You may have seen the promos on Channel 4 promising to give away an iPad2 a day starting Thursday.
Your first question may be "Why is it starting Thursday?" That's easy, the November ratings period begins Thursday night.
The nightly winner will be announced on the 10 p.m. newscast, which could bump up the ratings for the flagship newscast.
I asked general manager Steve Wexler about the giveaway.
"It's a way for viewers to connect with the station through Facebook (so they can get updated content from us). We're thanking them for 'liking us' on Facebook with some great prizes, including an iPad2, every day starting Thursday.
"Viewers can easily register by simply liking us, winners will be announced in our 10 p.m. news."
So you get an iPad2, Channel 4 gets some potential new 10 p.m. viewers.
By the way, if you've been confused about reruns this early, some network shows pop in repeats in the last week or two before the ratings period, saving new episodes for the four-week "sweeps.'
By Thursday night, everything should be new.
Some moves at Journal Broadcast: Channel 4's radio sister stations WLWK-FM (94.5) and WTMJ-FM (620) have announced some personnel changes.
J. Pat Miller, program director and afternoon voice at WLWK – better known as Lake FM – will be promotion and marketing director at both stations.
John Roberts will take his place as PD at Lake FM. Roberts, who comes from CBS Radio and Clear Channel, where he had responsibility for that chain's Milwaukee stations as a regional programming vice president.
On TV: AMC has ordered a third season of "The Walking Dead." It's not a surprise considering the performance of season two. There's no word on how many episodes in season three.
- CBS has picked up "Unforgettable" and "Persons of Interest" for the full season.
- Comedy Central has picked up a third season of "Workaholics."
- A&E has ordered a third season of "Beyond Scared Straight."
- CBS says Andy Rooney had major complications from minor surgery and is in "stable" condition.
- MTV's "True Life" is planning a Nov.5 episode profiling a young "Occupy Wall Street" protester.
- CBS will become the first broadcast network to air a Republican presidential debate this season on Nov. 12. That's a Saturday night. When nobody's watching. But it's likely to provide material for the Sunday news sh0ws.
Sweeps and Halloween: Thursday is the first day of the November sweeps, so the Halloween episode of "The Office" won't be a rerun.
NBC offers this preview:
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.
