewed from slightly askew. They also anoint Isaac Mizrahi as the new king of red carpet dish. I didn't...
Posted January 17, 2006 12:43 PM
Interesting piece on local alt-weekly lore in today's Pasadena Weekly. Nigey Lennon, who spent a decade writing for the old L.A. Reader along with her ex-husband Lionel Rolfe, writes that...
Posted January 12, 2006 2:24 AM
CBS2 anchor Kent Shocknek blogs a little something on the station website almost every day. Earlier this week he had some fun with the governor's motorcycle accident. It's usually light...
Posted January 11, 2006 6:11 PM
Former Channel 5 pilot/traffic reporter Desiree Horton lives in Chatsworth and has a blog: The Adventures of Chopper Chick! She posts about flying on traffic reports and car chases for...
Posted January 10, 2006 9:45 PM
Patt Morrison takes sides with Stephanie Edwards on the LAT op-ed page and proposes an equitable solution at next year's Rose Parade: Stephanie in the warm booth with Heath Ledger,...
Posted January 5, 2006 1:12 AM
Stephanie Edwards emailed the Times' Scott Collins [Scott Collins wrote the story but I'm told that Edwards emailed Susan King] to scoff at the suggestion of bad blood between her...
Posted January 3, 2006 11:29 PM
Yes it rained—and hard—on the Rose Parade, but KTLA figured out a way around the tension in the booth between longtime hosts Bob Eubanks and Stephanie Edwards. They demoted Edwards...
Posted January 2, 2006 11:52 AM
Newest adds at the bottom... ⇒ KNX 1070 reporter Michael Linder's website details his background as a KTLA reporter, creator of "America's Most Wanted" and "The Jesse Jackson Show" and...
Posted December 30, 2005 1:44 AM
In case the whole wintry Christmas thing in Los Angeles isn't faux enough for you, KCAL-9 added an hour to its new tradition of airing the WPIX-TV Yule log. New...
Posted December 24, 2005 1:58 PM
Few culture war causes strike me as more dishonest and less trivial than the Fox News-promoted meme that liberals are anti-Christmas. (Excuse me while I stop laughing.) Part of the...
Posted December 20, 2005 9:27 AM
Lisa Guerrero used to be a sports reporter for KCBS and KTTV here, then for the "Regional Sports Report" on Fox Sports West. She was also a regular on Fox's...
Posted December 9, 2005 4:07 PM
Starting January 3, the West Coast will get a live version of World News Tonight with newly named co-anchors Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff. The news on CBS and NBC...
Posted December 5, 2005 10:22 AM
♦ Alex Padilla on Monday endorsed Eric Garcetti as his successor in the City Council president's chair. Let the record show that on May 27, LAObserved posted: "Alex Padilla will remain...
Posted November 22, 2005 1:40 AM
Readers of the TV news website RonFineman.com voted Channel 7's Marc Brown and Michelle Tuzee the best anchors in town. Wasn't close. They beat the KCAL duo of Pat Harvey...
Posted November 18, 2005 7:13 PM
It was only last January that ex-Channel 5 anchor Sharon Tay landed a hosting gig at MSNBC. Well, TVNewswer reports today that MSNBC At the Movies and the "MSNBC Hot...
Posted November 15, 2005 5:44 PM
Just days after Michael Jackson referred to wine as "Jesus Juice," Los Angeles-based CBS News producer Bruce Rheins and his wife, actress-writer-producer (and fine art model) Dawn Westlake, apparently filed...
Posted November 7, 2005 9:00 PM
Connie Chung and Maury Povich were local TV news fixtures in Los Angeles before going on to better—or at least other—things. Chung came to Channel 2 as a reporter and...
Posted November 7, 2005 1:16 AM
♦ A senior Times editor says the paper checked out Mickey Kaus' second-hand report of a big Halloween gang rumble in Brentwood—just a few blocks from Editor Dean Baquet's residence—and was...
Posted November 4, 2005 1:56 AM
Tuesday's Correction of the Day out of the New York Times (about the non-word trustiness) is riffed on during tonight's 8:30 pm re-airing of the "Colbert Report" on Comedy Central....
Posted November 3, 2005 2:59 PM
Jennifer York, KTLA's airborne reporter for thirteen years until 2004, has an honored place in the lore passed down to the new recruits around the spacious LAObserved suites. She...
Posted October 14, 2005 11:52 PM
Kennedy was a producer and writer for KCBS and KCET and started the program "Life & Times" at the latter station. He died Oct. 5 in Palo Alto of liver...
Posted October 13, 2005 2:42 AM
On the first night of the recent Topanga Fire, when Eyewitness News went off the air to make room for the network, ABC7 viewers were directed to the station's parallel...
Posted October 9, 2005 11:43 PM
Follow-ups, catch-ups and clearing off the desk for Columbus Day... ♦ Sunday's L.A. Times fronts a Steve Lopez column about his violin-playing street person, Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, taking in the stage...
Posted October 9, 2005 1:15 PM
♦ Adelphia blames equipment failure related to the Topanga fire for depriving thousands of their "Desperate Housewives" fix. ♦ Mayor Villaraigosa's plan for improving schools falls into the hands of the Times'...
Posted October 4, 2005 1:40 AM
Sounds like a lot of viewers in Adelphia territory got the español version of ABC last night. A reader emails: My boss came into work last week asking if anyone...
