Contents - Front Page - Mailbag - Current Rants - News - Daveland - Support DCRTV By Dave Hughes dcrtv@dcrtv.com Rants from October and November 2002..... 11/30 - What radio station would Jesus listen to? I tuned to WGMS on the morning of NOVEMBER (!!!) 29 and what did I hear? Classical Christmas tunes. Well, at least the Bonneville station had the "class" to at least wait until after Thanksgiving before jumping into the Xmas radio craze. Hey, I'm no Scrooge, but most of the joy and the wonder of the Christmas season is dependent on it being on one day (or a few days) of the year. It's kind of sad to see it all being exploited - and diluted - so much, all in the name of a better ranking in the holy Arbitrons. And, yes, we the unwashed public, are to blame too. We should let some of the advertisers on some of those "Xmas in November" stations know that we don't like this exploitative trend. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to see Christmas music begin on Halloween next year..... 11/28 - OK, I'm not a TV executive. And I don't make anywhere near a TV suit's salary. And I have no connection to Gannett or Channel 9. But I have lived in the DC area for 30-plus years, and I think I kinda know something about this market. And I have to declare that Gannett's decision, in 2000, to trim 9's early evening local newscast from 4-7 PM to 5-6:30 to be one of the dumbest moves ever. While the station's early morning newscast is doing well, and you can see it in the anchors' enthusiasm, poor 9's early evening show is in the dumps. It's got a low-rated "Montel" as lead in. An even lower-rated lead out game show at 7. The 5 PM newscast is, in fact, often just a shill for the 6 PM newscast, which people, obviously, don't want to wait around for. And JC and Virg, who are nice folks, I'm sure, often look like they'd rather be doing something else while doing WUSA's 5 PM show. Ditto with Gordo and Gurvir at 6. Gannett has two choices - either restore the full local newsblock to 4-7 (or even 7:30) along with the funding, or schedule a movie at 5 and give up the evening news race. Hey, we hear that Detroit's CBS station (owned by Viacom) just dumped its entire news operation. Could Gannett do the same thing here? "Gary Reels is working on that and will have more at 6"..... 11/26 - I was watching "The Simpsons" on Fox 5 the other evening. Suddenly, the picture shrank slightly, and a message became visible at the bottom of the screen. It said: "You are watching The Simpsons." Does WTTG think its viewers are really that stupid, not knowing what they're watching without a clue? Duh..... 11/25 - New Order has always been my favorite band. And it's damn hard to hear the Manchester (UK) upbeat progressive mope with twangy electronic guitar sound on DC radio. It used to be that 99.1 or 101.1 would every once in a blue Monday play an NO tune. But that's rare. Now I occasionally find one on 104.1. But, imagine my surprise when I flipped by 107.3 at 3:40 this afternoon. It wasn't only NO, but it was my absolute favorite NO track, "True Faith." How utterly cosmic..... Best thing I've seen on TV all year - the 3.5 hour "Benjamin Franklin" documentary series on PBS. In fact, I've caught a lot of really fascinating stuff on PBS of late including a marvelously touching reality-based mini-series (British) of a family returning to WWII London. And a bunch of way cool "NOVA" revelations, including the latest on the sinking of Venice. And I have to hand it to WETA for its three new marvelous multiplexes, now offered via my Comcast system's digital tier. Especially the "WETA Prime" channel, which runs 26's prime time fare during daytime and overnight hours. That's why my cable box seems to be spending a lot of time on channel 191 lately..... 11/22 - Oh chill out! The Washington Times, today, reports: "A Federal Communications Commission official yesterday called for an overhaul of the government's broadcast indecency standards as hundreds of complaints flooded his office about the Victoria's Secret lingerie fashion show that aired on prime time national television Wednesday night. Michael Copps, one of five commissioners at the FCC, urged the agency to revise the definition of indecency and look into whether it should be expanded to include obscene, violent and profane programming." OK, so maybe watching an army of bulemic models prancing around in only bras and panties is not your thing. Watch another channel. Or, better yet, turn the darn TV off. There are plenty of folks who want to watch. Like Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto, who must have the libido (and the sexual sense) of a teenage boy. And, who, almost on a nightly basis drools (on air) over VS models. Memo to Neil - if "watching" is your thing, you might want to visit your local adult bookshop (or 7-Eleven), where they actually have magazines that show women in their full naked glory. Golly gee..... 11/21 - The Post may ignore most local media news, but at least it gets the stuff that's really important. From this morning's "Reliable Source" column: "We're pleased to report that if Vice President Cheney ever finds himself up the creek, he won't lack for a paddle. He was spotted yesterday purchasing a retractable aluminum oar at the Sports Authority in Alexandria." At least it didn't get scooped by the Times (NY or DC) or DCRTV..... 