TV Talk: Lynne Hayes-Freeland calls it a career; documentaries with Pittsburgh ties debut at DOC NYC

From her earliest days producing “The Roy Fox Show” on KDKA-AM to her current noon-3 p.m. weekday radio show on the same station, to her years covering news and public affairs on KDKA-TV, Lynne Hayes-Freeland has been a consistent media presence in her hometown for more than 40 years.

That concludes this week.

Her final radio broadcast on KDKA-AM airs Friday and the last episode of “The Lynne Hayes-Freeland Show” debuted on KDKA-TV on Oct. 31. It’s still available online and features clips from her decades on the air, including interviews with Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela and Oprah Winfrey.

Hayes-Freeland got her start at KDKA-TV in the mid-1970s working as a production assistant and then as a field producer on “Evening Magazine.” She created “Weekend Magazine” and produced “Vibrations,” a forerunner to “The Lynne Hayes-Freeland Show,” which she began hosting in the 1980s. She also produced the annual “Children’s Hospital Free Care Fund Telethon” and moved into the news department as an on-air reporter in the late 1980s (she left TV reporting for her current KDKA-AM job in 2019).

So why is the Duquesne University grad ready to hang up her microphone?

“The pandemic,” Hayes-Freeland said last week.

Her children and grandchildren live in Atlanta and the pandemic made traveling to see them a challenge.

“I was missing holidays and birthdays and I didn’t want to do that anymore,” she said. “And to be quite candid, it was also now 40 years into this career.”

While Hayes-Freeland will no longer be part of the day-to-day Pittsburgh media landscape, after Jan. 1 she will call in to Marty Griffin’s 9 a.m.-noon. KDKA-AM show for an hour once a week, which she can do from Pittsburgh, Atlanta or anywhere.

“I’m looking forward to calling him out on a whole lot of things,” she said.

Hayes-Freeland will also continue to host “Minority Health Matters,” an outgrowth of the pandemic, on KDKA-AM at noon Saturday.

On TV, she’ll co-host “KDKA’s Free Care Fund Benefit Show” with Ken Rice at 7 p.m. Dec. 16.

Hayes-Freeland said she hasn’t missed reporting for TV – she still gets to talk about current events daily on the radio — particularly given how TV news has changed over the decades.

“When I started, Pittsburgh was a Top 10 market, a destination, a place people would spend their whole lives trying to get to so you weren’t nearly as inclined to leave,” she said. “There was a time if you had a really good story or issue you could get three-to-five minutes to explore it. Now it’s like, ‘Nah, you’ve got a minute-and-a-half, take it or leave it.’”

Still, she wonders if in six months she’ll get restless without a daily outlet. For now, she’s just grateful: “To be able to leave on my own terms is amazing.”

Pittsburgh debuts at DOC NYC

Two documentaries with Pittsburgh ties debut at the DOC NYC film festival this weekend and both are available for paid online viewing.

“A Tree of Life,” from Pittsburgh native director Trish Adlesic (with Western Pennsylvania natives Michael Keaton and Mark Cuban among its executive producers), has its world premiere Sunday. The 80-minute film features interviews with survivors of the 2018 white supremacist’s attack on Squirrel Hill’s Tree of Life synagogue and is available for online screening Nov. 15-28 for $12 at https://www.docnyc.net/film/a-tree-of-life/.

InHospitable Clip: Healthcare Economist Martin Gaynor on nonprofit hospitals from Cora Media on Vimeo.

“InHospitable,” which has its world premiere Saturday, follows patients and activists fighting against the high cost of health care at UPMC. The 102-minute film is available for online screening Nov. 14-28 for $12 at https://www.docnyc.net/film/inhospitable/.

‘Mayor of Kingstown’

Despite the partial prison setting, Paramount+’s latest series from writer/director Taylor Sheridan is less “Oz” and more “Yellowstone,” Sheridan’s Paramount Network hit.

While “Oz” centered its stories on a diverse array of prisoners, “Mayor of Kingstown,” streaming Sunday and executive produced by Pittsburgh native Antoine Fuqua, focuses on Michigan’s McLusky family, particularly brothers Mitch (Kyle Chandler), Mike (Jeremy Renner) and Kyle (Taylor Handley), self-styled Kingstown power brokers who bend the law to, in their minds, maintain peace. Dianne Wiest co-stars as the boys’ disapproving mother.

“Kingstown,” written by Sheridan, is another muscular soap that’s long on characters talking in indecipherable lingo and short on clarity (Are these for-profit prisons? Is a McLusky the warden?).

The premiere episode of “Kingstown’s” 10-episode first season will also air Sunday on Paramount Network following “Yellowstone.”

‘The Shrink Next Door’

Despite starring comic actors Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd, “The Shrink Next Door,” based on a podcast of the same name and streaming Friday on Apple TV+, is less of a comedy and more of a drawn-out drama that should have been a movie.

Ferrell plays Marty, a perpetually nervous New Yorker whose sister (Kathryn Hahn, “WandaVision”) encourages Marty to go to therapy. Marty resists but eventually he looks forward to his visits with Dr. Ike Herschkopf (Rudd), who inserts himself into his client’s life in unethical, untherapeutic ways. The degree to which Ike takes advantage of Marty grows as the years pass.

And that’s pretty much … it.

Though the performances are uniformly terrific – Ferrell has to walk the highest tightrope, making Marty believable but not too pathetic — “The Shrink Next Door” is Exhibit A in streaming series bloat. There’s not enough story to justify eight episodes. Watch the first three and the last two and you’ll get all the story you need.

Kept/canceled

Paramount+ renewed animated “Star Trek: Prodigy” for a second season.

The creator of Netflix’s “Squid Game” says the show will have a second season.

“Search Party” will end with its fifth season debuting Jan. 7 on HBO Max.

Channel surfing

“The 11th Hour” anchor Brian Williams will depart MSNBC and NBC News by the end of this year. … Cornerstone TeleVision’s Pittsburgh Faith Family Channel, featuring worship services from multiple Christian denominations and non-denominational churches, is now available on Comcast Channel 1185.