Posted October 3, 2005 12:28 PM
Kim Day got the offer she couldn't refuse to leave as head of LAX personally from Mayor Villaraigosa's in-house counsel Thomas Saenz and deputy chief of staff Marcus Allen, according...
Posted October 1, 2005 10:43 PM
Don Adams, Agent 86 on the "Get Smart" TV show created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry in 1965, died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai. He was 82 and had been ill...
Posted September 26, 2005 3:32 PM
What a landing! Flight 292 is safely down. The pilot kept the plane in perfect control — so perfect that the nose stem left where the tires burned off came...
Posted September 21, 2005 4:43 PM
Happy Wednesday... ♦ DWP workers got the big raises they were demanding: up to 28% over five years. The Council voted 10-3 to go along. DN, LAT ♦ Bill Burke withdraws from...
Posted September 21, 2005 12:55 AM
Mixed-media artist Lisa Salem, who began walking Los Angeles streets in May with a digital video camera attached to a baby stroller, has found a good home for her art....
Posted September 20, 2005 9:23 PM
A sampling of starters for the day... ♦ Simon Wiesenthal died in Vienna at age 96, the center on Pico Boulevard announced. Standing ovations in every temple in L.A. on Friday...
Posted September 20, 2005 1:54 AM
Mark Treitel, one of the writers chosen to shoot an NBC pilot for the Bravo reality show Situation: Comedy, guest-blogs about it all today at Breakfast at Tiffany's. Right now...
Posted September 9, 2005 11:48 AM
Channel 2 morning news anchor Kent Shocknek pokes a sharp blog stick at rival NBC for excising rapper Kanye West's remark that "George Bush doesn't care about black people." West...
Posted September 7, 2005 8:48 PM
• Screenwriter Tom Benedek shoots his own unproduced scripts—literally, with a .45-caliber pistol—and mounts them as art. His exhibition "Shot by the Writer - Works on Paper: 1982-2004" opens this month...
Posted September 7, 2005 2:15 AM
• More former press deputies in the Hahn administration have landed jobs. Elizabeth Kaltman is now the communications director for City Council member Wendy Greuel, and Sahar Moridani is director...
Posted September 2, 2005 4:54 PM
Good lede by Matt Meyerhoff on this week's L.A. Business Journal front-pager about TV huckster Ron Popeil, who is now 70 years old, cashing out of his famous Ronco Corp,...
Posted August 29, 2005 12:17 PM
The reporter noted for her Michael Jackson coverage emailed a fan club that she was dropped by Court TV last week. Here's an excerpt of the message, which is posted...
Posted August 29, 2005 11:05 AM
• KCAL and KTTV each won nine local Emmy Awards on Saturday night. Among the top honors, KCBS won for best daytime newscast ("CBS2 News" at 6 a.m.) and best daily...
Posted August 29, 2005 1:22 AM
The New York Times' most gonzo Los Angeles correspondent hasn't had a byline in the paper since April 14, prompting colleagues, rivals and competitors to wonder: where he at? Turns...
Posted August 24, 2005 5:13 PM
• Channel 2 won't renew the contract of political editor Linda Breakstone after eleven years, RonFineman.com reports. No additional details, except that political reporter Dave Bryan remains with the station. Before...
Posted August 24, 2005 1:26 AM
I can sorta see why they break in for Amber Alerts, but in these days of narrowcasting and hyper-targeted cable niches why would Comcast interrupt all programming in West L.A....
Posted August 15, 2005 12:12 AM
Whatever may or may not be going on between Dodgers pitcher Derek Lowe and Fox Sports West Dodgers reporter-anchor Carolyn Hughes is breaking out as a media story. It began...
Posted August 3, 2005 12:28 AM
Anchor-reporter Carolyn Hughes has been taken off Dodger coverage at Fox Sports West during an investigation of her relationship with pitcher Derek Lowe, the pay site Ron Fineman's On the...
Posted July 29, 2005 2:24 AM
In response to mounting losses, TV Guide is going to get harder to hold—and run fewer TV listings. Variety reports that Gemstar-TV Guide will spend $110 million to convert the...
Posted July 27, 2005 2:42 AM
According to to the pay site RonFineman.com, Channel 2 was thinking seriously of taking Jim Hill out of the sports anchor slot. Hill didn't want to go, and he got...
Posted June 28, 2005 2:49 AM
Mondays are always so busy... • This news won't help the layoff jitters sweeping the LAT's newsrooms this week. Tribune Company stock was downgraded Monday to "neutral" from "buy" by brokerage...
Posted June 20, 2005 8:08 PM
• Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa took the official oath privately in his office, with Corina and children Antonio Jr. and Natalia Fe attending. It doesn't take effect until July 1, of course....
Posted June 17, 2005 2:11 AM
Longtime award-winning L.A. reporter Warren Wilson announced his retirement from KTLA yesterday. When we last heard from him, Wilson had hired Melanie Lomax to press discrimination claims against the station,...
Posted June 14, 2005 11:31 AM
Maria Shriver tells the New York Daily News' Lloyd Grove that she had no contact with anyone at NBC about the Schwarzenegger biography by Laurence Leamer. "It never came up,...
Posted June 7, 2005 12:57 PM
Laurence Leamer, author of Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger, lost a shot at promoting the book on "Today" because of Maria Shriver, according to David Carr's media column in...
