John Kiesewetter: Media Beat

TV stations which loved the web traffic for the naked Bengals locker room video would hate losing unrestricted access to players immediately after games.

WCPO-TV’s John Popovich, WLWT-TV’s George Vogel, WXIX-TV’s Joe Danneman and Bengals announcer Dan Hoard do appreciate the concerns of Bengals tackle Andrew Whitworth, who doesn’t like having media in the locker room while players shower and dress. He said the NFL’s policy “is dated, it’s old, and it needs to change.”

But local sports broadcasters are wary of any limitations or changes after the NFL’s own network crew positioned a camera to show naked men in the background while interviewing Bengals for the NFL Network Sunday.

When Mariah Carey needed a child actress to sing her “Oh Santa” in “A Christmas Melody,” she signed Broadway’s “Matilda: The Musical” star.

Nine-year-old Fina Strazza had recently finished an 11-month run in New York’s Shubert Theater when she got the call for the Hallmark Channel movie Carey is appearing in and directing in Cincinnati this month.

It came just in time. Fina was en route to meet with a theater director when her agent and manager called to say, “Turn around! You’re going to Ohio!”

Fina, in her first major TV role, plays Emily Parson, daughter of a single mother (Lacey Chabert) who recently moved back home to fictional Silver Lake. Carey, who appears as the diva PTA president, rewrote lyrics to her 2010 “Oh Santa” hit for Fina to sing at the Silver Lake Elementary Snowflake Pageant.

1:30 P.M. UPDATE MONDAY OCT. 19: Be on the lookout for Kathy Najimy. She’s also in Mariah Carey’s “A Christmas Melody” Hallmark Channel movie. She plays Aunt Sarah to Kristen (Lacey Chabert). Sarah owns the diner where Kristen often goes to eat.

You’ll never watch Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” the same way after reading this column.

I always learn a lot about TV when former NBC late-night programming executive Rick Ludwin returns to speak to students at Miami University, his alma mater.

On Thursday night, he revealed NBC's camera tricks on Fallon’s top-rated “Tonight Show” to overcome limitations of cramped Studio 6B in New York’s Rockefeller Center – and a few other observations about Stephen Colbert and the changes in TV’s late-night landscape.

When you watch this promo for Vanessa Lachey’s new NBC sitcom, “Truth Be Told” Friday, it’s clear what the premiere episode is about: sex and porn jokes.

Lachey plays Tracy, a “tough as nails attorney” married to a Mitch (Mark-Paul Gosselaar, “Franklin & Bash,” “NYPD Blue,” “Saved by the Bell”), who have a 4-year-old daughter.  They live next door to newlyweds Russell (Tone Bell, “Bad Judge”) and Angie (Bresha Webb, “Grey’s Anatomy”).

In the premiere (8:30 p.m. Friday, Channel 5, NBC), Tracy and Mitch search for a babysitter so they can go to a concert with their neighbors. That’s how they find Kim (Antonimar Murphy), a well endowed “delicious” young woman. To make sure you know she has a great body, the sitcom gives viewers a close-up of her cleavage. Then the guys and their wives think they recognize her from pornography.

On this day in TV Kiese history… Over-the-Rhine resident James Hoskins, armed with five guns and 600 rounds of ammunition, held nine WCPO-TV employees hostage inside the station at 500 Central Avenue downtown on Oct. 15, 1980.

Hoskins, 41, gained entry after approaching reporter Elaine Green and photographer John Ehrhart with a semi-automatic rifle in the parking lot about 2 a.m., as they returned from working on a story.

Once inside, he wanted to make a statement on live television. Green instead offered to videotape him. Her 14-minute interview at gunpoint (see a clip below) won a prestigious George Foster Peabody Award.

Hoskins shocked them during the interview when he confessed to murdering Melanie Finlay, 30, in their 12th Street apartment earlier that night. “I blew my girlfriend away tonight. It’s over for me… I killed her,” Hoskins said while waving the rifle.

