You may have sensed it in the streets, but Milwaukee has lost one of its "reality" TV stars.
Molly Malaney, who lost Jason Mesnick to former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader Melissa Rycroft, and then, almost inexplicably, won him back on ABC's "The Bachelor," has packed her bags and moved to Seattle.
It was an odd ending to last season's edition of the "reality" romance show, and the 25-year-old Malaney has been adamant that it wasn't scripted.
But she also hadn't been in any hurry to move to the Northwest.
"We're just taking it at our own pace, we're not rushing anything, we're not getting engaged, we're just, you know, dating," she told me back in March after the show concluded.
Malaney popped up this week in a Q & A in the online Seattle Post-Intelligencer, reporting that, yes, indeed, she and Mesnick are engaged and living there together, along with Mesnick's son.
No date has been set for a wedding that's likely to get coverage on tabloid TV, since nuptials coming from the ABC dating show are a rarity. Malaney tells the Seattle news site, "it will definitely be in the next year."
Malaney has left her job as a buyer with Kohl's Department Stores, where she worked for the past several years. She's a native of Grand Rapids, Mich.
She's started a new job with Seattle-based OnlineShoes.com, where she's planning to write a blog. Malaney's officially a "co-op marketing specialist," whose job is to create partnerships with major shoe brands.
On TV: Channel 4 debuted new "road warrior" morning traffic reporter Caitlin Morrall on Wednesday morning. The 26-year-old Burlington native has done some on-air work for sports/talk WAUK-AM (540). She may be best known for competing for the Miss USA crown in 2007 as Miss Wisconsin. She replaces Lisa Manna, who left to spend more time at home.
- Model Joanna Krupa and partner Derek Hough have been cut from ABC's "Dancing with the Stars," leaving Kelly Osbourne, Donny Osmond and singer Mya competing in next week's season finale. Krupa gets the cover of the December issue of Playboy as a consolation prize.
- Wendy Williams' daytime talk show has been renewed through 2012. "The Wendy Williams Show" airs at 9 a.m. weekdays on Channel 6.
- Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello confirms that Amy Poehler's hubby, Will Arnett, will appear in her "Parks and Recreation" in January.
- Broadcasting and Cable says Oprah Winfrey's favorite interior designer, Nate Berkus, will get his own daytime show in fall 2010, joining a growing list of Oprah proteges with their own shows.
MTV gets Michael Jackson's flick: MTV Networks has picked up the U.S. rights to "Michael Jackson's "This Is It," the post-mortem concert film that's still playing in area theaters.
It won't hit MTV's various channels until 2011, but the trailer for the film follows below if you need a little Jacko, right this very minute.
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.
