Channel 6 has added a 9 p.m. Friday airing of its annual "Season of Giving" holiday special -- the first produced in high definition.
It's not the only station to air such Christmas fare -- Channel 12's one-hour "12's Season To Celebrate," aired last week.
But Channel 6 is the first to put together its special -- which highlights holiday events and decorations around southeast Wisconsin -- using the HD technology that works particularly well with the sights and sounds of Christmas.
Among the settings for the special -- which will air four more times -- are the Pabst Mansion and the lights of Waukesha's Country Christmas.
Channel 6 became Milwaukee's second high-def TV news operation on Dec. 5, joining Channel 4, which went high-definition with its newscasts in April.
An angry Johnny B: Fond du Lac's own Jonathon Brandmeier, axed last month from his morning show on Chicago's WLUP-FM, has responded with an angry rap that could never air on radio.
As he warns on his Web site, "There is a lotta MF'S bein' tossed around up in here..." With that warning, you can find the video of his "Johnny B -- The Unemployed Radio Mo Fo" here.
Among the passages of his post-firing rap that are safe for gentle ears is this line about the state of radio: "Hey, monkey, push a button and play another song. Talent on the radio just doesn’t belong."
A number of big radio names have lost their jobs since Chicago adopted the Portable People Meter system of radio ratings. It's happened in other markets where the new and, theoretically, more accurate ratings system has been started by Arbitron.
PPMs are scheduled to go into use in the Milwaukee radio market next year.
On TV: Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance" crowned another winner last night, Boston's Russell Ferguson, a 20-year-old Hip-Hop/Krump dancer. But it's likely more attention was focused on Adam Lambert's live performance. But, no, Lambert didn't embarrass the network the way he did with some unrehearsed moves on ABC's "American Music Awards."
- There may be somebody out there who still remembers the CW's "The Beautiful Life," the Ashton Kutcher-produced drama that was the first cancellation of this TV season. If you're still interested, three unaired episodes are supposed to be posted on You Tube, with one launching today and two more on Monday.
- TV Newser reports NBC News anchor Brian Williams is filming another episode of "30 Rock."
- HBO has given a March 14 premiere date to "The Pacific," the World War II miniseries produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.
A gift for "Glee" fans: Fox's "Glee" is on hiatus until mid-April, but Mark "Puck" Salling offered a musical video gift to viewers, and a tribute to his cast-mates and crew members.
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.
