TV Talk: Former KDKA-TV reporter Julie Grant announces the National Spelling Bee; ‘Pistol’ premieres

Former KDKA-TV legal reporter Julie Grant, now a Court TV anchor, will be an announcer for live coverage of the “2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee” next week, a full-circle moment for the Steubenville, Ohio, native who once attended the Bee in Washington, D.C., as a competitor.

Moving from its long-time home on cable’s ESPN to Ion (WINP-TV, over-the-air Channel 16; Channel 56 on Comcast, Channel 16/516 on Verizon’s FiOS TV) and Bounce (over-the-air Channel 16.2 and 40.3), the Bee semi-finals will air 8-10 p.m. June 1 and the finals will air live on June 2. LeVar Burton is the on-camera host of the coverage with Grant serving as a telecast announcer. (Preliminaries and quarterfinals will stream on free, ad-supported streaming channels Ion Plus and Bounce XL beginning May 31.)

“I guess we could use the analogy like with a game on ESPN, the sportscasters in the booth are going to call the game and we’re gonna do play-by-play and color commentary, which is also similar to what I do on Court TV with the trials,” Grant said in a phone interview Monday. “Viewers will be hearing us when a contestant goes up to the microphone. We might say a little bit about the person, share some interesting facts.”

Grant, who continues to recover from injuries sustained in an April car accident, turned 14 in 1995 during her week in Washington after advancing from a local round of the Bee to the national tournament. She was in eighth grade and was eliminated in the second round in Washington. The Bee falls on her birthday week again this year.

“Getting to work with LeVar Burton is the best birthday present I could receive,” Grant said. “I was a ‘Reading Rainbow’ kid and absolutely loved him when I was a little girl.”

Grant will be off from her Court TV duties next week to do the Bee. Lately she’s been busy covering the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial, which mostly seems to have further damaged the reputations of both performers.

“There are loads and loads of dirty laundry coming out in this case, and if the jury believes both of their stories, then they both have been violent toward each other,” Grant said. “I think it’s very possible that this jury comes back and doesn’t award either of them anything. The allegations that are being made and the details that are coming out are very, very sad. And I think they’re both very fortunate that they’re both healthy and alive and well and even able to be litigating this. But I think the only real winners are the lawyers who are fattening their bank accounts by trying the case.”

Grant returns to Pittsburgh often to spend time with her fiancé, Pittsburgh-based country music singer Justin Fabus. She was back earlier this month to emcee the 15th annual Cocktails & Cuisine charity event to benefit Crisis Center North. Grant serves on the advisory board of the Paws for Empowerment program that uses dogs in animal-assisted therapy and courtroom accompaniment for survivors of domestic violence.

‘Pistol’

A six-episode, early 1970s-set limited series (all episodes debut on Hulu Tuesday ), “Pistol” chronicles the rise of British punk revolutionaries The Sex Pistols in this rambunctious, raw retelling based on a memoir by guitarist Steve Jones.

Directed with a gritty bounciness (and a hat tip to the anarchic) by Danny Boyle (“Slumdog Millionaire”), early episodes are more about the personalities and the band’s formation than its music.

The actors are largely unknown except Maisie Williams (“Game of Thrones”) as an iconoclast and the show’s early MVP, the endlessly energetic Thomas Brodie-Sangster (“The Queen’s Gambit”) as the Pistols’ manager.

There’s loads of great music on the soundtrack that’s representative of the era (not just by The Sex Pistols) that’s matched by Boyle’s shooting style that embraces the period in an off-kilter, slightly chaotic manner.

Pittsburgh native on ‘Commit or Quit’

Antoine Morgan, a Westinghouse High School grad who’s now an Atlanta-based actor, appears in the May 26 and June 2 episodes of WEtv’s “Commit or Quit with Judge LynnToler” (10 p.m. Thursdays).

The series follows couples in crisis with Toler hearing their stories and making a judgment on whether or not they should stay together.

WEtv says Antoine, 36, and Kieyesia, 41, have been dating for six years after meeting on social media but “Antoine’s ex-fiancé, and mother of his child, continues to [butt] into their relationship. On top of all of the baby mama drama, Antoine’s social media persona is a source of contention for Kieyesia and she doesn’t like that she is completely absent from his world.”

Morgan said he went on the program “to show how every relationship has their ups and downs.”

New news director

KDKA-TV general manager Chris Cotugno announced the hiring of a new news director, Shawn Hoder. He’s set to start at the station July 6, succeeding Kathy Hostetter, who was upped to GM at the CBS-owned station in Baltimore earlier this year.

Hoder is a West Virginia native who, in 1994, was a photographer and producer at WPXI-TV. He’s also worked as an on-camera investigative and consumer reporter at stations in Atlanta, Seattle, Orlando, and Columbus, Ohio. He comes to KDKA from WTSP-TV, the CBS affiliate in Tampa, Fla., where he’s been the assistant news director and senior executive producer since 2019.

KDKA-TV sharing

Affiliates have long-shared video with the network and TV stations under the same affiliate groups have routinely shared stories with one another.

Over the weekend CBS-owned KDKA-TV pitched in to help CBS OO KYW-TV in Philadelphia with a staffing shortage, loaning out forecaster Mary Ours who appeared on KYW’s air Saturday offering Philadelphia’s weather forecast from KDKA’s studio in Pittsburgh.

That followed CBS-synergistic, money-saving reciprocity a week earlier when KDKA did not send a reporter and photographer to cover the Penguins’ last game in New York, relying instead on footage from CBS-owned New York City station WCBS-TV.

Channel surfing

After nine years at WTOV-TV in Steubenville, anchor Rich Pierce joins WPXI-TV as a reporter, returning to work in his “home television market.”

PERSONAL NEWS: pic.twitter.com/VoJQy3LjiO

— Rich Pierce (@RichWTOV9) May 25, 2022

… Tuesday’s “This is Us” finale drew 6.4 million viewers and notched the show’s best demo rating and total viewer number since November 2020.