Your first thought may be that Milwaukee TV stations couldn't be happier as the biggest Packers story since the 1990s coincides with what's looking like it will be a HUGE snowstorm.
No, not necessarily.
The perfect storm would have come early next week, after the Super Bowl stories started fading.
Go to the cable news channels as a model.
Did you ever notice how they almost always focus on one story to the exclusion of all others? When it's massive demonstrations on the streets of Cairo, that's somewhat understandable (although hours of nothing happening don't exactly advance the story, and there's a world full of correspondents who aren't in Egypt).
But it could easily be a missing blond girl or the death of a pop star or something insignificant.
TV news finds it difficult to multi-task.
On the local front, there's a staffing issue. The economic problems of the last couple years means newsrooms don't have all the bodies they once did.
Add to that the problem of sending folks to Dallas for the Super Bowl, and the possible blizzard is not so much a gift from above, even though important February ratings period starts on Thursday.
All four Milwaukee TV news operations led off with the coming snow on their flagships 10 p.m. newscasts Monday night, offering six or seven minutes of weather stuff before getting into the Packers' arrival in Dallas.
That was the right news decision as the storm is the primary concern over the next two days.
And while there's plenty of storm coverage -- Tuesday morning newscasts started as early as 4 a.m. for the first round of 3 to 6 inches of snow -- you have to give credit to the chronic offenders for not going overboard.
Channel 4 didn't drop NBC's "Today Show" as it frequently does during Stormageddon coverage. All three network shows aired despite extended weather updates.
Interestingly, "Today" noted its own problem of two big stories, opening by noting the enormous storm crossing the heart of the U.S. (no, this isn't just a Milwaukee snowstorm), and live coverage from Cairo of the biggest demonstrations so far calling for the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.
Green and gold TV and radio: Time Warner Cable's Sports32 airs a series of "Super Bowl XLV Roundtable" programs at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday. Dennis Krause anchors the nightly discussions of the big game through Monday.
WMIL-FM (106.1) is sponsoring a Super Bowl viewing party at the Red Rock Salon, with morning guy Scott Dolphin hosting.
It begins at 4 p.m. Sunday at Red Rock Saloon, 1227 N. Water St. Admission is free, but the morning show is giving way passes to a VIP room that features free Coke Zero, Kraft snacks and more food (of course, they'd like you to listen to the morning show, which is the reason for the VIP room.)
Fox says its post-Super Bowl episode of "Glee" -- airing on Channel 6 around 10:30 p.m., after the local post-game show -- will run an hour and six minutes. If you're DVRing the show, you may want to make sure you record the program that follows it (Channel 6's late news) just in case.
On TV: NBC's Brian Williams is already anchoring from Cairo and Katie Couric is due there for tonight's 5:30 p.m. "CBS Evening News." ABC has its foreign correspondent powerhouse Christiane Amanpour on the ground already.
- CBS' "Two and a Half Men" is on hiatus until Charlie Sheen comes out of rehab. CBS may end up working around him, since he could be out for three months. The early solution will be doubling up on episodes of "Mike and Molly" and "Rules of Engagement."
- TNT is adding six more episodes to "The Closer," with EW.com reporting that could keep the show alive until 2012
- The latest talk about "The Kennedys" is that the miniseries could end up in syndication, with Deadline Hollywood reporting that Tribune Broadcasting is interested.
- The retiring Regis Philbin will be getting the "Legend" award at this year's TV Land Awards, taping April 10 for an April 17 airing on the cable channel.
The Groundhog Day blizzard: If that snow really comes today and tomorrow, you may be at home during the day Wednesday with some TV-watching time on your hand. Cable's Encore Channel is celebrating Feb. 2 by a marathon of Harold Ramis' funny (and suprisingly insightful) "Groundhog Day," with Bill Murray as a TV weather guy trapped by a blizzard.
Here's a sample of one of my favorite movies:
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