Posted June 5, 2005 11:54 PM
Here are some items from the week. Posting over the weekend will be sporadic at best. • Los Angeles magazine celebrated this month's comedy issue last night with drinks, schmoozing and...
Posted May 27, 2005 6:36 PM
In addition to editor Katrina Dewey, whose resignation letter was posted on L.A. Observed last Friday, four other veteran staffers are about to leave the Los Angeles Daily Journal. Melissa...
Posted May 24, 2005 12:51 AM
Michele Ruiz, anchor of the "Channel 4 News" at 6 p.m., announced today she is leaving the station, according to TV Week. She came to KNBC in 1998 from KTLA....
Posted May 12, 2005 8:55 PM
The television program produced by KCET and three other public TV stations in the state begins its fourth season on a new night — Fridays. Tomorrow's opener airs at 8:30...
Posted May 5, 2005 12:40 PM
• Longtime Channel 7 weatherman Johnny Mountain joins the rival Channel 2 news on May 8. He will work the news at 5, 6 and 11 p.m. He left KABC in...
Posted May 4, 2005 10:39 PM
Gourmet editor and former L.A. Times food editor and critic Ruth Reichl doesn't really look like this. It's one of the disguises she used as a restaurant critic for the...
Posted April 19, 2005 12:24 AM
Curtis Vogel, whose complaint about an affair apparently led to the firing of three KNBC staffers, including his wife Kyung Lah, emails RonFineman.com: I won't comment on any of the...
Posted April 4, 2005 2:19 AM
Friday's New York Post Page Six picks up the story we had Tuesday on the three KNBC news staffers fired over an affair that somehow broke station rules. No mention...
Posted March 24, 2005 11:47 PM
Weekend reporter Sam Hall Kaplan has left Fox 11 News after ten years. In an emailed column scheduled to run in the April 4 Downtown News, he says the routine...
Posted March 23, 2005 8:29 PM
Ron Fineman follows up today with reporting on his scoop last week that KNBC reporter Kyung Lah and "Today in L.A." producer Jeff Soto got fired for having an affair—and...
Posted March 22, 2005 2:04 AM
Industrious readers have been emailing that KTLA morning anchor Cher Calvin's banned-by-management website lives on in the cache of various Internet search engines. But now someone points out that Calvin's...
Posted March 11, 2005 9:19 AM
I caught up last night with E! News for the first time in months. To my surprise, Giuliana DePandi is back in the host's chair (actually, she stands to read...
Posted March 11, 2005 12:51 AM
Cher Calvin's short stint so far as Sharon Tay's replacement co-anchoring KTLA's morning show has not met with much approval at RonFineman.com. The TV site has pointed out some of...
Posted March 9, 2005 12:32 PM
LAT investigative reporter Gary Cohn emerges from the Schwarzenegger-groping beat to chip in a piece in today's paper about KTLA entertainment reporter Zorianna Kit grazing up against an ethical line....
Posted March 1, 2005 2:01 AM
RonFineman.com is asking his readers to vote over the next week on the best storm gear on local TV news. Leslie Miller—from Channel 7, top left in the fuzzy hat—has...
Posted February 17, 2005 11:00 PM
Tonight on Channel 5's News at Ten, co-anchor Leila Feinstein narrated a story about her mother, a child psychologist, going to Thailand to work with tsunami victims. Feinstein opened the...
Posted February 9, 2005 11:01 PM
E! Entertainment Television is planning a daily reenactment of the Michael Jackson trial when testimony begins up in Santa Maria. Today E! announced that the part of Jackson will be...
Posted February 9, 2005 10:45 AM
John Beard: The Wall Street Journal devotes most of a TV column to the Fox 11 anchor's cameo appearances on series such as "24" and "Arrested Development." Tim Iacofano, a...
Posted February 3, 2005 12:05 AM
Members of the Radio & Television News Association of Southern California dined last night in Universal City and handed out this year's Golden Mike awards. Best news broadcast honors went...
Posted January 30, 2005 7:36 PM
Johnny Carson: No shortage of appreciations and retrospectives online and on the air for the late-night pioneer who died Sunday at home in Malibu (of emphysema at age 79). David...
Posted January 23, 2005 9:20 PM
The former top news executive at CBS (1982-1986), Fox and Channel 2 here has been on something of a kick about liberal media bias lately (he is more conservative). On...
Posted January 13, 2005 1:27 PM
Three network execs and producer Mary Mapes lost their jobs after an independent report concluded that a bogus "60 Minutes Wednesday" story on President Bush's National Guard failed to apply...
Posted January 10, 2005 1:25 PM
Yes, the USC Trojans won the Orange Bowl in a rout, 55-19, and locked up a national title. Hard to miss among the illustrious alumni on hand was Orenthal James...
Posted January 5, 2005 12:29 AM
Friday is Sharon Tay's last day at Channel 5, says Ron Fineman. The longtime KTLA Morning News co-anchor is headed to MSNBC to co-host an entertainment show. She won Emmy...
Posted January 4, 2005 7:07 PM
A roundup of items in the news: Prostate cancer: Channel 7 weatherman Dallas Raines disclosed his disease on the air and underwent surgery today. The station website has video of...
Posted January 3, 2005 10:06 PM
Franklin Avenue puts out the word that KCAL Channel 9 will adopt a New York television tradition by airing a crackling fireplace on Christmas morning. From 6 to 9 a.m.,...
