A half-dozen Milwaukee TV veterans are being inducted into the Emmy "Silver Circle" this weekend. Just one of them, Channel 12 anchor Kathy Mykleby, is still on camera every night.
"I'm the one who has to stay up past 10:30," jokes Mykleby.
She joins former retired anchors Joanne Williams and Melodie Wilson Oldenburg, former Channel 4 chief meteorologist Paul Joseph, Channel 6's retired director of communications Carl Zimmermann and retired Milwaukee Public TV producer/director Bill Werner in that Silver Circle set up by the Chicago/Midwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to honor broadcasters with 25 years of service.
Williams, by the way, left Channel 6 -- where she spent nearly three decades -- last year to become Cardinal Stritch University's vice president for public relations and marketing.
They'll be inducted Sunday morning in a ceremony at the Marcus Center.
Mykleby was at last year's ceremony, introducing her Channel 12 co-worker, Mike Anderson, one of the first class of five inductees. The others were Channel 6's Vince Condella, Channel 4's Mike Jacobs, Channel 10's Dan Jones and former Channel 6 news director Jill Geisler.
"I feel like I'm in pretty good company," says Mykleby.
With 33 years in broadcast journalism (she started in radio), the 55-year-old Mykleby sees no slowdown coming in her career. She doesn't buy the line that it's a young person's business.
"It's a fresh person's biz," she says. "If you keep it fresh and you stay with the times and you make sure that you offer your expertise that you've gained over the years."
She joined Channel 12 as a backup anchor in 1980, Mykleby became a full-time anchor five years later. She's been anchoring ever since.
ON TV: It's not yet official, but the Hollywood Reporter says NBC has axed "Southland" even before its second season began. Six episodes of the cop drama have been finished, but there's no word on when they'll air. There is a chance the show could move to a cable channel.
- Meanwhile, Michael Ausiello reports at ew.com that ABC has picked up Wednesday night sitcoms "Modern Family," "Cougar Town," and "The Middle" for the rest of the season. "Modern Family" is the only good one in that the bunch and one of the best shows of the new season.
- Fine Living Network will disappear next year and be replaced by the Cooking Channel, with a lot of reruns from its sister channel, the Food Network.
- A campaign to get Tracy Morgan to jump on the Twitter bandwagon is successful with the launch of twitter.com/RealTracyMorgan.
- And now the tragic news: Miley Cyrus has reportedly tweeted her last tweet, and shut down her Twitter account.
MAKING FUN OF HERSELF: Remember Nicole Eggert, the former teen star who was one of the lifeguards in "Baywatch"?
Well, she's 37 now and is having a little fun with her old character -- and her old image. Funny or Die has posted the video, which follows.
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.
