No, you don't have to watch Sunday night's Super Bowl, although the majority of TV viewers will be tuning in for at least part of the game -- or the commercials.
And the networks aren't making it easy, offering mostly reruns. But there are some choices to tempt you away from the game.
Here's a handful of alternatives:
1. Animal Planet's "Puppy Bowl" has become something of a Super Bowl Sunday tradition. Now in its sixth year, the latest version will feature rabbit cheerleaders and hamsters piloting a blimp.
Yes, hamsters.
The two-hour show starts running at 2 p.m. and repeats until 4 a.m.
2. ABC is offering reruns of its Wednesday night sitcoms, including four episodes of the best of the lot, "Modern Family," at 7, 8 9 and 9:30 p.m; the best is the Christmas episode at 8 p.m.
Take that, innocente!
3. MTV repeats the season of "Jersey Shore" from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and then repeats "Teen Mom" from 5 to 11 p.m.
4. If you want to go old school, Hallmark Channel offers a black-and-white "I Love Lucy" marathon from 8 a.m. through midnight.
5. TBS also takes us back to a far simpler time, when James Cameron's characters were all wet and shivering, rather than blue and spiritual and under threat from evil corporate interests. Cameron's "Titanic" airs at 6 and 10 p.m.
Vote for WKLH: Since there aren't any other Milwaukee stations in the race, I don't feel any reason not to urge you to vote for WKLH-FM (96.5) as North America's "Most Caring Radio Station."
You can find details here for the competition, which could yield $50,000 for Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.
You can vote until 11 tonight. And you can vote 10 times. Just like in Chicago.
The Super Bowl en Español: If you're looking for the big game in Spanish, WJTI-AM (1460) airs the game Sunday evening.
On TV: Former Channel 6 anchor Dawn Hasbrouck joins Chicago Fox affiliate WFLD-TV next week to co-anchor the noon newscast. She was most recently at Boston's WBZ-TV.
- Wednesday night's fourth episode of the BBC's very funny teen sitcom "InBetweeners" has a subtle dig at Brew City, closing with a reference to one of the gang taking his geeky young date and her mum to a "Milwaukee Fried Chicken." It doesn't sound like a classy place for a meal, although I bet the cheese curds are great.
- With ratings up for its ongoing fourth season, HBO has ordered a fifth season of "Big Love."
- Despite what the National Enquirer says, CNN's Anderson Cooper tweets that "while the plight of children in Haiti has touched us all, stories about me adopting a baby are completely false."
- Ashton Kutcher hosts this weekend's "Saturday Night Live" at 10:30 p.m. on Channel 4. Them Crooked Vultures are the musical group.
A Super Bowl ad teaser: If you are watching the Super Bowl for the ads on Sunday -- which I'll be live-blogging -- here's a teaser for one of the spots that look worth a look, Betty White for Snickers.
And as long as we're talking about the Super Bowl commercials, feel free to post your comments on the ads as I'm live-blogging the game starting at 5 p.m. Sunday right here at OnMilwaukee.com.
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.