Posted December 16, 2004 4:39 PM
On her blog, radio personality and voice actor April Winchell has posted an MP3 file of an on-air tiff (audio she wants you to listen to it from her blog,...
Posted December 14, 2004 9:10 PM
I've mentioned before the strange fascination that some L.A. Observed visitors have with TV news women, in general, and especially with Gretchen Carr, the former CBS 2 News anchor. The...
Posted December 10, 2004 12:34 PM
David Goldstein at CBS 2 apparently had the story last night (it's in the Daily Breeze today). A 78-year-old Lancaster man walked into the LAX police station last Saturday to...
Posted December 10, 2004 11:56 AM
Beth Sweeney won the popular vote (10,399 to 8568), but at the conclusion of The Audition channel 5's Supreme Court of judges tapped Ross King as the new weatherman on...
Posted December 1, 2004 11:26 PM
Channel 5's news operation has had better months. Already in November, there have been reports that Lynette Romero and Marta Waller are out as co-anchors and KTLA got flack over...
Posted November 28, 2004 11:28 PM
Documentary filmmaker and L.A. native Philip Rodriguez's on-screen interviews in Los Angeles Now include Eli Broad, Phil Jackson, Salma Hayek, Yxta Maya Murray, Michael Ventura, D.J. Waldie, Cardinal Roger Mahony,...
Posted November 27, 2004 2:38 PM
Today's L.A. Times Calendar runs a brief confirming Ron Fineman's report that KTLA suspended Sam Rubin for criticizing the "Morning News" set on the air. At least I hope they...
Posted November 24, 2004 12:06 PM
RonFineman.com says that KTLA suspended entertainment reporter Sam Rubin yesterday for making derogatory comments about the new set on "The Morning Show." It would be at least the third suspension...
Posted November 23, 2004 10:36 AM
The former anchor on channel 5's "News at Ten"—now Mindy Stearns—plays one of the "millionaire's wife" roles on the upcoming TBS reality show, "The Real Gilligan's Island." She qualifies: Franklin...
Posted November 22, 2004 8:58 PM
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kevin Ross is in hot water for making comments about pending cases on KCET's "Life and Times" program and for appearing in a proposed TV...
Posted November 17, 2004 5:56 PM
Brandwynne, the assistant news director at Channel 5, gave $2,000 to Sen. Barbara Boxer's reelection fund, RonFineman.com says. The pay site also cites a newsroom source saying that she solicited...
Posted November 9, 2004 9:09 AM
RonFineman.com reports that Lynette Romero will not return from maternity leave as Hal Fishman's co-anchor on channel 5's "News at 10." He doesn't know of a replacement, and there apparently...
Posted November 2, 2004 4:34 PM
This is so lame it hurts to even hear about it. Ron Fineman.com reports that Jackie Johnson, the new weather reader (bio) on KCAL-9, gave the rain totals tonight as...
Posted October 18, 2004 11:53 PM
In most news organizations, Tim Rutten writes in his Times media column, the allegations about a network star like Bill O'Reilly—accused of sexually harassing a younger, junior network producer—would prompt...
Posted October 16, 2004 12:21 PM
This was the longtime channel 5 traffic reporter's last day up in the helicopter. She is leaving the station. Fans of her spots on the KTLA Morning Show are flooding...
Posted October 15, 2004 3:09 PM
That's the title of Court TV's new show based on access to the files of the Los Angeles County Coroner's morgue, located at 1104 N. Mission Road. I haven't watched...
Posted October 15, 2004 11:25 AM
The Radio and TV News Association and councilman Dennis Zine have negotiated 20 parking spaces for media vehicles around City Hall and Parker Center. RTNA president Steve Kindred tells LARadio.com:...
Posted October 13, 2004 3:51 PM
"Life and Times" has a segment slotted in tonight on Penny Grenoble O’Malley, author of Malibu Diary: Notes from an Urban Refugee. She is the ex-upstate New Yorker who escaped...
Posted October 11, 2004 1:58 AM
Analyzed at Cinemocracy: You’ve got a three-act structure (four if you include the vice presidential encounter), recurring characters, and a narrative line driven by the ups and downs of the...
Posted October 5, 2004 10:30 AM
Former channel 4 weathercaster Christopher Nance alleges that the station, which fired him in 2002, discriminated on the basis of race (he's African American) and subjected him to ridicule for...
Posted September 22, 2004 10:03 PM
Jay Leno phoned up the LA Weekly's Nikki Finke to talk about media and politics after she wrote about him and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Weekly put the resulting sit-down interview...
Posted September 15, 2004 2:54 PM
Giselle Fernandez left the anchor chair on the KTLA Morning News in August 2003. Her web site Casa Giselle updates her whereabouts, including a name change to Fernandez-Farrand....
Posted September 13, 2004 12:01 AM
KCAL-9 news photographer Bryan Frank blogs about his work and life (with his wife) at beFrank. He gives an interesting glimpse at the unpredictable day of a TV news shooter....
Posted September 9, 2004 12:26 PM
The blog kottke.org reports a tip it got on the eventual fate of reigning Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings, whose multi-month run resumed on the air this week....
Posted September 8, 2004 11:52 AM
Sure the media (and of course, we bloggers) wrote about them a lot, but Paul Colford writes in the New York Daily News that the anointed convention blogs didn't attract...