11/20 - I actually had a dream that Fox 5 news was running a scare story on people who had toxic mold invade their computers. Glad I woke up..... Superstation? That's what Infinity calls hot talker WJFK-FM. Yet, as Don and Mike pointed out on Tuesday, the Fairfax studios of 106.7 are sitting vacant most of the time. With the long ago departure of middayer G. Gordon Liddy, and the recent defection of the evening Sports Junkies to WHFS, the only local week-daily show JFK produces is PM drive's D&M. Everything else, including Howard Stern, Bill O'Reilly, and Ron And Fez, comes from the Big Apple. Well, JFK still produces some weekend stuff - the Redskins, Pat Goss's car show, and some infomercials..... We're hearing that morale at old 630 is soaring after the announcement on Tuesday that Chris Berry's going to be the new GM. And we hear that there's a strong possibility he'll beef up MAL's news posture and give rival TOP more of a run for the money. He's got experience on the news side of things, including a stint at Chicago all-news blowtorch WBBM..... 11/19 - Lloyd Grove's "Reliable Source" column in Tuesday's Post: "Roger Ailes went ballistic yesterday over our colleague Bob Woodward's new book, 'Bush at War,' in which the Fox News chairman - once the media consultant to President Bush's father - is portrayed as giving Bush political advice in the aftermath of 9/11... In his book, Woodward wrote that when presidential adviser Karl Rove received 'an important-looking confidential communication' from the news executive, he promptly shared it with Bush. 'Ailes was not supposed to be giving political advice,' Woodward continues. 'His back-channel message: The American public would tolerate waiting and would be patient, but only as long as they were convinced that Bush was using the harshest measures possible'"..... 11/18 - Only on Fox News. Just before 5 PM, business news host Neil Cavuto spends 15 minutes drooling over Victoria's Secret models. And then, after an ad break, proceeds to pontificate on why all Arabs hate the USA. Is this guy for real? Or just the 2002 version of Ted Baxter. With idiots like this on the national TV screen, maybe we should be just a little bit frightened..... Some local stuff. Maybe Channel 9 might increase the number of folks watching its 5 PM newscast if it started delivering some news instead of just teasing for its 6 PM 'cast. On Monday - hey we got a great Gary Reels story on an assault at a local high school, but we're not gonna tell you about it until 6. And then another cool local story, and, again, I'm gonna have to wait until 6. And then Topper comes out. Again, more waiting for the whole forecast. What if I don't wanna! Maybe, like many other viewers, I'll flip over to another station, where they won't make me wait so much..... For some strange reason, death was the topic at the start of Monday's "Don And Mike Show" on WJFK. Don said he wants to be cremated, while Mike said he wants a wake (with plenty of booze) and then wants to be stuffed and displayed, possibly in the wax museum on the boardwalk in Ocean City..... You say Usama and I say Osama. Fux, er, Fox News Channel is still calling the terror leader "Usama" - when just about every other media outlet is calling him "Osama." In fact, even other media outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch (who owns Fux, er Fox) call him "Osama." And we've even noticed some Fux, er, Fox News Channel anchors even accidently calling him "Osama" and then catching themselves, and going back to "Usama"..... 11/11 - During its 5 PM newscast on Monday, Fox News Channel anchor John Gibson referred to "Saddam" as "the butcher." Yeah, it was a passing, casual reference that probably no one, apart from me, even bothered to notice. And I won't even argue that such characterization of Iraq's leader isn't accurate. But do we, the viewing public, really need a "fair and balanced" news channel, which brags about how it practices "real journalism," being engaged in such name calling. Fox News may be getting in a few "digs" against Saddam and making our government leaders smile, but it also makes itself look silly and unprofessional. But then again, does Rupert really care? Nah..... 11/6 - I often vote Democratic, but I am finding that there's not a lot of difference between the two parties. I mean, we had eight years of Clinton, and apart from having a president who couldn't keep his pants on in the Oval Office, I can't see how much would have been different if we'd had George Bush Sr. or Bob Dole during those years. Yes, the GOP done good yesterday. Bush Jr.'s got the Senate and the House. On the radio/TV side, it looks like we'll have more of a "free business market" and less regulation, so the number of independent voices will probably diminish as huge corporations grow bigger and merge with each other, and become even bigger. There are probably plenty of smiles today in the boardrooms of Rupert Murdoch's Fox/News Corp., and at Clear Channel, and Viacom/CBS/Infinity, and Disney/ABC, and GE/NBC, etc. But things would be heading in the same direction with the Dems in charge, although maybe not quite so fast. And, locally, Maryland's got a new gov. It'll probably be good to have some GOP blood in the statehouse after so many years of the Dems running things. And thankfully, Virginia voters saw the wisdom in killing a sales tax hike that would have, most likely, been a subsidy for