BC Beat

November 4, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

Earlier in the afternoon, Fox News Channel had some moments of excitement about "Black Panthers" who seemed to be menancing a student video journalist at a Philadelphia voting location. A Fox reporter confronted one of the two men (the other one with the nightstick had left by the time Fox got there) and had a testy relationship about freedom of the press, racism and who was bugging whom more. It was an interesting hour that I suppose was supposed to at least suggest--gee, maybe a little more than that--that some voters might be intimidated at the voting booth.  

Maybe it's just my reading of body language; maybe it's ridiculously too-hot in Arizona, but Fox's chief political correspondent Carl Cameron looked as if he knew a lot more than he was saying about how the vote is going on Fox News Channel just now. Cameron ...Read More

Industries: Programming, Washington

September 23, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

For anybody new to Chicago electronic media, there are only two necessary things to know from the start: The lake is always East and read Robert Feder. 

Feder, for 28 years the TV/radio reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, announced in his column Tuesday he was accepting a buyout offer from the paper, which has seen large circulation declines.

There's hardly any way to overestimate the power of Feder's radar scope on Chicago TV and radio, and since so many Chicago journalists end up going elsewhere, he enjoyed a network of sources who make his column a must read. He was rarely scooped.  (For the record, this reporter was Feder's cohort as the TV critic at the Sun-Times and later his boss as the entertainment editor.)&...Read More

Industries: Fates & Fortunes

September 16, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (1)

I would rarely suggest a press conference is better than a one-on-one interview, but the fact that Sarah Palin won't meet the grubby press plays right into the Republican script, which these days is going quite nicely. 

 

Palin won't answer questions without a schedule. Now with a planned set of interviews with Katie Couric, like last week's set of interviews with Charles Gibson, it gives her a way to look candid without really being candid at all. She's not an interview. She's an event. She's a "get."  

 

...Read More
Industries: Washington

September 16, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Well, one wise thing Fox is doing with this year's show: it's doing a much better job than usual celebrating what TV Land calls "our rich television heritage." From Mary Tyler Moore to Kermit to Julia Child to Tom Snyder, the on-air tributes show that the producers seem to be figuring it out: television stardom is cumulative. That's what makes TV a unique art form. Just a thought.

By P.J. Bednarski

August 1, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

I worked for the Chicago Sun-Times when Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought the paper in 1984, and so I have a feeling for the reporters at The Wall Street Journal who today are likely getting dozens of calls from long-lost acquaintances asking them how awful they feel. I felt like I was the car accident everybody could gawk at. Because Murdoch, particularly then, was mainly known for the New York Post, and that was before its outrageousness was seen as something special, funny almost. 
Mike Royko, the famed Sun-Times columnist, immediately quit and joined the Tribune (where he wrote columns referring to Murdoch as "The Alien") and went on Phil Donahue's talk show, taped in Chicago, to proclaim that "No self-respecting fish would be wrapped in a Rupert Murdoch newspaper." That l...Read More