It is, no doubt, not a title that WKBW-TV General Manager Bill Ransom coveted.
But, for better or worse, in a TV news industrial list of "The Top 10 Worst People in TV News" he has placed a resounding no. 1.
The list comes from FTV Live which describes itself on its website as "a TV News Insider website that has been around since 2000. The person behind FTVLive.com is Scott Jones...a former News Director, Exeuctive Producer, Producer, Assignment Editor, Reporter and Photographer" currently living in Jacksonville, Fla. Among other things, the website also gives itself credit for being "the first media outlet in the country to break the Jay Leno story."
In explaining its list of The Top 10 Worst People in TV News, FTVLive reported "we got over a thousand emails from people nominating different people in the TV industry for the 10 worst list."
In explaining its choice of Ransom as the worst of the very worst, FTVLive wrote "Trying to figure out the order for the 10 worst people in TV news was difficult to say the least. But coming up with Number 1 was as easy as could be.
"Bill Ransom has been the General Manager of the Graniite Station in Buffalo for years. When he took over as the GM, it was one of the highest rated stations in the country.
"WKBW's Newscasts had been Number 1 since the 60's and the station was known as a news powerhouse.
"Bill Ransom took the station from First to Worst in the ratiings and gutted a once proud newsroom into almost nothing.
"Ransom laid off some of the best people at the station. He hired very cheap replacements and slashed the budget to almost nothing."
For the record, others on FTVLive's list of the worst people in TV News include a news director in Alaska, CNN's President Jon Klein, Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly, NBC CEO Jeff Zucker and the Peacock Network's Owned-and-Operated Station preisdent John Wallace.
Sometimes, it's the little things that can hurt the most. Just watch the Animal Planet series "Monsters Inside of Me" as it explores cases of tiny parasites and their attacks on humans. The show takes a local turn with the case of a Buffalo man in tonight's second season premiere.
"Ralph," a commercial banker who lives in Buffalo, experienced strange behavior and symptoms while on a trip to the Caribbean. A cyst on the back of his brain turned out to be the anisakis parasite (or pork tapeworm). To see what happened to Ralph, tune into "Monsters Inside of Me" airing at 10 tonight on the Animal Planet.
Southern Belle Blanche Devereaux had a sharp tonge, a roving eye and an appreciation for the finer things in life -- including the gentlemen. As played by actress Rue McClanahan, she will never be forgotten.
The Hallmark Channel is paying tribute to McClanahan, who died last week, with a series of Blanche-centric episodes of the "Golden Girls" including "Blanche Delivers," "Mrs. George Devereaux" and "Blanche's Little Girl." Watch the best of Blanche from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. today through Friday on the Hallmark Channel.
The MTV Movie Awards expanded its audience for the 2009 telecast with the promise of a visit from the stars of "Twilight" and exclusive footage from the second installment in the movie series, "New Moon." It worked out so well, the network is doing it again.
"Twilight's" holy trio -- Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner -- will again be on hand to present exclusive footage from the upcoming movie "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" which opens on June 30. Word is it involves a scene between Edward (Pattinson) and Jacob (Lautner) in their battle over their love for Bella (Stewart). MTV is offering a short peek (basically a snippet) from the scene. At the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, "Twilight" won five popcorn awards including best movie and best kiss. "New Moon" is also nominated in five categories this year.
The "Twilight" gang joins a star-studded lineup including Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Miranda Cosgrove, Sean "Diddy" Combs, Shaun White, Jonah Hill, Chris Rock and Vanessa Hudgens. Christina Aguilera and Katy Perry will both perform songs off their new discs. The awards show airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on MTV.
Vampires never die -- but they do go into syndication.
The Alex O'Loughlin vampire series "Moonlight" has found a new home on the CW starting tonight. The addition of the romantic vampire cop drama (yes it's all of that) creates a Thursday night vampire doubleheader on the CW. At 8 p.m., watch encore presentations of the CW's hit freshman teen vampire series, "The Vampire Diaries"; followed at 9 p.m. by "Moonlight."
The O'Loughlin show had quite a following, although not large enough to keep it going, when it premiered on CBS in 2007. O'Loughlin starred as the immortal private investigator Mick St. John who falls for the woman (the lovely Sophia Myles) he saved as a child from a vampire. The show is from Ron Koslow, one of the guys responsible for the unabashedly romantic TV series "Beauty and the Beast," and it shows here.
The show may not have lasted, but the CBS love affair with O'Loughlin has. He starred in the short-lived medical drama "Three Rivers" for the network; next up is a new-look "Hawaii Five-O" with O'Loughlin taking on the Steve McGarrett role.
By the time "Lost" ended its six-year run Sunday night with an epic 2 1/2-hour finale, we thought we would have answers to at least some of our lingering questions. What was the island? What was the mysterious light that needed protecting? What did it mean?
We didn't get the answers to those questions but it doesn't seem to matter much.
(Spoiler alert ahead)
There is so much to say about the emotionally powerful finale, but for today we can start here: it offered more comfort and closure than answers and, in the end, that just feels right. Having the choice between knowing why the island was worth saving or seeing Jack (Matthew Fox) and Kate (Evangeline Lilly) in a tearful reunion and walking off into eternity together -- well, creators Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof made the right choice.
