The folks at Milwaukee Public TV have to work on coming up with better titles for their programming.
The title, "Habitat Destruction on the Gulf Coast," makes the special airing tonight at 8 on Channel 10 sound like a scientific training film.
But this half-hour show, subtitled "An 'Outdoor Wisconsin' Report" deserves a look, whatever it's called.
"Outdoor Wisconsin" host Dan Small went down to the Louisiana gulf coast and came back with a show linking that disaster and the chronic loss of wetlands on our southern coast with wildlife back home.
At its length, the special is easily digestible, and brings a big environmental story back home, looking beyond the summer's oil spill story to seven decades of dredging and other work on the Mississippi River and it's impact far to the north in Wisconsin.
It repeats at 9 a.m. Saturday on Channel 10.
Speaking of MPTV: "InterCHANGE" host Dan Jones will be asking questions of the two candidates for Wisconsin governor, in a debate also airing on Channel 12 at 6:30 p.m. Friday, with Mike Gousha moderating.
Jones wants some ideas for questions, which you can e-mail to him, post at the "InterCHANGE" Facebook page or at MPTV's Web site.
On TV: In a rare event, CNN had more viewers than Fox News Channel or MSNBC, when the first Chilean miner was brought to the surface shortly after 10 p.m. Tuesday. Nielsen Media Research numbers show CNN had 4 million viewers, Fox News had 3.5 million and MSNBC had 1.1 million. Fox News still won primetime on Tuesday.
- Speaking of ratings, national laughing stock Brett Favre made ESPN's "Monday Night Football" the sixth biggest cable show ever. Nielsen counted 17.3 million for the Vikings-Jets game.
- NBC tries a live "30 Rock" at 7:30 tonight on Channel 4. There will be a different version for the West Coast, with slight differences in the script.
- There's been talk of moving the Oscars into January, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced late Wednesday that they'll stay on the last Sunday in February -- at least for another year.
- ABC will bring "Wipeout" back to its schedule in January.
- CBS has ordered a couple more episodes of "How I Met Your Mother," bringing the season total to 24.
- Spike TV has recreated an original trailer for "Back to the Future," complete with Michael J. Fox, for its Scream Awards at 8 p.m. Tuesday, and the 25th anniversary of the movie. Here's the new trailer:
TV news at its best: The Chilean government did its best to facilitate the amazing coverage of the successful rescue of the 33 trapped miners in a true reality drama that began shortly after 10 p.m. Tuesday and stretched until around 8 p.m. Wednesday. There was an unreal quality to the live pictures of the miners coming out one after another.
And while there were plenty of useless chattering and talking heads brought in during the 22 hours of coverage, both CNN and Fox News Channel fell silent after that last miner came out and crowd at the scene broke into the Chilean anthem.
It may be trite to say that TV is at its best in conveying the emotion of the moment, but it's hard not to feel the power of the moment for the people of this South American country -- and the countless TV viewers around the world who shared in it.
Here's a look at the final rescue coverage (the anthem starts at around 4:50):
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.
