Media Beat

Angenette Levy didn't see it coming, how people would be so moved by her going.

Thom Brennaman, who was suspended mid-game five weeks ago for making a homophobic slur,  has resigned his Cincinnati Reds TV job after 13 years.

"My family and I have decided that I am going to step away from my role as the television voice of the Cincinnati Reds," Brennaman, 56, wrote Friday in a letter obtained by WVXU.

WLWT-TV will be hiring two new reporters to replace Andrew Setters and Alexis Rogers "in the very near future," says Branden Frantz, Channel 5 president and general manager.

Cincinnati's E.W. Scripps is buying ION Media, the national network originally called PAX TV, which distributes programming on its 71 stations in 62 markets, and on 124 affiliated TV stations, reaching 96% of all U.S. homes.

For most of my 35 years covering television, I'd write a story for the day after the Emmy Awards about TV's biggest week filled with dozens of new fall TV series and your returning favorites.

Not this year. 

Roll over Beethoven, and tell Pagliacci the news!

WGUC-FM (90.9), Cincinnati's classical music and opera station, turns 60 at 4 p.m. today. 

The station will repeat its inaugural broadcast at that hour, a 20-second clip of the University of Cincinnati chimes followed by then-chief announcer George Brengel proclaiming, "This is WGUC in Cincinnati!'

American Factory has won a trifecta.

Yellow Springs filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, who shot the film at a Dayton-area former GM plant, won an Emmy Monday. This follows their Academy Award for best documentary and 2019 Sundance Film Festival trophy for best documentary and Grand Jury Prize.

Larry Thomas was born to love movies. Thomas, the former owner of The Movies Repertory Cinema in downtown Cincinnati and Cincinnati Public Radio film critic, was the son of West Virginia parents who owned several drive-ins and theaters.

What was supposed to be some short website videos turned into a two-hour special about the creation of FC Cincinnati and how it captured the hearts of Greater Cincinnati.

Welcome to a fall TV season unlike any other. Most of your favorite shows – This Is Us, Bull, NCIS, The Good Doctors – won't return until November or sometime next year because of production delays due to COVID-19.

Without several thousand people around to watch the Western & Southern/WEBN Fireworks due to the pandemic, WKRC-TV's live telecast definitely will look different on Sunday (9 p.m., Channel 12).

Greater Cincinnati daytime viewers will see more of the same this fall.

The new daytime shows can be counted on one hand: Drew Barrymore's talk show premiering Monday, Sept. 14 on WXIX-TV; Protection Court switching from WXIX-TV to Channel 12.2 that day; and WSTR-TV adding a second run for the People's Court at 9 a.m. on Sept. 21.

WGN America launches the NewsNation primetime national newscast 8-11 p.m. today (Eastern) in hopes of finding a center lane between the Fox News Channel and MSNBC.

Fans of This Is Us, Law & Order: SVU, The Blacklist, Chicago Med, Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D. must wait until November for new episodes while NBC fills the next two months mostly with The Voice, game shows and reruns during the pandemic.

As I reported last week, ABC and CBS are doing the same.

WCPO-TV has hired Iraq war veteran Adrian Whitsett to co-anchor Good Morning Tri-State with Julie O'Neill.

The former Marine comes from Orlando's WESH-TV, where he was morning anchor.

One Day At A Time. That's the name of Netflix's revival of a 1975 sitcom which CBS will broadcast this fall, since its own shows haven't resumed production due to the coronavirus pandemic.

One day at a time also explains how the TV networks are dealing with the annual fall TV season launch when unable to air the lineups they announced in May.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare wrote that "the course of true love never did run smooth."

But from all accounts, the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company’s adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream did run smoothly when recorded for broadcast on WVXU at 7 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 30.

In a Cincinnati TV first, WCPO-TV will broadcast one hour of local news at 7 p.m. weekdays starting Monday, Aug. 31.

It's the end of an era on WVXU-FM. Around Cincinnati, the 7 p.m. Sunday arts and culture show, airs its final broadcast after 15 years this Sunday.

It's provided an important voice to local theaters, authors, musicians, actors and other performers, especially after the Enquirer's arts and entertainment staff was mostly disbanded in 2014, and Northern Kentucky University sold off folk-rock WNKU-FM in 2017.

The show must go on! WKRC-TV will broadcast the Western & Southern/WEBN-FM fireworks 9 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 6, from an undisclosed location due to the coronavirus.