the fat-cat developers who rule Fairfax and Loudoun. I do feel kind of sorry for rightish radio talkers like Ron Smith and Rush Limbaugh, though. With more "evil" Dems out of the picture, who'll they get all rabidly worked up about? Oh, found a little glitch in this morning's Post: "The 8th District includes Falls Church, Alexandria, Arlington, Reston and Herndon, making it more heavily Democratic than when Moran last ran for reelection in 2000." Herndon is in Republican Frank Wolf's 10th district..... Down, yes. Dead, no. On MAL/BAL today, Rush, in his usual tasteful manner, boasted that the Dems are in "total collapse, total chaos" after yesterday's election. OK, yeah, the Dems lost Senate seats in Georgia, Missouri, and Minnesota, for a net loss of two (with a pick-up in Arkansas). And, yes, that does give the GOP a majority in the Senate, but it's not filibuster proof. And while the Dems lost the Maryland governorship, they did pick up some big prizes in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, and in some other states..... And my prediction for 2004 - VP Dick Cheney will retire (to an advisor capacity) and Rudy Giuliani will take his place and "Doubya" will easily win a second term against Hillary and NC Senator John Edwards as her VP. Hillary won't be playing to win, just to make the history book as the first major party female candidate for prez. Her hubby, Bill (remember him?), will run for NY governor in 2006. And, Rudy will run for prez against "former" Virginia governor Mark Warner, a Dem, in 2008. I won't predict a winner in that one..... 11/5 - It's election day. Whoopie. For our Virginia friends. Vote "yes" on the sales tax hike and you'll be paying more for everything (even if you don't drive a car) and there'll be some road improvements, which will fuel more sprawl, which will cause more traffic, which will increase gridlock. Vote "no" and you'll get pretty much the same thing, but there won't be a tax hike..... For our Maryland friends. Ehrlich or KKT? Morella or Van Hollen? Coke or Pepsi? I really don't think it matters all that much who wins. OK, I'd vote for the woman in one race, and the man in the other. Or the other way around..... Nationally? All I know is that if the GOP gets control of the Senate and keeps control of the House, watch for media baron and GOP backer and media sleazemonger and former Aussie Rupert "Fox" Murdoch to get the keys to the US broadcasting kingdom. Will we soon see a Fox radio group and Fox control of direct to home satellite? The suits that run Clear Channel and other corporate radio interests will be happy, too..... Oh, WMAL is awarding a Xeroxed portrait of the station's on-air team (Tim and Vicky have been pasted over with Bill and Jane) to the 630th voter in each Maryland precinct who votes for Bob Ehrlich..... 11/4 - I really hate to keep picking on WMAL, but they just offer soooo many opportunities. At 3:05 PM on Monday, the news talker runs a promo for Chris Core's show which features Republican Connie Morella answering a key question about Montgomery's proposed inter-county connector highway. Yet, the promo makes no mention of her opponent's view. Now, maybe MAL's running a like promo that features Democrat Chris Van Hollen, but I didn't hear it. In any case, should MAL even be running such politically oriented program promos in the supercharged atmosphere of the day before the election? Maybe MAL needs to give its promo people a quick course in Journalism 101. And maybe its current suits could use a refresher, too..... 11/3 - Watched football on Fox 5 on Sunday afternoon. Don't know what was worse - those goofy scare promos for WTTG's horrid news ("deadly hamburgers," come on) or all that ugly mud slinging (from both sides) in the Maryland governor race..... A caller to David Burd's Saturday morning show on WMAL said how much she likes listening to him, and how she is "so tired of those three people" on old 630 during weekday mornings. Too funny..... 10/31 - No mention of Darrian Chapman's death in Lisa's TV Column today. But there was a little blurb at the bottom of the front page of the Post's Sports section, directing readers to an obit in the Metro section (see our newsblurb, left). And, true to form, the Post gets some call letters wrong - again. This time Buffalo's WGR (where Chapman used to work) is called "WGAR." Those calls used to live in Cleveland. Last evening, Channel 4 sports anchor George Michael did a touching tribute to Darrian, who'd just gotten married over the summer..... It seems that Rupert Murdoch's support of George W. Bush is paying off. The Post reports that not only has Rupy's Fox News Channel White House correspondent James Rosen received an improvement to his assigned seat in the briefing room (row 6 to row 3), but the prez himself yesterday gave an Oval Office tour to Sean Hannity, who has a Fox News Channel evening talk show. Sean was in town, with a bunch of mainly right-wing talk show hosts, for the White House's "Radio Day," which, coindicently, took place exactly a week before the mid-term election. Oh, in case you've forgotten, Rupy also owns Channels 5, 20, and 24..... 