I am a Televisionary, but before that, I was a student reporter and director. The show I’ve worked most passionately on over that last 3 1/2 years has been CONNECT.

The public affairs program just finished its sixth semester of tapings today with an episode plagued by technical difficulties. (nothing new to CONNECT) After some minor post editing, it will be going out to our distributors at WSYR, WSPX, and Syracuse University’s OTN.

Due to some technological and personal frustrations this during the past two semesters, management has decided to change the format and style of CONNECT. As a public affairs program, it had previously tried to mimic the magazine style format of Nightline. In the future, it will aim to be more like 60 minutes with relatively unrelated in-depth segments. We will also work to eliminate on-set live interviews, a staple of the program for the last 3 years.

Previous guests have included members of the rock bands, elected officials and candidates for local government, university officials, doctors and medical professionals, and various economic specialists. All future interviews will become part of the long-form stories that CONNECT will begin to produce in higher numbers.

Also, in the change, the position for anchors will be eliminated in favor of 60 minute’s format where the reporters introduce their own segments.

These changes are being made with the best interests of the program in mind, but as a long time member, it is sad to see the program slide away from its roots.

CONNECT can be seen most easily on cable channel WSYR 9.2 (890 on Time Warner Digital).

I was pretty young back in 1994 and 1995, when O.J Simpson’s murder trial unfolded before our eyes on television unlike any other criminal trial before. But I still remember a lot–the day he was acquitted, his weird, smarmy half-smile when the verdict was read, the celebrations outside the courthouse, the glove, and the white Bronco.

Simpson’s demeanor was much different this afternoon, as he was sentenced to at least nine years in prison stemming from a littany of charges from an armed robbery at a Las Vegas hotel. Before the judge handed down his sentence, Simpson plead for leniency for five minutes.

As I watched the courtroom proceedings live, Simpson struck me as someone genuinely sorry for what he did, almost to the point where I felt sorry for him. He maintained he was only trying to get back his property that had been stolen from him by his friends.  He choked back tears throughout his plea. His co-defendant, C.J. Stewart, put on a similar but less emotional show, talking about he had filed for bankruptcy and what a good father he was. He even tried to sweeten up judge Jackie Glass, thanking her profusely and lauding her professionalism.

After they made their case for mercy, Glass set the record straight and reminded me that I shouldn’t feel sorry for Simpson. Going to get your things back armed with a gun and a group of cohorts, and forcefully accomplishing your goal is criminal. She  seemed irritated by Simpson’s antics, the fact that they had been captured with a tv camera for all to see. She said she did not expect Simpson to speak. She emphasized her sentence did not reflect anything that happened thirteen and fourteen years ago in the murder trial, but it was hard not to think about what happened when the camera cutaway to shots at the back of the courtroom and the Goldman family, whose son was killed the same night as Nicole Brown-Simpson.

As a culture, we are fascinated by the mighty falling, whether professionally or legally. In his heyday, Simpson was one of the NFL’s best, and he is forever enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It’s a strange reaction we have, fascination. Some are appalled, some are shocked, but everyone is fascinated. A bubble of perfection gets created, especially around professional athletes, and when the bubble bursts, it’s hard not to be interested by what went wrong.

Variety’s Mike Flaherty wrote an article about the upcoming makeover for WNBC in New York City. NBC Universal’s flagship station is scheduled to undergo a $15 million dollar technological and personnel upgrade. Many veteran (high salary) employees who aren’t already out will be early next year. Flaherty found one employee who aptly described the upcoming change:

WNBC

“They don’t call Cheez-Whiz ‘cheese’ on the package; they call it a ‘cheese product’,” said one survivor. “What’s going to be produced here isn’t really news. It’s a news product. And you have to wonder what will happen when a major story breaks and you have someone from a small market who was cheap enough to hire.”

But what does he mean by “news-product?” 

Well the first change will be one just like what I last wrote about in I told you so Philadelphia, that is, a resource sharing program with FOX News. Variety thinks, like I do, that this program will lead to less unique content and less competition – two elements that drive most news organizations.

Freelance journalists have been eliminated, further shrinking the pool of original content available to the station.

Whole teams of reporters, photographers, and engineers are being replaced by a position called: Content Producer. This backpack journalist position, sends a single person with a high-priced mini-camera after a breaking story rather than a crew, a satellite truck, and all the related resources.

