Archive for February, 2016

Update: Local Oscar Ratings Revised Downward

Posted by Duane Dudek
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Despite controversy surrounding the Oscar nominations the final local ratings for the awards telecast on ABC appear to be a wash.

The final local rating for the show on WISN-TV (Channel 12) is expected to be 24.7.

That was slightly better than last year’s rating of  24.3, but 1.4 points lower than the originally reported preliminary overnight rating.

It is higher the national overnight rating of 23.1.

A local rating point is the equivalent of 8,822 television homes.

According to the national figure represents an 8-year low, down 6% from last year’s telecast which was the third worst since 2005 when Chris Rock last hosted the show.

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Axford Makes His Annual Oscar picks

Posted by Duane Dudek
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Former Milwaukee Brewer John Axford – now with the Oakland Athletics – predicts a big night for Leonardo DiCaprio and “The Revenant” picking both to pick up Oscars in ceremonies Sunday night on ABC.

He picks that film’s director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu to win the Oscar as well.

Axford started out making his picks on Twitter and then last year with the Players Tribune, an online magazine for and by athletes.

This year he made them as part of a team for ABC News.

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Milwaukee Media Notes: Pudi, Petrie, Public Radio

Posted by Duane Dudek
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Time for another bunch of low hanging fruit from the Milwaukee media tree

Marquette University alum Nick D’Agosto has what Deadline Hollywood calls the “sought after lead role” in the upcoming NBC series pilot  described as a  “documentary style procedural comedy.”

It is a fish out of water tale about a New York lawyer defending a poetry professor played by John Lithgow accused of murdering his wife in a small Southern town.

D’Agosto, a Nebraska native, is currently appearing on “Gotham,” and previously appeared on “Masters of Sex,” “E.R.,’ “House,” “The Office” and “Six Feet Under.”

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The Seven Wisconsin Angles You’ll Meet on Oscar Night

Posted by Duane Dudek
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By my count there are seven (7) Wisconsin connections in this Sunday’s Oscar awards ceremony.

Six are film related and one of them is corporate. To recap.

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 The list is front loaded by three local connections to the Oscar nominated stop-motion animated film “Anomalisa.”

Kenosha native and University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee film department Caroline Kastelic oversaw puppet fabrication for the film by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson.

After college Kastelic worked at Starburns Industries, the animation production company co-founded by Milwaukee native Dan Harmon, creator of “Community.”

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Milwaukee Radio Ratings For January

Posted by Duane Dudek
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Below find the radio ratings for the Milwaukee market during January.

WRIT-FM lost 5.7 share points from the so-called holiday book during which it played all Christmas music. But it still held a comfortable 2.1 point lead over second place WTMJ-AM.

Third ranked conservative talker WISN-AM seemed to benefit from the noisy Republican presidential contest, climbing 1.2 points.

Ratings dropped for only five stations – WMYX, WKLH, WJMR, WSSP and WOKY.

The survey was conducted between Dec. 31 and Jan. 27.

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Oscar Nominee “Son Of Saul” Riveting And Repellant

Posted by Duane Dudek
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At their best Holocaust films can never adequately capture the horror of concentration camps.

At their worst they fetishize a culture of death.

Then there’s “Son of Saul,” which is like an episode of “The Office” set in Hell.

It’s about a slaughterhouse where people are murdered in assembly line fashion. Management wears uniforms but slave labor does the dirty work.

Prisoners themselves, called Sonderkommando, herd Jews off trains like cattle and into changing rooms where wary but hopeful people undress with promise of soup and showers, the latter of course a euphemism for the Final Solution.

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Don’t Be Afraid Of Sundance Winner “The Witch”

Posted by Duane Dudek
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The essence of “The Witch” is below the surface, just like the fears and anxieties that rattle around our subconscious despite rational evidence to the contrary.

It is not a routine don’t-go-in-the-basement or -woods-style horror tale, its  perhaps misleading title aside. Rather the Sundance Film Festival award winner finds its escalating tension in the unknowable.

This portrait of how superstition and conspiracy is used explain away anything people don’t understand is set at a time when not much was understood.

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Michael Moore’s European Vacation

Posted by Duane Dudek
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In the documentary “Where To Invade Next” Michael Moore channels at least three of this election cycle’s presidential candidates with his Trump-style bluster, Sanders-type slogans and Christie-like girth.

The last, size, matters only because the veteran liberal provocateur has been the face of his films from the very first and now at the risk of judging a book by its cover looks frail and unhealthy.

That said the globetrotting Moore gamely takes a European vacation and cooks up a revealing and entertaining recipe for ways to make America great again.

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WDJT’s Lance Hill Reportedly Recovering From Stroke

Posted by Duane Dudek
Photo credit WDJT

Photo credit WDJT

WDJT-TV (Channel 58) meteorologist Lance Hill is on a medical leave of absence from the station.

Sources said he is reportedly recovering from a stroke.

Hill, 45, who joined the station in 2011 has been off the air since November. He was meteorologist on WDJT’s morning newscast.

Until recently his replacements said they were “filling in” for Lance.

Hill’s absence has been noticed and commented on by viewers and members of the local broadcast community.

In a statement Hill confirmed that he had “a medical issue.”

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Milwaukee Super Bowl Ratings Beat National Average

Posted by Duane Dudek

Overnight ratings for Sunday’s telecast of Super Bowl on CBS earned a 50.6 average for WDJT-TV (Channel 58). That was higher than the national overnight rating of 49.

Local ratings grew throughout the course of the game peaking at 55.4 in the closing moments.

Overnight ratings are preliminary. In Sunday’s game the Denver Broncos upset the Carolina Panthers, 24 to 10. A local rating point is the equivalent of 8,822 television homes.

The national overnight rating was the second highest ever for a Super Bowl game, beating last year’s rating of 49.7 on NBC, according to MediaLife magazine.

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