Get ready for at least a month of attack TV, that most unpleasant form of political "debate" that has become the norm in this country.
It's already begun, with Democrat Sandy Pasch putting an attack ad on the air in her challenge against Republican State Sen. Alberta Darling in this summer's recall election.
The election is scheduled for July 12, but if other candidates join the race, that would become the primary. The general election would then be Aug. 9.
It's only anecdotal information, based on my conversations with readers (and TV viewers), but I know how hated the attack ads are. Sadly, they've become the main style of political advertising on TV.
Wait until the outside interest groups start airing their ads, since Wisconsin has become a national battleground over the past months and these recalls are a key part of the fight.
Here's Pasch's spot, which opens with an attack on the Republican before presenting Pasch in a far more positive light, as you'd expect:
Milwaukee News Buzz bites the dust: Milwaukee Magazine's local news website has shut down, with magazine editor Bruce Murphy answering my email about its whereabouts with this:
"We’ve discontinued it and decided to devote our resources to insidemilwaukee.com, which will have more of a news presence."
A glance at insidemilwaukee.com finds something that's more of a promotional tool for the magazine, than a stand-alone local news site – at least right now.
As long as we're talking about Milwaukee Magazine, Mary Van de Kamp Nohl has picked up a Mirror Award from the Newhouse School for last summer's "Paper Money," on Journal Communications and what happened when its stock went public.
The Glenn Beck model: While his Fox News Channel show ends at the end of the month, Glenn Beck is planning for his next step, with an internet-only show that viewers will have to subscribe to.
GBTV.com is already up, and soliciting subscriptions for the new two-hour "Glenn Beck Show," which launches on-line Sept. 12. There's a "free premiere webcast" scheduled for 6 this evening.
Monthly subscription fees are $4.95 for a limited package of programming and $9.95 for everything GBTV.com has to offer.
On TV: NBC has outbid the other networks for the Olympics through 2020. Some of the competitors had promised real-time coverage, rather than packaging the big stuff in prime time.
- The Sheboygan Press reports local woman Allison Donlon's appearance on this morning's installment of CBS' "The Price is Right" came two years after her dad, Mark Donlon, went for the big money on the game show. "The Price is Right" airs at 10 a.m. weekdays on Channel 58.
- EW.com reports Josh Duhamel will do a final appearance on "All My Children" in August, reprising his role as con artist Leo du Pres on the ABC soap that shuts down for good in September.
- Craig Ferguson is taking CBS' "The Late Late Show" to Paris this summer, with episodes from France starting Aug. 1.
So long, Meredith: Today was the final day for Meredith Vieira on NBC's "Today," with Anne Curry taking her chair starting Thursday morning.
On Tuesday morning's show, the rest of the cast shared their favorite Meredith moments. Here's the video:
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.