One thing that wont reportedly change, the anchor team of Chuck Scarborough and Sue Simmons. Apparently both have iron-clad contracts that are keeping them secure despite a huge dip in the ratings

“It averaged a paltry 17,000 viewers at 5 p.m. in October, compared with 38,000 at Fox’s WNYW, 71,000 at WCBS and 126,000 at WABC. At 6, it garnered an anemic 28,000 demo viewers as opposed to the 41,000, 58,000 and 133,000 of its respective rivals.”

If it has been said once, it has been said a hundred times: broadcasting is not a strong business to be getting into. But this happening in New York City, the number one market? It might be worse than I had thought.

I hope you didn’t think I was talking about ABC’s Desperate Housewives because I could only mean The Real Desperate Housewives of Orange County have returned to television. After watching the housewives of Atlanta and New York, I’m glad Bravo decided to go back to wear it all started. The new girl to season four does bring the blond to brunette ration up to four to one.

The part about this season I like the most is the fact that all the kids are more grown up so the focus is to the housewives. Also, the Jo and Slade drama is finally gone but replaced with the new young girl of Gretchen. Now if you don’t know which one Gretchen is, she is the one found next to the oldest spouse. The 23 year difference was a little shocking, but Gretchen is trying to prove that they are truely in love. She does add a some competiton to the hottest housewife, but Tamra doesn’t think she has any competition.

The preview for episode three does say one housewife will be leaving. I’m very curious to see who it is. Personnally I could see Gretchen going, but she is the newest. On the other hand, the four other housewives seem like they aren’t going anywhere as they have been around since season one.

There aren’t too many Tina Feys in the tv world. I see her as a kind of real life Miranda Hobbes, but cooler. Smart, funny, beautiful, honest, hard-working. To me, she is proof that you really can have it all.

That’s what it says in this month’s Vanity Fair cover story by Maureen Dowd. The focus of the article is Fey’s transformation from a “mousy brain to a brainy glamourpuss”, but Fey has long been one of the most unique women on television. She didn’t indulge in the drug scene of her former SNL castmates, and she’s proud of it. She’s so straight-laced, so live-by-the-rules, it’s hard to believe she can be in an industry that changes so much.

But that speaks to how talented she truly is. She is successful because she’s comedically gifted. It wasn’t until recently, when she lost 30 pounds and changed her look, that she really started getting noticed. But then, Sarah Palin came along, and people started recognizing her even more. Was it luck, that the Republican vice presidential candidate is a dead ringer for Fey? Maybe. The same can be said for Palin, that she was so lucky to be so hilariously and memorably portrayed.

Fey is a gem. But it begs the question: why aren’t there more women like her on tv, both in real life and on her show, 30 Rock? Why are hard-working, professional women who take themselves seriously not seen in a more positive light? Even Miranda Hobbes, the lawyer on Sex and the City, struggled with her personal life, and whined about it. Fey doesn’t strike me as a whiner. She strikes me as someone truly independent in a world where following everyone else’s path is the norm.

One of my professors says, the harder you work, the luckier you get. So it looks like Fey is finally getting her due.

A little while ago, I wrote a post titled NBC News. Fox News. What’s the difference? about how FOX and NBC in Philadelphia were planning to share their news gathering program. My conclusion was that it was being done to save money in a soft economy, but would only continue the trend of shrinking numbers of television news jobs. And, I was right. I told you so.

Michael Klein of the Philladelphia Inquirer and philly.com included some notes about the Philadelphia media industry in his latest column. It includes notes about job cuts in both TV and radio. What did Klein reference as a reason for the upcoming layoffs? 

“Every week seems to bring another notch of belt-tightening. Two weeks ago, NBC10 and Fox29 announced they’d pool routine video and helicopter time.”

I’ll say it again. Told you so.

Not that it was hard to predict. The number of available jobs is shrinking everywhere in the television industry. Television stations are being asked to do more (especially with multimedia) without being given more funding for new staff. Some are even loosing funding. If TV station owners keep up this trend of not spending on their historically profitable TV assets, we are going to see more of these job cuts and more of these news gathering partnerships.

Philadelphia is my case in point. They are market number 4 out of 210, and yet Klein reports:

“Reporters and anchors are being offered pay cuts. Slots are going unfilled. There have been no direct hires to replace the four local anchors who left ingloriously this year: NBC10’s Vince DeMentri and Lori Delgado and CBS3’s Alycia Lane and Larry Mendte. Lane-Mendte were making a combined $1.5 million, while successors Chris May and Susan Barnett, already on the CBS3 staff, probably are making half that. May, incidentally, was brought in after Mar Howard’s retirement to fill his $800,000-a-year anchor seat.”

