CNN and its sister station HLN (formerly Headline News) launched apps this week that will allow viewers who already subscribe to a TV service that offers the channels to watch live programming on their computers, iPads and other mobile devices.
But like a similar problem with HBO's "HBO Go" app, there's no deal between the news channels and Time Warner Cable, leaving the bulk of southeast Wisconsin viewers without access to the new services.
I already had the CNN app downloaded on my own iPad, so I went and checked on the live video. I quickly learned that the only TV services available in southeast Wisconsin where the service is currently available are Dish Network and AT&T's U-verse.
Let me repeat my explanation about HBO Go: these decisions aren't made locally. It's a Time Warner Cable corporate decision, not one that comes from Wisconsin. So complaining locally won't do any good.
What's funny is that CNN and HBO are Time Warner operations. But Time Warner Cable is now a separate company from the rest of Time Warner.
The access to breaking news on an iPad or another mobile device is an advance for CNN. I just hope I can see it sometime in the near future.
A familiar voice moves on: Former WTMJ-AM (620) news voice Rob Hart has left his news job at Chicago's WGN-AM (720). He reports he's taken a job with the new all-news FM station launching in Chicago to take on WBBM-AM (780), which is simulcasting on its FM sister station.
I didn't know he was that much of a gambler.
On TV: Syndicated TV talker Wendy Williams is coming to Milwaukee next month as part of what she's calling "Say It Like You Mean It" summer tour. She'll be in town Aug. 25. Williams' show runs at 10 a.m. weekdays on Channel 6.
- Sunday's Women's World Cup soccer defeat for the U.S. team brought in the biggest audience ever for soccer on ESPN, an estimated 13.5 million people, according to Nielsen Media research numbers.
- Speaking of the women's soccer team, a couple of them will drop by David Letterman's CBS show tonight at 10:35 on Channel 58.
- Speaking of numbers, Sunday night's season premiere of AMC's "Breaking Bad" brought in its biggest audience ever, some 2.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen numbers.
- First lady Michelle Obama will appear on an episode of ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" in October. The show will showcase efforts to find homes for homeless female military veterans.
- Troubled Charlie Sheen is looking for a network for a sitcom in which he plays a guy with an anger management problem. It's based, of course, on the big-screen "Anger Management." Who thinks this sitcom will ever air?
A peek at "The Walking Dead": AMC has offered its first, one-minute look at the second season of "The Walking Dead." It won't be back until fall, but here's the video:
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
