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This one is sad. His voice resonates and was SYNOMOUS with WISN and Milwaukee television. May God forever rest his soul in peace. He will be sorely sorely missed.

Jerry Taff, who anchored at WISN from 1979 to 2005, passed away last night. He was 85. Had the opportunity to meet him once (my time at WISN was long after he had retired), but he was kind and gracious to me.

The New Orleans Pelicans have also dropped the stock (W)NBA scorebug in favor of a new one: this, specifically, is a new standard graphics package for Gray's sports broadcasts, which originally debuted during their Atlanta Braves spring training package from earlier this year. It's not bad and feels like an evolution of one of the old Raycom Sports packages from back in the day.

Nearly 30 years on Central Iowa television, 20 years at WHO 13, and nearly 20 in the top spot at the station. Yet, it'll all come to an end for Erin Kiernan before Thanksgiving. This is the third such well known departure from WHO in recent years. Dan Winters in 2022 and most recently, Jannay Towne, who also spent 20 years at WHO and started in the same year as Erin did, before leaving in August. https://who13.com/on-air/seen-on-tv/erin-kiernan-steps-down-as-who-13-anchor/

Bream would be the likely choice for Special Report if Baier were to leave. Or they could just expand 'The Five' to two hours. How about no slant at all? News organizations shouldn't be taking a side.

Cronkite is rolling over in his grave…

This is a little confusing, as Bhargava is majority owner of The Arena Group already. In August 2023, there was an announcement that said he was merging Bridge News (NewsNet/Sports News Highlights) into The Arena Group, and that his IV Media LLC was acquiring ShopHQ. On December 1st of that year, a SEC filing shows he received 10,512,236 shares of The Arena Group. A year later, NewsNet was shut down, presumably by "Arena". Now, two years later, he moves ShopHQ to The Arena Group, and suddenly the NewsNet auction is finally posted. Interestingly, in some of the photos for the auction listings, you can see sticky notes that bear The Arena Group logo on the items.

Isn't it one of the busiest lots in Hollywood?

Which is dumb, since accessing the files wouldn't require any human involvement on the FCC's end.

A perfect time to bring up another of Manoj Bhargava's projects that failed; ShopHQ's IP has been bought by The Arena Group, which you might remember as the Maven Group that tried to run Sports Illustrated but failed, and also has other dead-tree brands such as Parade and Men's Journal. The site's back up online and selling things (and they're back on social media), which may just be a combo of leftover inventory combined with dropshipping.

I could see why the new far right CBS News would want a far right disgrace to anchor the CBS Evening News, but why would Baier ever consider this? He has a very high profile job at a very high rated and profitable network and would be giving that up for a failing newscast at what is basically a FOX News wannabe with no audience. The FNC audience is not going to follow him over to CBS, they are going to keep watching whatever FNC airs in the slot. No matter how much money CBS offers him now, that big salary is not going to last long term as CBS News is a ratings and financial disaster.

A year and some months after the shutdown, an auction has popped up for the assets located in the Farmington Hills studio. The auction provides some insight on their plans before the shutdown. The Farmington Hills facility seems to have been outfitted with two complete studios and control rooms (we only really ever saw pictures of one studio), fully equipped with Ross Carbonite Ultras and Ross Xpression. Both had matching desks, but different LED wall configurations. They definitely seemed to think this was going to be a huge operation, if they invested in two complete fully-equipped studio/control rooms.

From last night, Amazon previewed their new permanent sports set (mainly for NBA coverage) during TNF;

man it looks so weird how they replaced the TNT logo in the graphics on on set with the ESPN logo.

1,000% @Georgie56

As for Inside the NBA, as promised, nothing has changed about the show except for ESPN logos replacing the TNT logos.

Have to say, having NBC back in the fold has made the NBA more engaging to watch; they’re clearly using the SNF/NFL playbook for their coverage. Their coverage tonight has outclassed anything ESPN/ABC did in the last two decades. The league needed this in the worst way. It’s a shame Disney paid enough to keep the Finals exclusively on ABC. I was hoping to see them and NBC alternate them yearly. But at least we’ll finally have Inside the NBA at the Finals, something NBA fans have been wanting for years now.

The league feels like an event again, they really got this right so much. ESPN has always felt RSN-equivalent in production and 720p does not do the product justice; finally having a basketball broadcaster in 1080i/p, it's always felt so different than the former. And they managed to get an overtime, so it'll be a dream launch night for them.

This is really incredible.

Paywall-free link: https://archive.ph/4CaZ9

Ghosts on 10-week trial run on CBS stations and WCIU: https://substack.com/redirect/09d8d8bb-ea9b-405e-9c60-e2624ae67731?j=eyJ1IjoiMWxyejk4In0.IEOHQY2J4GgWxzyrJTSIh73nz2UWpIZvP0ayd9YU7sE

NBA is getting good network theme songs again

Much better than what ABC uses.

It's a shame what Paramount is doing to CBS News.

CBS News under Bari Weiss eyes a major shakeup of 60 Minutes, and many of these anchors will be axed, potentially including Scott Pelley and Bill Whitaker. Weiss complained that the program "has drifted far to the left" (NY Post Exclusive). https://nypost.com/2025/10/27/media/cbs-news-boss-bari-weiss-eyes-major-shakeup-at-60-minutes-sources/

John Dickerson is leaving CBS News. https://www.foxnews.com/media/cbs-news-anchor-john-dickerson-exit-network-bari-weiss-era-shakeup-begins

In the end, Paramount Global didn’t settle because they were wrong. They didn’t settle because it was fair. They settled because that’s how power works now. Grease the right palms, press the right flesh, and you can say whatever the hell you want—as long as you don’t mean it. In the end, they sold out the truth for 16 million bucks. ... that’s a hell of a bargain.