TV Q&A: Are Lonni Rivera and Yolanda Hawkins the same WPXI reporter?
Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen answers reader questions every Wednesday at TribLive.com in a column that also appears in the Sunday Tribune-Review.
Q: WPXI has a new reporter, Lonni Rivera. Am I crazy or is that WPXI’s former reporter Yolanda Hawkins from years ago?
— Tyler, via email
Rob: They are one and the same.
Rivera, who grew up in West Mifflin, explained in May that she’s always gone by the nickname Lonni to friends and family. “Hawkins” is her mother’s last name.
When Rivera left Channel 11 in 2007 after a four-year stint at the station, she decided to use her nickname and her biological father’s last name, which is Rivera.
“It’s a way of honoring my mom — Lonni is very special name to her; she had a girlfriend name Lonni — and also a way of honoring my father,” said Rivera, who returned to Pittsburgh from California during the pandemic to be with her mom.
Upon her return to Pittsburgh, Rivera was looking for a flexible freelance schedule and Channel 11 needed another reporter, resulting in her return to the station’s newscasts.
Q: With SAG/AFTRA on strike along with the writers, how does this affect comedians? If they are members of either union, are they obligated to cancel live comedy shows?
— Jennifer, via Facebook
Rob: No one is striking against comedy clubs, just as no one is striking against Broadway producers. They’re striking against the major production/media companies (Paramount, Disney, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Sony, NBCUniversal).
Just as Broadway is unaffected by the strikes, live comedy shows will not be affected by the strikes. The biggest grey area I’ve seen so far is fan convention appearances because usually actors attend those to promote work done under the aegis of studios and to promote that work would go against SAG-AFTRA strike rules. (Though their may be some wiggle room for appearances around past work.)
Q: What have the ratings been like for the late-night talk show circuit since the networks have been forced to air re-runs amid the writers’ strike?
— Xavier, via email
Rob: Even before the writers’ strike late-night TV was in sad shape. Ratings were down and so were revenues, falling from about $900 million annually in 2016 to $342 million in 2022, per Axios.
Certainly ratings have been depressed since the May 2 start of the writers’ strike, though when I went looking for data, I found little, suggesting the late-night shows have lost so much relevance there’s no longer much coverage of their ratings.
One ratings chart that covers late April, May and June shows some decline for “The Last Show with Stephen Colbert,” but during those periods ratings did not fall off a cliff as one might expect them to do. Another source stopped tracking late-night ratings in June but through that period while there was ratings erosion it was milder than one might expect.
Similarly, most local May sweeps numbers for late-night shows weren’t terrible either.
In May 2023, “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on KDKA was down almost a full ratings point in households compared to May 2022, but the demo decline was only one-tenth of a point year-to-year. “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on WTAE-TV and “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on WPXI-TV were essentially flat year-to-year.
You can reach TV writer Rob Owen at rowen@triblive.com or 412-380-8559. Follow @RobOwenTV on Threads, X, Bluesky and Facebook. Ask TV questions by email or phone. Please include your first name and location.
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