At least that’s what it looks like. After one episode on NBC, Rosie O’Donnell’s attempt at an old-school variety show seems like just a one-night-only gig. The November 27 show finished in a distant third place with about 5 million viewers.

On her website, O’Donnell responded to viewer questions about the show’s future by saying a number of things, most notably “there will b no more”. The posters call it like they see it, calling the show “awful”, “crappy” and “inauthentic”. There are a lot of supportive fans as well, encouraging her to keep working on re-finding her niche.

O’Donnell’s attempt at a variety show revival is one of many. The broadcast networks are all under the impression that in these tough economic times, one hour of singing, dancing and general happiness could bring families to the tube. Ellen Degeneres hosted “Ellen’s Really Big Show” and “Ellen’s Even Bigger Really Big Show” during the Las Vegas Comedy Festival. Ozzy Osbourne and his family, of musical and reality tv fame, have signed on with Fox to host one. And there are rumors CBS is in talks with musician John Mayer to host one.

The NY Times article above talks about how reality tv competitions, like “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars” have replaced variety shows. They’re unpredictable, entertaining, and immensely popular. They involve the viewers with voting, and allow people to escape from everything else in their lives for half an hour or an hour. So as long as Idol and other reality tv is around, I think variety shows face an uphill battle.

I really wanted to point out this commentary by David Zurawik about the MSNBC coverage of the Mumbai terrorist incident.

Zurawik points out the fact that CNN international obviously overwhelms most others in staff for international coverage. However, even over a holiday weekend most other major networks had some kind of coverage of the attack and hostage taking, even if it was just rebroadcasting New Delhi Television. However, MSNBC, had little or none of this. Zurawik says:

“Don’t tell me it doesn’t matter that MSNBC embraced ideological propaganda instead of news and information when it handed over the keys to prime time to Olbermann and Maddow. If the terrorist attacks in India don’t warrant coverage on MSNBC in prime time, than nothing short of another 9/11 is likely to stop Olbermann and Maddow from their partisan game playing at what used to a respected anchor desk.”

My only opinion on this: shameful. In the modern age with all of television’s connectivity and partnership, I don’t care if you’re entire staff is home stuffed with turkey and gravy – somebody has to get the skeleton crew in to cover a major terrorist attack that threatens to renew tensions between two neighboring nuclear nations. Thats just my and David Zurawik’s opinion.

Happy Thanksgiving Televisionaries!! Hope you are enjoying a good turkey coma infront of the TV. Though normally I find myself watching a lot of movies with my family, I found myself watching Friends. For those who are lovers of Friends, it was the episode where Brad Pitt made his way onto the set. It made me think how much has changed over the years in the world of Hollywood.

Brad Pitt has gone from Jennifer Aniston to Angelina Jolie in what seems like a few years. My thursday night TV has changed from Friends to Grey’s Anatomy. Friends was one of those shows, and still is, that I can turn on no matter what day or time and enjoy. I don’t know how they did it, but the show always had me with a smile on my face. The amazing one liner of “We were on a break” to Pheboe singing “Smelly Cat”. Friends is one of those shows that I will not stop watching.

Homer Simpson is the most important character on televsion now, and maybe ever. Don’t believe me? Here is why in 4 points:

1. As the patriarch of the Simpsons, he has been on TV for 20 seasons (427 episodes) and on the big screen once. This makes it the longest running prime time animated show on TV.

2. His trademark lines are completely recognizable by anyone who has ever watched TV. “Do’h” is just simply part of our culture now thanks to this show.

3. His character has developed beyond that of a cartoon character, he has now become an archetype. He is the prototypical characterization of a fat American slob who really loves his family and tries to do well, even if he can’t show it with much grace.

4. I tried to think of any one character from any other program, live action or cartoons, that has the same appeal and pervasiveness of Homer Simpson, but failed. I even did some reading in Bravo’s top 100 characters of all time. (Homer Simpson was only rated #5 in that ranking, but I disagree.) Bravo ranked Fonzy, Lucy Ricardo, Ralph Kramden, and Archie Bunker above Homer, and maybe that is a generational sign, but I don’t think that youth today would really relate to them the way they do to Homer Simpson. Homer is satire and slapstick, fool and father figure all rolled into one.

Tell me if you agree or disagree, and who you might pick to be the most important television character of all time.