Posted September 3, 2004 10:28 AM
KMEX channel 34 won the most (seven) local Emmy awards over the weekend, followed by Fox 11 (six). Individual winners include Diego Carro of KVEA/KWHY as best news writer, Cris...
Posted August 30, 2004 9:59 PM
Some things to note from while I was gone: • Larry McCormick: The co-anchor of the KTLA "News at Ten Weekend Edition" began at channel 5 as a weatherman in 1971....
Posted August 30, 2004 12:37 AM
Television Week editor Alex Ben Block accepted an invitation into the Fox News lair of Bill O'Reilly and lived to tell about it. It was an irresistible invitation to go...
Posted August 9, 2004 11:02 AM
The same night that Bill Clinton guests on "The Daily Show," his favorite fiction author is being featured on "Life and Times" on KCET. Walter Mosley's latest Easy Rawlins mystery...
Posted August 9, 2004 10:36 AM
New York real estate lawyer John Odoner hopes to launch Jewish Television as a 24-hour digital cable channel early next year, the New York Times says. His planned programming includes...
Posted August 9, 2004 9:46 AM
That Valley man who was freed from jail on a murder rap after his alibi checked out — thanks to footage from HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" — is suing the...
Posted August 5, 2004 12:43 AM
The headline is from Franklin Avenue, the blog by Michael Schneider and Maria Villar that is having a good week. Their top item today is about this morning's L.A. Times...
Posted August 4, 2004 6:58 PM
Dave Lopez of Channel 2 was voted the best local TV field reporter by readers of Ron Fineman's On the Record. Lopez finished ahead of Patrick Healy, who had won...
Posted August 3, 2004 2:02 AM
MSNBC's gang of convention bloggers is a strange group. It crosses the spectrum from Pat Buchanan to Willie Brown and includes Ron Reagan and a couple of Democrats steeped in...
Posted July 27, 2004 11:56 PM
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...
Posted July 27, 2004 12:20 AM
Tonight's Nightline will take a vacation from war and politics to ride some 25-foot waves at Maverick's Beach up near San Francisco. The show's note says: "So this is one...
Posted July 23, 2004 12:59 PM
Mediabistro has put up pictures from the site's July 7 TV party in Hollywood. There are revelers from KTLA, KTTV, NBC, Bravo, E! and others. A Mediabistro photographer also worked...
Posted July 21, 2004 5:44 PM
Philip Bruce, news director at Channel 28's "Life and Times" program, takes over as supervising editor for California at NPR West, the Culver City operation of National Public Radio. He...
Posted July 10, 2004 12:15 PM
The top editorial in today's L.A. Times, headline Show Riordan the Door, urges Gov. Schwarzenegger to use the latest blooper by Richard Riordan to do away with the "redundant office"...
Posted July 10, 2004 10:35 AM
OK, I'm hooked. More than a month ago, flipping through the TV channels I saw a nerdy-looking guy win that night's "Jeopardy" game. Couple of weeks later, I noticed Ken...
Posted July 9, 2004 2:30 PM
Fashion dishers Joan Rivers and her daughter Melissa are poised to defect from E! for an $8 million deal at the TV Guide Channel, the New York Post says. A&E...
Posted June 23, 2004 10:49 AM
As TV news insider Ron Fineman predicted, the local CBS operation is announcing that Miami weathercaster Jackie Johnson will be coming to town. The memo says she will take over...
Posted June 9, 2004 10:42 PM
For more than a week, "California Connected" on KCET has been promoting this Thursday's show featuring segments on Suspect Entertainment (the gang talent agency we mentioned last month), what happens...
Posted June 2, 2004 3:21 PM
Los Angeles TV's two local morning news and gab shows plummeted in the May sweeps ratings book, Variety reports. KTTV's "Good Day L.A." was down 32% from last May and...
Posted May 28, 2004 12:25 PM
Kausfiles found a link at ABCNews.com where they summarize each day the lead items and main political stories on the three big TV networks' evening news programs. Could be more...
Posted May 28, 2004 11:57 AM
Before coming to L.A. to anchor the Channel 2 News, Paul Magers was the top-rated TV newsman in Minneapolis-St. Paul. He confesses his bias to the St. Paul Pioneer Press...
Posted May 25, 2004 1:16 PM
Veteran Channel 5 reporter Warren Wilson has hired civil rights attorney Melanie Lomax to press claims that the station is discriminating against him in salary and assignments, the Wave newspapers...
Posted May 20, 2004 1:53 AM
Esquire editor in chief David Granger, whose magazine just won four National Magazine Awards, will be on "The Treatment" with Elvis Mitchell on KCRW, Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. Speaking of...
Posted May 18, 2004 1:41 AM
Now that NBC and Universal have joined, keeping the players straight can be a bit of a challenge for employees. The following policy memo sent to staffers at NBC News...
Posted May 17, 2004 11:36 AM
Channel 2 morning anchor Kent Shocknek asked his blog readers on Monday if Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should resign over the Iraqi prison abuses or stay on the job....
Posted May 14, 2004 12:54 PM
There are 2,255 stars for tourists to scuff their shoes on along the Hollywood Walk of Fame, including as of today one for longtime TV host Steve Edwards. Richard Horgan...
