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TV Talk with Rob Owen category | TribLIVE.com

TV Talk with Rob Owen category, Page 45

TV Q&A: Why do TV stations pay for bragging rights?
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: Channel 4 recently began promoting that they are the “WeatheRate Certified Most Accurate” weather forecast in Pittsburgh. Why would a station pay a company for...
TV Talk: Murrysville native Julie Benz spills ‘Secrets of a Gold Digger’ on Lifetime 
Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week. While some American actors have gone stir crazy waiting out the required 14-day quarantine before they can work on film and TV projects that shoot in Canada, Murrysville native Julie Benz learned to love the...
TV Talk: ‘Loki’ time hops, AMC’s ‘Kevin Can…’ struggles 
So far Marvel’s efforts for Disney+ have stretched from the genre-bending, clever “WandaVision” to the excessively violent, more routine “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” The streaming service’s latest series, the six-episode “Loki,” falls somewhere in between, but leans closer to the creative freshness of “WandaVision” in the first two...
TV Q&A: When will PBS’s ‘Call the Midwife’ be back with new episodes?
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: Do you have any clue as to when PBS’s “Call the Midwife” will be broadcast? Usually, by now the show is over for the year....
TV Talk: George A. Romero transports viewers to ‘The Amusement Park’ 
Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week. There are no zombies in the usual George A. Romero sense in his recently restored film “The Amusement Park,” streaming Tuesday on Shudder and AMC+. Instead, the emphasis is on discrimination against the elderly. “The...
TV Talk: ‘Meerkat Manor’ rebooted on BBC America with bigger scope
In this age of remakes, reboots and revivals, it stands to reason that even a 2005-08 natural history series can return with new episodes. Previously airing on Animal Planet, the reboot of “Meerkat Manor” from original series creator Caroline Hawkins and Oxford Scientific Films debuts at 8 p.m. Saturday on...
TV Q&A: Why did KDKA-TV make such a big deal out of an anchor’s retirement?
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: In reference to “Stacy Smith prepares to sign off from KDKA-TV on his terms” and his three-day consecration: I appreciate Stacy Smith and his devotion...
WTAE's Twitter account throws shade at WPXI
Fridays, particularly before a holiday weekend, are often dubbed “take out the trash day” for when a company wants to make moves that could be poorly received in hopes that most people aren’t paying attention. Someone running WTAE-TV’s social media account opted for a different kind of trashing on Twitter...
TV Talk: ‘Friends’ cast reunites; May sweeps local news ratings released
HBO Max and media hype over the long-in-the-works “Friends” reunion would make more sense if it was the cast of the one-time NBC hit reuniting to reprise their classic characters, but this is not that. The “Friends” reunion, streaming on HBO Max, is just the actors as themselves reminiscing about...
TV Talk: TV specials shine a light on 1921’s Tulsa race massacre 
Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week. Although The Washington Post began to dig into the history of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre earlier, it was HBO’s 2019 fictional limited series “Watchmen” that really turned the spotlight on this shameful forgotten piece...
Pittsburgh-raised music star Wiz Khalifa revealed on ‘Masked Singer’ 
In the end, it makes sense that Wiz Khalifa would turn out to be The Chameleon. After all, he’s already a chameleon-like multi-hyphenate: rap star, actor (“Dickinson”) and businessman (Khalifa Kush cannabis). The Pittsburgh Allderdice grad was unmasked Wednesday night on the fifth season finale of Fox’s “The Masked Singer”...
After 38 years, Stacy Smith anchors his last KDKA-TV newscast 
In the end, the most stoic of Pittsburgh news anchors remained as steady as ever. Stacy Smith’s voice cracked just the tiniest, almost imperceptible bit as he bid farewell to a 50-year broadcasting career, 38 years of it at Pittsburgh’s KDKA-TV. Smith anchored his final KDKA-TV newscast at 6 p.m....
TV Q&A: Why do newscasts use so much file footage? They didn’t do that in Walter Cronkite’s day
