Channel 12's long-awaited transition to high-definition local newscasts could be only "a couple of weeks away."
President and general manager Jan Wade tells me things are moving in that direction, but she's reluctant to pinpoint the exact date when the switch will be thrown.
"As you know, it is a lot of work and it is a process that has been underway for several months now. But it is coming very, very soon."
It comes as Channel 12 prepares for its annual broadcast of the fireworks launching Summerfest, which, coincidentally, was the first live HD telecast by a Milwaukee commercial TV station. That project, in 2006, was done with assistance from Milwaukee Public TV, a leader in the transition to the new TV technology.
That the ABC affiliate was moving toward HD is hardly a secret. There's a new news set and the weather and traffic graphic packages are being updated. And when the station went to a wide-screen (but still standard definition) format, many viewers thought the transition was complete.
Channel 4 was the first Milwaukee station to go HD, in 2009. Channel 6 followed later in the year.
On TV: Milwaukee Public TV is happy as can be with the results of its latest pledge drive, which exceeded its goal by 13 percent, an increase of 8.5 percent over June 2010.
- Speaking of MPTV, its entire "Milwaukee's Forest Home Cemetery" documentary is now available for viewing on its website.
- Lacey Crisp, who's been freelancing for Channel 4 since April, has joined the NBC station's staff as a general assignment reporter. She's worked at a number of stations, including Journal Broadcast Group sister station WGBA-TV in Green Bay.
- Keith Olbermann hasn't been banned by NBC. He's booked on Jimmy Fallon's show at at 11:37 p.m. Thursday on Channel 4 to talk about his Current TV show (Channel 226 on Time Warner Cable), which launches Monday night at 7.
She's back: It looks like Betty White is making the TV rounds again, guest-hosting on "Live with Regis and Kelly," and joining Jimmy Fallon in a recreation of the show her late husband, Allen Ludden, hosted - and she guested on - "Password."
Here's part one the video:
Here's part two:
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.