The finale once again split time between the island and the sideways world. On the island, Jack, the anointed one, faced off against the Fake Locke-Smoke Monster (Terry O'Quinn). In the sideways world, the characters were continuing to have memories of the island but they were now full-blown "awakenings," something necessary if they were to "move on." These awakenings were exquisitely done -- Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and Sun (Yunjin Kim) remembering their lives, love and deaths; the unexpected reunion of Sayeed (Naveen Andrews) with Shannon (Maggie Grace) who died in season two; Claire (Emilie de Ravin), Charlie (Dominic Monahan) and baby Aaron finally together again; and Sawyer (Josh Holloway) and Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) finding each other over a vending machine of all things.
It was all emotinally draining -- the awakenings/reunions and the explanation that the sideways world was a limbo the characters created to wait for each other when they died -- yet it was somehow joyous and definitely fulfilling. I don't know about you, but I was still awake at 3 a.m. with the final words and images running through my head.
We didn't get many answers, but we got closure for the characters we invested six years in. I say well done. What about you?
My favorite bit on Betty White's triumphal march through "Saturday Night Live?" It was the final one--the only one that could have been rated PG.
Betty was playing a senile and quite nutso old bat, you see. And Tina Fey, playing a census taker, came to her door. Whereupon Betty, when asked her name, confirmed that it was spelled "L-E-E S-M-I-T-H."
And pronounced "Blar-fen-gard Blar-fen-gard."
It was absolute nutsy in a way actually redolent of the original "Saturday Night Live" where the first skit on the first show--immortally--showed us sinister satirist Michael O'Donoghue pretending to teach John Belushi how to say "I want to feed your fingertips to the wolverines."
I'd bet anything that Fey herself wrote it.
It's not that I didn't think all the zesty smutty stuff was funny. It was--especially Betty as Florence Dusty, a baker and guest on a show in tribute to dietary fiber, declaring to the two hostesses :"if there's anything I'm known for, it's my muffin." There was a succession of double entendres so heavy but hilarious that they were barely single entendres. ("My muffin hasn't had a cherry since 1939.") As raunchy and funny as the bit was, it was all too characteristic of a show that pretty much treated the unique 88-year old figure as little more than the grandmother of TV raunch.
In one skit, she played a granny doing embroidery and expressing regret that she'd never become a lesbian, thereby avoiding contact with her least favorite part of male anatomy. In another, she was MacGruber's granny, compulsively divulging secrets about his micropenis and secret breast reduction surgery.
She was just doing a lot of variations of Sue Anne Nivens, the nymphomaniac "Happy Homemaker" written for her on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."
A lot--I must confess--was funny in a very raunchy way but it did sadden me a little, as if Abraham Lincoln were to climb down from Mt. Rushmore and flip the bird on the evening news.
But then Betty--bless her--was, in a small way, doing just that. Sure, it's true that she has become unique in American entertainment history--a figure who, quite literally, helped put TV on the air and is now, almost 60 years later, in the greatest demand on her entire professional life (stay tuned for "Hot in Cleveland" on the TV Land nework in June.) It was a little grandmotherly hug and kiss for all the world's young folk and a full bird flipped to anyone of an older generation who thinks she ought to be home sipping Dubonnet, knitting sweaters for her dog and thinking G-rated thoughts about the good old days.
The fact is she made history Saturday night. She gave the show its oldest host ever and by implication proclaimed that she is TV's only first-generation survivor at this stage in the 21st century.
If she now wants to be known as the most ribald old broad in TV history, I'm the last one to argue with her. They way I look at it, at her age, she ought to be whatever she jolly well wants to be.
The history part was hardly lost on all those female SNL alumnae who flocked back to the show to celebrate the grandmother of them all--Fey, Amy Pohler, Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, Ana Gasteyer, Molly Shannon.
I wish there's been a bit more wonderment at what Betty White has become, in the 21st century world where Facebook can become a guest late night TV producer--and a bit less superannuated smut.
The News' Television Critic Alan Pergament gives a network-by-network rundown of what's coming in the May 'sweeps' in this video produced by Digital Reporter Denise Jewell Gee:
When the Buffalo Sabres opened their Stanley Cup playoff series with the Boston Bruins, all three local news departments made it the lead of their newscasts.
When the Bruins eliminated the Sabres Monday night, Channel 4 and Channel 7 had sports reporters at the top of the 11 p.m. newscast doing the post-mortems. The reports were followed by mandatory pointless interviews with disappointed fans.
And Channel 2? Its big story was on reports that General Motors will announce today that it is investing $400 million in its Town of Tonawanda plant to produce a new V-8 engine. Sports director Ed Kilgore didn't arrive to talk about the Sabres' elimination for eight minutes.
Of course, the GM story has a greater impact on the area in the long-term and is bigger news. It was nice to see some news perspective for a change about what is important. Three cheers for Channel 2 News and perspective.
Having said that, it wouldn't be shocking if viewers were more interested in the Sabres' story than the more important one on GM.