Posted May 14, 2004 12:15 PM
Kent Shocknek of Channel 2 News sent an email memo recently suggesting that the early morning show he anchors choose stories, then write and edit them, not to inform but...
Posted May 11, 2004 12:36 AM
Ron Fineman's screen grab caught Hal Fishman opening a recent KTLA "News at 10" show with his coat on (left), then coming back from a break coatless (right). The odd...
Posted May 8, 2004 7:49 PM
In honor of the heat wave and the year's first brush fires, Franklin Avenue links to the classic video of Channel 4's Chuck Henry watching the station's expensive truck --...
Posted May 5, 2004 3:28 PM
A couple of key positions have been filled in local TV news, according to RonFineman.com. Channel 4 has brought in Keith Esparros, a former executive producer at KCAL and KTTV,...
Posted April 19, 2004 11:38 PM
A reader emails that Hal Fishman's commentary on tonight's KTLA "News at Ten" defended Sharon Tay, who was the subject of that "Are Anchors Too Hot?" story in today's Times....
Posted April 14, 2004 10:45 PM
Ron Fineman's complaint on his website a few weeks back about the way Channel 5 anchor Sharon Tay dresses turned into a full-blown story in today's L.A. Times Calendar section...
Posted April 14, 2004 10:55 AM
L.A. Times Calendar writer Scott Collins chats up his new book, Crazy Like a Fox: The Inside Story of How Fox News Beat CNN, in today's "Media People" interview with...
Posted April 7, 2004 12:08 PM
Subscribers to Ron Fineman's On the Record are voting on the best TV news anchor team in Los Angeles. The field has narrowed to two finalists: Channel 7's Marc Brown...
Posted March 30, 2004 12:29 AM
Channel 2 reporter Rick Chambers was taken off the air for two days last week after airing racial slurs in a taped story about that protest over hate crimes at...
Posted March 15, 2004 4:36 PM
Somebody asked in email recently what's with all the Paul Magers mentions here. All I can say is check out the big Times Calendar story Sunday on the $2.2 million-a-year...
Posted March 12, 2004 5:57 PM
Channel 4's legal reporter Manny Medrano is the former federal prosecutor who got into TV news as an analyst on the O.J. Simpson case and other big trials in the...
Posted March 7, 2004 11:12 AM
But not much else? I've said before that the name of the big-bucks KCBS anchor imported from Minneapolis is the number one search engine term that brings casual visitors to...
Posted March 5, 2004 11:29 AM
When Stan Chambers began covering news for KTLA, there were only 100 televisions in Southern California. Since then, Chambers estimates he has reported about 20,000 stories for Channel 5. At...
Posted March 1, 2004 12:42 AM
Ron Fineman's On The Record says that Channel 2 aired tape of nude women celebrating Brazil's Carnival on the 6 a.m. news this past Wednesday. A per-diem writer and editor...
Posted February 27, 2004 11:43 PM
Nick Clooney, the father of actor George Clooney, was a TV news anchor here on Channel 4 for a couple of years in the 1980s. He was also a host...
Posted February 26, 2004 11:48 PM
Three hours before the new season of "California Connected" debuts on KCET-TV tomorrow night, KCRW will air the program -- in which Gov. Schwarzenegger and four living ex-governors discuss the...
Posted February 18, 2004 11:06 PM
The third season of "California Connected" begins on KCET this Thursday at 10 p.m. with a new host. Lisa McRee, the former ABC News reporter and co-host of "Good Morning...
Posted February 18, 2004 12:29 AM
Channel 2 (KCBS) has put its top-line anchors Paul Magers and Laura Diaz on the Sunday 11 p.m. news for the crucial February ratings period, says Ron Fineman.com. It hasn't...
Posted February 18, 2004 12:19 AM
TV Week reports that with "Seinfeld" heading into a new cycle of syndicated reruns, the series looks certain to reach $3 billion in license fees and advertising revenue collected over...
Posted February 16, 2004 10:45 AM
Three on-air staffers at the channel 2 & 9 combine now write blogs on the station websites: morning anchor Kent Shocknek, weatherman Josh Rubenstein and "money man" Alan Mendelson. Jonah...
Posted February 12, 2004 11:06 AM
Pulitzer winner Suzan Lori-Parks is featured tonight. On Monday, Miles Corwin talks about how he got homicide cops to feel comfortable letting a reporter hang around. Tuesday it's Sandra Tsing...
Posted February 6, 2004 11:56 AM
That traffic snarl on the southbound I-5 near Santa Clarita yesterday was caused by CHP officers and L.A. County Sheriff's deputies arguing on the freeway over which agency got custody...
Posted February 5, 2004 1:25 AM
NBC has ordered "ER" to delete a two-second scene of an 80-year-old woman's breast from tonight's show, citing the national furor over Janet Jackson's Super Bowl exposure. The Hollywood Reporter...
Posted February 5, 2004 1:12 AM
Maria Shriver resigned today from NBC News, ending an awkward moment for the network and the governor. [Actually, they're calling it an "extended leave of absence." Shriver also is free...
Posted February 3, 2004 3:20 PM
The former CNN anchor based in Los Angeles will do freelance reporting for the NBC bureau in Burbank, Television Week's Insider column says. Bay is the wife of Disney top...
Posted February 2, 2004 9:31 AM
Steve Lowery at OC Weekly remembers in a column this week the brief era when Jerry Nachman, the ex-New York Post editor who recently died, sat in as the host...
