All right, it was a pretty surprising earthquake that hit the East on Tuesday.
OK, this Hurricane Irene could be a huge deal over the weekend when it's likely to hit somewhere on the East Coast.
But when you live around here, the land of ice and snow in the winter, and floods and tornadoes in the summer, you have to get tired of the fact that the news organizations are concentrated in New York and Washington.
And, thus, what happens up and down the Atlantic Coast is magnified in importance. I don't know about you, but it is a tiring reality that a region so crammed with reporters, cameras and the newsroom management that decides what is news.
Maybe it's just an impression (I haven't done a detailed study), but their natural disasters get far bigger play than ours – even when ours are bigger and more interesting.
Still, I know I'll be watching hurricane coverage over the weekend. But I'll be happy if its expected right turn takes it far away from that over-covered coast.
By the way: The best earthquake video thus far comes from a State College, Pa., TV station:
On TV: TV Guide says Christian Slater's axed "Breaking In" will get a 13-episode reprieve on Fox. No word yet on when the episodes will start airing, but don't expect it before mid-season.
- Showtime has picked up "Inside the NFL" for three seasons. The weekly show started on HBO.
- The Los Angeles Times' Show Tracker blog reports that CBS is airing a half-hour special at 8:30 p.m. on Sept. 4 updating viewers on "The Good Wife" storyline, now that the show is moving to the 8 p.m. Sunday slot on Channel 58 this fall.
- This is hilarious, Zap2it.com reports that Jimmy Fallon predicted in a 1998 "Saturday Night Live" skit with Alec Baldwin that he'd host SNL on Dec. 12, 2011. He's actually hosting the Dec. 17 show. Here's the video:
The latest from the Muppets: The new Muppets "Green Album" came out this week and one of the cuts is a new version of the "Muppet Show Theme Song" from OK Go.
Here you go, OK?
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.