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: Why is it that the local TV news stations feel the need to always fill with file photos/video when on a given subject? I’ll pick...
TV Talk: WPXI meteorologist Danielle Dozier leaving Pittsburgh
Danielle Dozier, weekend evening meteorologist at WPXI since April 2018, will exit the station this week. Dozier’s last broadcast will be at 12 p.m. Wednesday. Dozier says it was her choice to leave Channel 11 but she wasn’t yet ready to say at what TV station or in which TV...
TV Talk: Stacy Smith prepares to sign off from KDKA-TV on his terms
For KDKA-TV news anchor Stacy Smith, the decision to retire was less about his age, 72, than about hitting a milestone. Now in his 50th year as a full-time broadcaster, Smith reached his five-decade goal. “I really feel like I could go on another five or 10 years,” Smith said...
TV Talk: Broadcast networks plan game show-heavy summer schedules 
Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers viewing tips for the coming summer season. With the exception of The CW — and to a lesser extent, Fox — it’s looking like a steady diet of unscripted programming on the broadcast channels this summer. CBS Although CBS still has season...
TV Talk: Broadcast networks announce fall schedules 
Stability is the strategy most broadcast networks are using for fall, adding just a few new shows and keeping their prime-time lineups largely intact. ABC Aside from “Big Sky” moving to 10 p.m. Thursday and “Celebrity Wheel of Fortune” joining “Supermarket Sweep” on Sunday, ABC’s prime-time schedule will look largely...
TV Talk: Pittsburgh native, ‘Pose’ star Billy Porter reveals he's HIV-positive 
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Pittsburgh native Billy Porter revealed he was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 2007. It’s one reason why his HIV-positive character, Pray Tell, on FX’s “Pose” meant so much to him. “I was able to say everything that I wanted to say through a surrogate,”...
TV Q&A: What is going on at KDKA-TV?
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: What is going on with KDKA-TV? All these young women newscasters — and a few young men, too. There are so many. The good ones...
TV Talk: ‘American Rust’ showrunner talks filming in and around Pittsburgh
Dan Futterman, writer, executive producer and showrunner on Showtime’s “American Rust,” currently filming around the region, first came to appreciate Western Pennsylvania when he shot a small role in the locally-filmed 1992 movie comedy “Passed Away.” “It’s not a great movie but I had a lot of time on my...
TV Talk: Wilkinsburg native says goodbye to ‘Last Man Standing’ 
Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week. Actors know they’ve signed up for an itinerant career, moving from one role to the next, but even by Hollywood standards the 2011-21 run of sitcom “Last Man Standing” has been a roller coaster for...
TV Talk: Summer TV series already debuting on cable, streamers 
It’s not yet Memorial Day but cable networks and streamers are already setting up their summer scripted series premieres, in part to get them out the door before the Summer Olympics in late July, a noticeably lighter month for premieres. On Friday Amazon’s Prime Video debuts “The Underground Railroad,” adapted...
TV Talk: Netflix sets premiere date for Pittsburgh-filmed ‘The Chair;’ 'This is Us' ending
Filmed-in-Pittsburgh Netflix comedy “The Chair” will premiere on the streaming service Aug. 27. The six-episode, half-hour comedy stars Sandra Oh and filmed locally earlier this year. The series follows the chair (Oh) of a university English department and should not be confused with Starz’s 2014 movie-making reality competition series, also...
TV Q&A: Where has a WTAE-TV forecaster gone?
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: I thought Ashley Dougherty returned from maternity leave already but I haven’t seen her on the noon news lately. Is she still with the station?...
TV Talk: John Shumway will anchor weekends on KDKA-TV
KDKA-TV veteran John Shumway will take over the weekend evening anchor desk this summer. The change in KDKA’s weekend anchor lineup comes after longtime weekend anchor Paul Martino was reassigned to weekday general assignment reporting and subsequently opted to retire July 1. KDKA reporters Bryant Reed and Royce Jones frequently...


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