10/30 - Sorry to keep picking on sorry old MAL, but what's up with the station leading every newscast on Wednesday afternoon with a study by some womens' group about how corporate monsters - everyone from AT&T and GM to Comcast and Marriott - are marketers of evil "pornography." Look, if someone wants to watch, in the privacy of their home or hotel room, consenting naked people of legal age getting on with each other via a scrambled pay channel, or via a video or magazine obtained from the adults-only section of a local store, what's the big deal? OK, so the porn report might be newsworthy, but does it really merit being the lead story in every newscast? Sheesh (again)..... Marketing mindlessness. Promos now airing on 630 which brag that one of the first citizen reports of the location of the sniper suspects' car last week came from a man who heard the lookout on WMAL. That comes from a "Good Morning America" interview of the man on Tuesday morning. Okay. So what's next? Charles Moose saying he regularly tunes in to WHUR when off duty. Or maybe the snipers themselves revealing that they were listening to "Hot 99.5" while cruising around in that dark Caprice of theirs. Or the news that owners of white vans are most likely to be tuned to JFK-FM. Or how about this? WTOP, with its network of stations, best covers the area (Ashland to Bowie) where the snipers stalked. Sheesh..... 10/29 - The folks at WTOP are kinda pissed at the folks from Mediaweek. It seems that the trade pub released a report on the DC media market (see our 10/28 newsblurb) and they didn't add the ratings figures from WTOP-AM and WTOP-FM, which, as we all know, broadcast the same thing. This distorted some of MW's radio conclusions, not to mention downplaying the Bonneville all-news station's ratings and billing numbers, we hear..... The final game of the World Series on Sunday was the lowest rated in 11 years. Not to mention ho-hum teams, the Fox series was up against the Skins' game on ESPN/JLA, and another dull episode of Tony's clan..... 10/28 - Today's "big" news. The sniper suspects ate at Aspen Hill's Outback Steakhouse during their spree..... Nothing more funny than a couple of critically injured libs. On his Monday show, El Rushblo found this particularly humorous. From the SF Chronicle: "Two people are at San Francisco General Hospital with critical head injuries stemming from an accident inside the Broadway tunnel... A man and woman who are in their 40s were riding in a converted school bus to the Civic Center anti-war demonstration at about 11 a.m. Saturday when the accident occurred. The full-size school bus has the body of a Volkswagen van welded to its roof... The man and woman were riding with their heads and bodies sticking out through the van's sunroof when it passed through the tunnel heading eastbound. The tunnel is taller at one end than it is at the other... and as the vehicle approached the North Beach end both the man and the woman clipped the roof of the tunnel with their heads." Oh, by the way, no Wellstone jokes from Rush - yet..... With the talk of some sort of pairing between ABC News and cable's CNN, and NBC already with a cable news network, Jim Rutenberg, in Monday's NY Times, says that CBS News is going to have to find a cable partner. And, don't laugh, he speculates that it could be the Fox News Channel. Alleged lefty Dan Rather working for righty Rupy Murdoch? Okay..... 10/27 - Comcast, my Wild West Fairfax cable TV system, has a text channel for local announcements. Usually a high school bake sale or news of a lost pet. Around election time, there are also ads for and against politicians. And there's one that's been running that pleads for the resignation of the allegedly corrupt Democratic incumbent Congressman Jim Moran. The ads change every 15 seconds or so. Well, the computer that controls this channel has been "stuck" for the past day or so, with only the anti-Moran message being seen. Right-wing conspiracy? Hmmm. And, why is Comcast running ads for the Maryland governor race on its Virginia systems? Maybe a few extra "south of the Potomac" votes for Republican Bob Ehrlich?..... 10/24 - Live, local, and late-breaking. Sorry it had to take such tragedy to make it happen, but it was nice to hear so much LOCAL talk/news content on WMAL today. Old 630 not only pulled the plug on Rush, but on Sean too. David Burd was heard during midday, with Chris Core doing the later stretch. How about making it more of a regular thing and giving TOP a real run for the money? Also, nice to see Channel 9 once again temporarily bringing back its 4 PM newscast. How about moving "Montel" to 9 AM, and restoring the early afternoon newscast, which Gannett's suits axed two years ago..... Been talking to some area TV reporters about coverage of the sniper arrests. The word was out well beforehand what was coming down with the early morning nabbing. In fact, several reporters were tipped off when the Feds put in place a "no fly" zone around the Frederick area rest stop in preparation for their action. That caused a pre-dawn journalistic rush of sorts up I-270. We hear that Channel 9 was the first on the air with a report of the arrests - in the 4 AM hour, with Dave Statter doing several feeds for CNN. Still no word as to why the local TV stations were reluctant to go with blanket coverage of Wednesday evening's search of the Washington state house where the suspects had lived. That gave Brian Wilson, one of Fox News's few really "fair and balanced" reporters, plenty of time to break news before the arrests came down..... All original material on this website is copyright by Dave Hughes/DCRTV.