Posted January 30, 2004 3:52 PM
When I noticed last night that the #3 Internet search term (after "Paul Magers" and "Gretchen Carr") that lands the unsuspecting here is "Giuliana Depandi," it seemed time to check...
Posted January 30, 2004 12:09 AM
The Radio & Television News Association of Southern California handed out its annual Golden Mikes on Saturday night. Here are some of the dozens of winners: Television: Best TV Newscast...
Posted January 26, 2004 9:18 PM
For some reason, the name Paul Magers - the new anchor on the Channel 2 news - is one of the most common search terms that brings new visitors to...
Posted January 26, 2004 11:46 AM
KCBS Channel 2 is misleading the L.A. Times about the status of former anchor Gretchen Carr, says Ron Fineman. The paper reported the station claims Carr has been off the...
Posted January 15, 2004 1:28 AM
Today is the big sit-down between Maria Shriver and the head of NBC News over her future on the air, the LAT says. Tim Russert has spoken to both parties....
Posted January 15, 2004 1:17 AM
Schwarzenegger adviser Mike Murphy, described by Television Week as a "hot-hot-hot Republican campaign strategist," has been hired as consulting producer for Dennis Miller's new show on CNBC. He says it...
Posted January 13, 2004 12:55 PM
The site Sports by Brooks says today, based on undescribed and unnamed sources, that it is "unlikely" NBC will pick up the talked-about series based on the life of Jeanie...
Posted January 6, 2004 5:11 PM
Remember those stories in December saying that Maria Shriver was cozily back at work at "Dateline NBC," and the LAT story (and L.A. Observed post) about her taking an active...
Posted January 6, 2004 10:35 AM
KTLA Channel 5's coverage of the Rose Parade got higher ratings in Los Angeles (again) than the three big networks combined, says Michael Schneider in Variety. I didn't watch the...
Posted January 5, 2004 12:13 PM
Associated Press does a little feature on Court TV's Diane Dimond and her scoops on the Michael Jackson sexual abuse case. A few months ago, reporter Diane Dimond told Court...
Posted January 5, 2004 12:31 AM
Alex Ben Block at Television Week checks in with longtime entertainment reporter David Sheehan, who left Channel 2 two weeks ago to work on syndicated specials, help out at the...
Posted December 22, 2003 11:13 AM
Fans of Sandra Tsing Loh know that she sometimes writes about the eccentricities of her Chinese-American scientist father. He used to hitchhike around L.A. -- maybe still does -- and...
Posted December 19, 2003 3:31 PM
Paris Hilton and "The Simple Life" on Fox outdrew Diane Sawyer's primetime sitdown with President Bush Tuesday night. Paris stomped the Prez among 18- to 34-year-olds (22% to 7%), and...
Posted December 18, 2003 10:18 AM
News items: Reuters, Dec. 9 -- "Maria Shriver said on Tuesday that she had returned to her job as a NBC News television reporter after taking leave while her husband...
Posted December 13, 2003 11:31 AM
On the 5 o'clock news tonight, Channel 2 entertainment reporter David Sheehan read a report about Mick Jagger being knighted then told the audience that he was leaving the news...
Posted December 12, 2003 5:55 PM
A segment tonight on "Life and Times" (KCET, 7 p.m.) revisits the issue of splitting Los Angeles into boroughs. Also, L.A Business Journal reporter David Greenberg talks about the grocery...
Posted December 8, 2003 10:04 AM
The president of the Society of Professional Journalists chapter in L.A. responds to criticism of KTLA news director Jeff Wald, at Wednesday's post here....
Posted December 5, 2003 5:01 PM
Diane Dimond, the Court TV reporter who has had scoops on the Michael Jackson story, is close to signing up as a contributor to ABC's "Good Morning America," says TV...
Posted December 5, 2003 8:49 AM
Ron Fineman, who runs the subscription site On the Record, objects to KTLA news director Jeff Wald being given an award by the L.A. chapter of the Society of Professional...
Posted December 3, 2003 12:32 AM
Alex Ben Block at Television Week profiles Bill Rosendahl, the longtime host of local public affairs cable shows who is running for the L.A. City Council. He hopes to replace...
Posted December 2, 2003 1:10 PM
All three major networks led the evening news last night with the Michael Jackson story, says Variety, which surveys the newsmagazine shows being ripped up to get on the air...
Posted November 20, 2003 1:33 AM
Blogger Lonewacko's tour across the country stops in Gallatin, TN, hometown of his idol Huell Howser. Some knew The Enthusiastic One, most didn't. Lonewacko says that the L.A. Cacophony Society...
Posted November 4, 2003 10:59 AM
I hate to see anyone lose their jobs, but the decision by E! News Live to cut back to half an hour was overdue. Living in a household where the...
Posted November 4, 2003 9:53 AM
Tim Rutten interviews disenchanted former Fox News producer Charlie Reina for today's Media Matters column in the L.A. Times. "Roger is such a high-profile and partisan political operative that everyone...
Posted November 1, 2003 12:10 AM
Sharri Berg, VP-News Operations at Fox News Channel, responds at Romenesko to the criticisms leveled yesterday by former producer Charlie Reina: "Like any former, disgruntled employee, Charlie Reina has an...
