respublica

St Louisans seem to watch a lot of TV

New Nielson survey results on TV watching by city, show that St. Louis is second only to Pittsurgh in the numbers of people who do live viewing. And, St. Louis leads the nation in Time Shifted Viewing. I had to look up the meaning of Time Shifted Viewing, which tells you how little programming we look at.

Time Shifted Viewing is the recording of programs (TiVo, DVR etc) to storage for watching at a later time. This is something we never, ever do, but know many people who use this method of watching TV more than any other.

San Francisco watched the least amount of TV.

AKA the Nerd prom

Tomorrow night is the White House Correspondents Dinner, a fancy dinner for political reporters and the president which is also known as the 'nerd prom'. It's like the Academy Awards for journalists. Everyone dresses up, has dinner and then sits back to laugh at the commedian chosen to be the main speaker and then the president's humorous response.

This is televised in total by CSPAN with the cable news stations carrying the entertainment portion. What makes CSPAN's broadcast best is that they carry every minute of the evening from the red carpet arrival of big names in news, actors, rocks stars, athletes and the like, to people milling around their dinner tables to the exits.

Conan O'Brien will headline this year's event, hopefully he will be relaxed and confident enough to make fun of the president and press which has long been the purpose of the WHCA's dinner. During Obama's term, however, there has been a stiffness to the humor by other speakers and reporters because Obama is not one the media types really want to laugh at. Clinton and Bush were different. They seemed to enjoy the jokes and gave back as good as they got.

Whatever happens, it's a night of tv that is worth watching. CSPAN begins their coverage at 5:15 CST with the arrivals while the cable networks will begin at 8 CST.

So who will be able to sit up half the night?

Just looked at the broadcast schedule for the NCAA men's basketball championship game and found that the game begins at 8:20 CST which means 9:20 EST. Does anyone else think this is just a terrible thing to do to fans of the tournament? Does no one in charge at NCAA headquarters or CBS care that this time period might just cheat lots of adults and kids out of seeing the entire game because they have to get up for work or school on Tuesday morning? Or, might just be too tired from Monday to make it through the game?

We follow all the games and results until the end when it comes on too late for over half of the country.

There's always a little truth in humor

This from Jay Leno is funny. I'm sorry, it really is.

“And in a groundbreaking move, the Associated Press, the largest news gathering outlet in the world, will no longer use the term ‘illegal immigrant.’ That is out. No longer ‘illegal immigrant.’ They will now use the phrase ‘undocumented Democrat.’ That is the newest – ‘undocumented Democrat.’”

Jokes like this are probably one reason NBC keeps trying to replace Leno.

The most opinionated cable news channel is:

MSNBC by a large margin. The PEW Research Center did an in depth analysis of how news is handled by cable, network and local channels and found in part that "over all, commentary and opinion are far more prevalent on the air throughout the day (63% of the airtime) than straight news reporting (37%). CNN is the only channel to offer more reporting (54%) than opinion (46%), though by a small margin. By far the highest percentage of opinion and commentary is on MSNBC (85% to 15% reporting).  Fox was in between at 55% commentary and 45% reporting."

And: "A separate Pew Research examination of programming in December 2012 found MSNBC by far the most opinionated of the three networks, with nearly 90% of its primetime coverage coming in the form of opinion or commentary.  And that remains the case with many of its packaged segments."

This is no big surprise, but interesting none the less.

 

Don't forget about the Food Network tonight

Restaurant Impossible at 8 CST tonight will cover their renovation of the Caseyville Cafe.

Caseyville on the Food Network

Next Wednesday, the 13th, the Caseyville Cafe will be featured on Restaurant Impossible as everything recieved a makeover-the physical building, kitchen, food prep and menu ideas, as well as staff management. Pictures of before and after by John Swistak at the link.

9 pm March 13th Food Network

When it comes to weather, we toe the line

We're expecting to be in the midst of a big weather event today as is most of the central part of the country. Every school in the St Louis metro area cancelled for today during the early evening last night. This winter storm, which is covering large parts of the country, is supposed to hit here around the noon hour and oddly, has not been given a name. When the snow storms hit the east coast recently they were all named by the weather channel. I guess the midwest isn't snow storm name worthy.

What's amusing though, is how St Louis forecasters can simultaneously tell us this will be a "can't miss" storm while at the same time reminding us that we are, as usual, "right on the line" of weather or no weather." Just one year I'd like to live somewhere that is not "right on the line."

So Channel 5 is hedging their bets and reporting this morning on the snow falling heavily in Wichita Kansas. They sent a reporting team to Kansas City the other night to cover the big fire in Country Club Plaza and must have told the group to stay in Kansas for storm reporting. We'll get a look at a big snow in case it actually does miss us.

 

 

The Booj is a Star

Ferdie's best friend Booji was the featured dog on KSDK's Jennifer Blome's Sammie's Stars segment this morning. We all watched and were so excited that Ferdie got a mention as being Booj's BFF.

Here they are playing together

And then cooling off together

Yay, Booj, you're always a number one star with us.

SNL and NBC, there is no low too low

Saturday Night Live presented a skit last night as a take off on a James Tarantino movie trailer called Djesus Uncrossed. The skit had Christopher Waltz (Django Unchained) as Jesus coming back from the dead and killing everyone in sight in the bloodiest way possible. And the audience screamed and laughed in delight.

They laughed. Didn't we throw a movie maker in prison for making a movie which insulted Islam and supposedly brought on the Islamic riots and Benghazi? No riots here, just laughter for a sacrilegious, blasphemous, insulting and offensive put down of the story of Christ. And in Lent no less.

Rolling Stone loved it, here's what they had to say by way of review:

The movie trailer for Djesus Uncrossed was stunning, in the best way possible. This upcoming blockbuster is "the ultimate revenge fantasy" – a spot-on send-up of Quentin Tarantino’s films, where Jesus (Waltz) rises from the dead, cuts down armies of Romans with swords and Uzis and leaves behind equal amounts hilarious blood and hilarious one-liners. Every last line in this gory sketch was written with impeccable sophistication.

"Impeccable sophistication". Indeed we as a culture are hitting bottom fast.