Thursday's a big day in Wisconsin sports.
The Green Bay Packers play the Kansas City Chiefs Thursday night in a pre-season game from Lambeau Field around the same time the Milwaukee Brewers are finishing their game against the St. Louis Cardinals at Miller Park.
Then there's the UW Badgers game against UNLV from Madison.
And the Journal Broadcast Group stations in Milwaukee – WTMJ-AM (620), WLWK-FM (94.5) and Channel 4 – all have a piece of the action.
So the games will be divvied up. With one of them landing outside the Journal Broadcast umbrella.
Here's the lineup for Thursday:
- Coverage of the Brewers-Cardinals game begins at 2:35 p.m. on WTMJ. The first pitch is scheduled for 3:10 p.m. WTMJ picks up Packers play-by-play at the end of the Brewers game.
- Packers-Chiefs coverage starts at 5 on WLWK-FM (known to listeners as Lake FM), with kickoff at 7. The entire game will be heard on Lake FM, even when WTMJ picks it up.
- Badgers coverage begins at 5 p.m. on Clear Channel-owned WOKY-AM (920) at 5 p.m.
- Television coverage of the Packers is on Channel 4, starting at 6:30.
- TV coverage of the Brewers is on Fox Sports, with pre-game coverage at 2:30 p.m.
- TV coverage of the Badgers is on ESPN starting at 7.
Steve Wexler, who oversees all the Journal Broadcast properties explained why the Packers aren't starting on WTMJ (unless the Brewers finish early.)
The "Packers are on Lake FM this time because a) the Brewers game starts very early (3 p.m.), so there won’t actually be much of a conflict this time. In all probability, the Brewers game will end around 7, just as the Packers game starts. And, b) the Brewers are playing a game of significance against their divisional foe."
As for the simulcast of most of the Packers' game on WTMJ and Lake FM, Wexler says, "It is always our policy that once we begin a play-by-play broadcast on either station, we will always carry it through until conclusion, even if WTMJ joins it in progress.
"We don’t want listeners who started listening on one station have to leave and find it someplace else once it has started."
On TV: Hurricane Irene coverage obviously brought in viewers to cable outlets, with the Weather Channel leading the way on Sunday morning (6 to 11 a.m.) as the storm hit New York. Weather Channel had nearly two and a half million viewers, Fox News was nearly 2 million, CNN was 1.6 million and MSNBC had 637,000, according to Nielsen Media Research.
- If you're interested in the full cast of the latest installment of ABC's "Dancing with the Stars," here you go: Ricki Lake, Ron Artest, Kristin Cavallari, Chynna Phillips, David Arquette, Carson Kressley, Nancy Grace, J.R. Martinez, Hope Solo, Rob Kardashian, Elisabetta Canalis and Chaz Bono. The show returns Sept. 19.
- Steven Spielberg and Stephen King are teaming up to make a Showtime miniseries based on King's novel, "Under the Dome."
- ReelzChannel is back in the miniseries business after "The Kennedys," picking up Showtime's "Pillars of Earth" to start airing on Dec. 4
Charlie is really into his roast: Comedy Central has been releasing promos for its Sept. 19 roast of troubled Charlie Sheen, and as this one shows, Charlie's into the whole thing:
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.
