If we can believe RadarOnline.com, CBS is interested -- very interested -- in getting troubled Charlie Sheen back on its hit "Two and a Half Men" next fall, just as Sheen is about to launch his odd national tour.
If the story is true, and it sounds quite possible, it's CBS president and CEO Les Moonves who's pushing series creator Chuck Lorre -- the target of much of Sheen's wrath -- to help find a workable solution to get Sheen back on the sitcom.
If you want a little more ammo to make this make sense, TMZ has reported Monday that Sheen had been meeting with Fox execs about a number of possibilities, including a late-night show.
TMZ said nothing was decided at the meeting.
But if it did happen, it's the kind of meeting that could force CBS to move.
None of this, of course, takes into account Sheen's emotional state. All of this is about money.
In another couple bits of Sheen news, he's talking about talking about ending his live tour with a fundraiser in Haiti for earthquake relief. Sheen pal Sean Penn is supposed to be helping to set that up.
And Sheen's Twitter account has passed 3 million followers.
On TV: NBC has released details of its summer season, bringing "America's Got Talent" on May 31, and starting the final season of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" on May 30. "The Marriage Ref" starts its second season June 26. Here's the complete list of shows.
- There's talk that the slow demise of daytime soaps could continue with the cancellation of ABC's "All My Children." But nothing's been announced.
- ABC is planning a four-hour miniseries on the sinking of the Titanic to coincide with the April 2012 centennial of the event that made Kate Winslett a star.
- TV Land will bring Whitefish Bay's Kristen Johnston back to regular TV in a sitcom called "The Exes," scheduled to premiere next winter.
Here's why I call it Stormageddon: There I was watching the conclusion to Sunday night's installment of "America's Next Great Restaurant" when Brian Gotter popped up on Channel 4 to tell me that it was raining.
Well, that's not quite accurate, he was reporting a Thunderstorm Warning in Jefferson County. That's an important function of local TV, and I'd seen the warning scrolling across the screen. But he could have waited just a few minutes, and interrupted the show as the credits were rolling, or after the climax of the show.
Instead, coverage resumed after New Yorker Marisa Zafran got the ax for her muddled stir-fry restaurant concept. I was able to go to NBC.com and check out the full-episode video to catch the washed-out scene.
This kind of coverage isn't limited to snow. We're entering spring and expect Channel 4 to lead the pack in letting us know about the threat of rain, lightning, thunder and even tornadoes. They do it because it grabs our attention and could lead us to tune in at 10 p.m. to see what exactly that storm did.
Which leads me to this entertaining video report from Doug Richards of Atlanta's WXIA-TV, having a little bit of fun with his own station's weather excesses:
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.
