Facetime
By Staff -- Broadcasting & Cable, 12/8/2002 7:00:00 PM
O'Reilly Gets Tough on VH1
Fox News Channel's contentious Bill O'Reilly keeps railing against whatever—and whoever—irks him. Lately, a favored target has been VH1 and its Music Behind Bars series featuring jailhouse rock bands. Since October, when the series aired, O'Reilly has bitterly denounced VH1 and its corporate sponsors for glorifying crime.
Last week, he rearmed, furious that VH1 did not reveal—or perhaps didn't even know—that Music Behind Bars subject Ronald Rosebure was in jail for beating a 14-month-old baby to death, not for shooting an adult man, as he claims on the music channel's show.
O'Reilly says the show promotes criminals: "If these men did not commit the crimes, [VH1] couldn't put them on; they couldn't have a program to sell."
Music Behind Bars has already finished its eight-episode run on VH1. No word whether it will be coming back in repeats or with new episodes.
Hewitt's Staying Put
He may be old, but Don Hewitt, executive producer of 60 Minutes, has no intention of being shoved off the show, he told CNN's Larry King last week: "I have a feeling—my radar tells me—that, if I come back here a year from now, I will still be the producer of 60 Minutes."
The question comes up because Hewitt is nearing 80 and The New York Times in a Nov. 25 article suggested that some at CBS would like to see him retire.
But he told King that, even if CBS were to replace him, he'd go work for some other news organization. "I've already had two offers," he said.
Speaking of CBS top brass, Hewitt told King, "I can't believe that Mel Karmazin and Les Moonves are going to run a network based on not how good you are but how old you are."
Hewitt did say that 60 Minutes II executive producer Jeffrey Fager might be just the guy to replace him. "Good guy. Except I'm not ready to go," Hewitt said.
Nice November for Chicago's Wert
November was a good month for Larry Wert, president and general manager of NBC O&O WMAQ-TV Chicago. First, on Nov. 20, he copped the prestigious Person of the Year award from the Broadcast Advertising Club of Chicago. Then, at the end of the month, his station's 10 p.m. newscast ousted longtime late-news leader WLS-TV for the top spot in the Windy City.
Celebrating (l-r): WMAQ-TV anchors Warner Saunders and Allison Rosati, Wert, NBC's Jay Ireland, and WMAQ-TV meteorologist Brant Miller.
The Sisters Go to ABC
You might have heard them on public radio the past couple years. Now The Satellite Sisters— real-life sisters (top row, l-r) Liz, Julie and Sheila and(bottom row, l-r) Monica and Lian Dolan —are taking their radio talk show to syndication via ABC Radio Networks starting Jan. 25.
They get the show's name from the way they all hook up for it—via satellite—from homes in Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., and Moscow. That's as in Russia, where Julie lives now as what she calls the "trailing corporate spouse" with her husband, who works in the town with the famous Red Square. All sisters, ranging in age from 37 to 47 will be at New York's Times Square for a kick-off party on Jan. 15.
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