UPDATE: The "Lost" party has been canceled, after the organizers learned they didn't have permission to air the show at the Rosebud. Money was being refunded to anyone who bought tickets.
Theresa Nemetz and a group of her friends have been watching ABC's "Lost" since the beginning.
No, not just watching the show. They've been watching it as a group. A group of about 20 people.
And the next day they mull over what they'd seen.
"Last year, it had grown so big that we didn't have enough seats in the house," she says.
So her group decided that as soon as the series finale date was announced they'd start planning for a real event. And since we're talking about a group of professional event planners, we're talking about a real event being planned for May 23 -- a Sunday night.
Although this is technically a private party, it's been thrown open to all "Lost" fans with a screening at the Rosebud Theater, 6823 W. North Ave., Wauwatosa. Doors will open at 6, the recap episode will air at 7 and the final episode of "Lost" begins at 8.
Admission is $5, with a $1 service fee. Tickets are available online. Nemetz says the goal is to break even on the cost of renting the theater.
Food and drink will available for purchase at the theater. And during commercials, there will be giveaways of food -- stuff like canned goods -- from "The Dharma Initiative," a research institute that regular "Lost" viewers are aware of.
Why plan so big for a TV show?
"'Lost' brings people together to try to figure out what exactly is going on, and that’s something that no other show on TV does right now," says Nemetz, who runs Milwaukee Food Tours. "That's why we want to have a large series finale party, so that we can all come together when the final mysteries are solved."
A new episode of "Lost" airs tonight at 8 on Channel 12, following a repeat of last week's episode.
ABC's sci-fi drama "V" returns from hiatus tonight at 9 (technically at 9:06 p.m.), with a recap of the first four episodes.
On the radio: News guy / fill-in talker Nick Reed has left WISN-AM (1130) after two years. He's taking a job Journal Broadcast Group's KSGF-AM/FM, a talk station in Springfield, Mo. He'll have his own home and both he and his wife come from the station.
- Former Channel 4 traffic reporter Lisa Manna and former WTMJ-AM (620) radio reporter Velia Alvarez have launched a weekly podcast called "Deep Dish Snark." In the spirit of full disclosure, Alvarez is married to OnMilwaukee.com publisher Andy Tarnoff.
- Richard Roeper, the Chicago Sun-Times columnist best known as a co-host of the syndicated "At the Movies," is joining Roe Conn in the 2 to 6 p.m. weekday slot on Chicago's WLS-AM (890), starting April 12. The news/talk station is pretty easy to pick up in southeast Wisconsin.
- Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum (he brought us the phrase "axis of evil) calls conservative talk the biggest winner of the health care reform. Frum blogs that it's "a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it's mission accomplished."
- Jonathan Green's annual WTMJ Teddy Bear Patrol campaign runs until April 23, and seeks the donation of new teddy bears to provide to local law enforcement and fire officials to help children in traumatic situations. Here's more information, with a list of drop-off locations.
CBS says "no" to Tiger Woods: While ESPN and the Golf Channel did brief interviews with Tiger Woods in advance of his return to golf in next month's Masters, CBS declined an offer to talk to him.
CBS is airing the tournament.
The New York Times' Bill Carter blogs that the five-minute interview wouldn't have been available to air until Sunday night, and such a brief piece wouldn't have fit in the format of "60 Minutes," the only network news show available until the next morning's "The Early Show."
Here's ESPN's five minutes with Tiger:
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.