Wednesday night's Milwaukee auditions on Fox's "American Idol" sent two messages to the outside world:
- Come to Milwaukee and see the cool stuff, like the amazing Milwaukee Art Museum and the stunning lakefront.
- Stay away from all the weirdos.
Before our civic pride gets all bent out of shape, remember that the job of "Idol" producers is to make an entertaining show -- and this one stretched two hours.
The episode showed two Milwaukeeans getting their golden ticket to Hollywood: 25-year-old Summerfest employee Naima Adedapo and 22-year-old Riverside High School student teacher Scott Dangerfield.
There were many other singers who made it to the next round. But they weren't from around here. My theory is that lots of auditions thought that they'd have a better chance in auditions in a smaller city, than in Los Angeles or New York. That brought hopefuls from across the country.
The other Wisconsinites got face time for comic relief. A Civil War re-enactor from Mount Zion, Wis., had no chance. Neither did an over-the-top Packers fan from Green Bay. And a West Allis construction worker got on camera because of the weirdness of his singing style.
It's part of the formula of "Idol," including the creative editing of last night's episode, which gave the impression that the Bradley Center auditions and the singers appearing before the new panel of judges -- Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, and sole veteran Randy Jackson -- at the same time.
The two events actually occurred months apart. But this is a TV show, not a news story or a historical document. Again, entertainment is the goal here.
And the upside is that Milwaukee came off pretty well.
Milwaukee was watching: The preliminary overnight ratings from Nielsen Media Research show a 42 percent of TVs on from 7 to 9 p.m. last night were tuned to Channel 6 for "Idol." It had a 29.4 rating, or 29.4 of all TV households in the Milwaukee market.
That translates to nearly 265,000 area households.
Green and gold radio: WTMJ-AM (620), which is carrying the Super Bowl on Feb. 6, is promoting the big game all next week by broadcasting its morning and afternoon shows live from Dallas.
All next week, the first half-hour of Charlie Sykes' show at 8:30 a.m. will feature Wayne Larrivee answering questions about the game. There's a Packers' hour every afternoon next week at 2 p.m. And, for the record, Larrivee and Larry McCarren will do play-by-play
By the way, if you're looking for somewhere to listen to the Super Bowl in Spanish, WJTI-AM (1460) is the place to go.
On TV: Nielsen Media Research estimated that 42.8 million people watched the State of the Union speech on broadcast and cable TV Tuesday night. Last year's audience was 48 million. President George W. Bush's final State of the Union address in 2008 had an audience of 37.5 million.
- Last week's Milwaukee County Executive forum is available on Time Warner Cable's Wisconsin On Demand Channel 411. The primary is Feb. 15.
- Ricky Gervais drops by the American version of his old show, "The Office," at 8 tonight on Channel 4. Now there's word that Will Ferrell will be a guest on several episodes later in the season.
- CBS has picked up "The Talk" for next season. It airs at 1 p.m. weekdays on Channel 58.
- Fox News says MTV is thinking about canceling its raunchy teen drama "Skins," because of plummeting ratings and fleeing advertisers. MTV tells the New York Daily News it ain't so. Of course, it ain't so until it's so.
- Keith Olbermann looks to be taking the Conan O'Brien route and use the Internet while he's contractually kept off TV. He's launched a second Twitter feed in addition to @KeithOlbermann. It's @FOKNewsChannel (for Friends of Keith).
That post-Super Bowl "Glee": It will be delayed an hour here on Channel 6, but here's a short advance look at the episode of "Glee" running after the Super Bowl (around 10:30 p.m. in Milwaukee):
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.