Posted October 30, 2003 2:38 PM
If what former Fox News producer Charlie Reina says is true, Roger Ailes and his pals not only aggressively juice the political slant, they've created a pretty awful place to...
Posted October 29, 2003 3:59 PM
It's not just the Los Angeles TV stations that are planning to cover the Capitol when Arnold gets there. No fewer than eight stations from around California are setting up...
Posted October 16, 2003 12:10 PM
Los Angeles TV news departments, which long ago closed down their Sacramento bureaus, will increase their Capitol coverage when the ratings-booster takes over, says Ron Fineman on his TV site....
Posted October 15, 2003 2:17 AM
Welcome to NBC Universal: LAT, NYT, Hwd Reporter Leno: Nikki Finke in LA Weekly, LAT, Wash Post Shriver: NYT, USA Today, Wash Post...
Posted October 9, 2003 11:50 AM
Life and Times on KCET (Channel 28, 7 p.m. and midnight) will look at the future of the old Raymond Theater in Pasadena on tonight's show. IMAX filmmaker Greg MacGillivray...
Posted October 1, 2003 1:20 AM
Not much is as embarrassing as running the obituary of someone who still breathes. But running the wrong picture comes close. The unfortunate culprit this time is KTLA, which apparently...
Posted September 30, 2003 2:40 PM
Ron Fineman is back online with On the Record, his pay site with insider reports on Los Angeles TV news. He reports on the move of political commentator Sherry Bebitch...
Posted September 16, 2003 6:45 PM
Readers have asked in email why the Los Angeles TV website run by Ron Fineman is off-line today. Ron explains that it's a little Network Solutions snafu, and he'll be...
Posted September 15, 2003 4:45 PM
Ron Fineman chastises Channel 5's "News at Ten" for making a story of co-anchor Mindy Burbano's wedding shower. But wait, it gets worse. In the lead to this "story," [co-anchor]...
Posted September 8, 2003 11:00 PM
A sample of the winners announced on Saturday night: Regularly Scheduled Daily News: Daytime "Good Day LA" (Fox11) Regularly Scheduled Daily News: 0-35 Minutes "Channel 4 News at 11pm" (NBC4)...
Posted September 8, 2003 10:42 AM
Filmmaker Lionel Chetwynd is the usual go-to guy for journalists who dust off the "lonely Republicans of Hollywood" story. He also wrote and produced the Showtime docudrama "DC 9/11: Time...
Posted September 8, 2003 12:49 AM
The newest TV anchor in Los Angeles -- thought to be in the line of CBS succession to Dan Rather -- is the subject of an unfriendly farewell in the...
Posted August 21, 2003 7:04 PM
Channel 2 is bringing in a 20-year veteran of the NBC station in Minneapolis, Paul Magers, to take over some anchor duties from Harold Greene. Magers is the long-reigning ratings...
Posted August 19, 2003 1:54 AM
ABC News correspondent Judy Muller begins in August as an assistant professor of journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. She will remain a contributing correspondent to "Nightline" and...
Posted August 6, 2003 4:39 PM
According to the subscribers to RonFineman's On The Record, it is Channel 4's Patrick Healy. He won best field reporter for the third year in a row, edging past Channel...
Posted August 4, 2003 4:49 PM
Some solid examples of investigative journalism run on L.A. television -- we'd highlight them if the stations will email us about them -- but now good local pieces will get...
Posted July 29, 2003 10:59 AM
Kim Godwin, the news director at channel 4, has been abruptly replaced by a former managing editor at the station, Robert Long. Ron Fineman reported the news Friday on his...
Posted July 28, 2003 12:35 AM
Which to lead with: Howard Rosenberg's television column -- since most people watch TV, and it has Kobe Bryant and Jessica Lynch in it -- or Steve Carney's radio column,...
Posted July 25, 2003 12:06 AM
KCAL-9 did the best job of covering the Kobe Bryant story on the day charges were filed, says Ron Fineman. The worst single effort he spotted was a people-in-the-street piece...
Posted July 22, 2003 12:48 PM
TV stations in Los Angeles are planning to go live at 2 o'clock this afternoon when the Eagle County (Colorado) prosecutor announces whether charges will be filed against Kobe Bryant....
Posted July 18, 2003 12:47 AM
A Howard Rosenberg column in the L.A. Times last month about the way network news programs produce their stories irked ABC News president David Westin, he tells Howard Kurtz in...
Posted July 13, 2003 8:32 PM
© 2003-2009 • About LA Observed • Email the editor
| Bev Hills billionaire Ron Burkle has $56 million in loans against his two houses. The McCourts have borrowed $28 million on their properties.
| Steve Jones, the self-proclaimed Sire of Wilshire (a nod to the physical address of his former home at Indie 103.1 FM), is back on the air!
| She gaped at me like I was living history -- Miss Jane Pittman come to put her withered lips to the "Young Only" fountain straw of ageism.
As newspapers and television pull back from investigative reporting, foundations and other organizations are beginning to fill the void. One of the most interesting is Accountable California, a project of Local 721 of the Service Employees International Union.
Sponsors
Blogads
Get RSS Feeds
of LA Observed
of LA Observed
LA Observed publishes several Real Simple Syndication feeds for easy scanning of headlines. If you wish to subscribe to a feed, most popular RSS readers will do it for you. You can also enter the web address from the XML button below or click on a specific feed. For more help with RSS, try here or here.
