As we reported back in May, Bob Mayer announced his retirement from Miami’s WTVJ. Mayer, who has spent nearly four decades on Miami TV, decided to retire while NBC was offering veterans an enhanced retirement package. He officially signed off on July 1st. Watch below as he says goodbye.
(from News-Press.com) - Nearly everyone has heard of television ratings, but very few people are ever asked to participate in the polling that comes up with those magic numbers.
That’s been a big beef for many in the TV industry — the small sampling size of the audience — and that’s about to change in Southwest Florida and across the nation.
In August, a company called Rentrak is preparing to launch a new television audience measuring service that will include some 55,000 households in our area. That’s the approximate number of homes here that use the Dish Network satellite system.
Through Dish, Rentrak will be able to tell what shows are being watched in homes as well as other valuable information. The results are community-wide and anonymous.
“Not only will they know what channel is on, but it’s second-by-second tracking,” said Wayne Simons, the general manager at WINK-TV, which is subscribing to the new service. “We’ll be able to see when they are coming to WINK, where they are coming from and when they leave, where they are going.”….Cont….
(from Sun-Sentinel.com) - Patrick Fraser has the tenacity of a bulldog as a reporter. But he’s a Gator at heart.
The co-host of WSVN-Ch. 7’s popular “Help Me Howard” feature is a native Floridian, who earned his journalism degree from the University of Florida, then got his first job in TV at a Gainesville station. He’s been at Channel 7 since 1986.
Howard Finkelstein gets his name in the title but it’s Fraser who sorts through the thousands of requests for help from Howard. Fraser does the interviews, supervises shooting and narrates the segments. He’s also been given credit for fine-tuning the concept in its early days to make it more accessible and entertaining….Cont….
(from MiamiHerald.com) - You could hardly blame WFOR-CBS 4 news director Cesar Aldama if, every once in a while, he stopped to gape at the big city. He was born in a town so small it had just one traffic light, so isolated that his football team couldn’t play against other schools, so far from all known social and cultural trade routes that it practically declared a holiday when the first McDonald’s opened.
(from MiamiHerald.com) - You’d think the more viewers the better for the Miami Heat’s welcome ceremony this evening for LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh at the American Airlines Arena. But when local ABC affiliate WPLG decided to preempt Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy and Wife Swap to instead show the party inside live, the Heat pulled the plug.
At 8:03, anchor Laurie Jennings promised viewers, “We have this whole hour planned out for you, we have Calvin Hughes and Will Manso inside, sports reporter Andrea Brody outside, along with a team of reporters Janine Stanwood, Rob Schmitt, Jen Herrera, Neki Mohan, we have it all covered for you as 10,000 fans pack the American Airlines arena for a king’s welcome.”
But at 8:18, just 15 minutes later, Jennings announced, “Right now we’re learning from the Heat that they want to keep this all inside. We are not going to be able to share with our viewers what’s happening inside, only on the big jumbotron, so we’re going to break away and join Wife Swap in progress.”….Cont….
(from WPBF.com) - Here comes the bride! If you haven’t heard by now, WPBF 25 morning anchor Felicia Rodriguez is getting married in a few months.
Rodriguez said she never expected to meet “Mr. Right” while on the job, that exact thing happened while she was reporting from Super Clematis By Night in West Palm Beach just 3 days before the Colts were to play the Bears in the 2007 Super Bowl.
”We just walked by each other,” said David Miller, Rodriguez’s fiance. “I was working — she was getting ready to kick a field goal — and our our eyes just met.”
Rodriguez recalls first seeing Miller: “I see this guy walking down Clematis Street. He had on glasses and a big smile and I thought, ‘Wow, he’s cute. Who is he smiling at? Oh! Me!’” Here comes the bride! If you haven’t heard by now, WPBF 25 morning anchor Felicia Rodriguez is getting married in a few months….Cont….