“NFL Turning Point” features Andy Dalton leading the Bengals comeback victory Sunday over the Seattle Seahawks on the NBC Sports Channel series Wednesday.

The weekly NFL Films’ program “reviews Andy Dalton’s performance on Sunday and provides an analysis of his consistent play through the first five games of the 2015 campaign. The segment then examines the thrilling conclusion of Sunday’s game and highlights how Dalton orchestrated the Bengals’ comeback win against the Seahawks to remain undefeated,” NBCSN announced.

Before football was a national Sunday obsession, the first professional games were played throughout Ohio in Cincinnati, Dayton, Portsmouth, Akron, Ironton,  Akron, Canton, Massillon and other towns.

“Before The League,” Time Warner Cable SportsChannel’s new six-part series, looks at the kick off of pro football to celebrate the 95th anniversary of the American Professional Football Association, forerunner to the NFL. The first NFL game was played in Dayton on Oct. 3, 1920, when the Triangles defeated the Columbus Panhandles.

With rare photos, film and some re-creations, the documentary looks at the violent early years of the game, and the origins of small town teams like the Triangles, Portsmouth Spartans, Ironton Tanks, Massillon Tigers and Canton Bulldogs, plus the Buffalo (NY) All-Americans, Rochester (NY) Jeffersons, Milwaukee Badgers and Green Bay Packers.

The new Comet sci-fi channel premieres here Oct. 31 on a new WSTR-TV digital signal, Channel 64.3.

Reruns of “Stargate SG-1” and “Outer Limits” will air on Comet, jointly owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the Sinclair Television Group, which operates WSTR-TV and WKRC-TV.

The 24-hour network will feature “a mix of science fiction, fantasy and adventure fan-favorite titles from MGM” including the “Poltergeist” and “Dead Like Me” TV series, according to the Comet announcement.

Reporter Zac Pitts is leaving WCPO-TV to return to Dayton’s WDTN-TV, the hometown station where he started his career as a teleprompter operator.

Pitts has been a Channel 9 daytime general assignment reporter for 18 months.

Starting Oct. 21, he will appear on Channel 2's “Living Dayton” noon-1 p.m. weekday lifestyle show with co-hosts Katie Kenney and Sallie Taylor, according to TVNewsCheck.

Why did WNKU-FM drop “UnderCurrents,” “E-Town” and “Little Steven’s Underground Garage” and move “The Real Mary Peale” and the “World  Café?”

“It’s fairly straight forward,” says Sean O’Mealy, general manager. “The objective is to appeal to and engage with a larger/wider group of music lovers in the Greater Cincinnati region who otherwise are ignored by mainstream radio.”

The new fall lineup implemented this week features more local shows. Former WOXY-FM host Matt Sledge will be heard 2-7 p.m. Saturday, with Peale moving to 5-8 p.m. Sunday nights. She had hosted  “Jelly Pudding” Sunday nights on WOFX-FM (92.5) before joining WNKU-FM in 2009.  "Mr Rhythm Man" now airs 7-10 p.m. Saturday, and Katie Laur's  "Music From The Hills Of Home" airs 8-11 p.m. Sunday. 

This is the second round of changes made by O’Mealy since he arrived in February.

On this day 29 years ago, the long-awaited “fourth network” began competing with the three-decades TV monopoly of ABC, CBS and NBC.

Fox Broadcasting launched  “The Late Show” hosted by comic Joan Rivers on Oct. 9, 1986.

Prime-time programming would not begin until the following April with a Sunday night lineup featuring “Married… with Children,” “The Tracey Ullman Show,” “21 Jump Street,” “Duet” and “Mr. President.”

I’ll be honest, I didn’t realize the significance when WXIX-TV program director Patrice Mohn told me in summer of 1986 that Channel 19 had picked up Rivers’ show for fall.

The New York Times has dubbed Don Cheadle’s “Miles Ahead” an Academy Awards contender, along with that other film shot in Cincinnati last year, “Carol” starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.

“Anyone who wants to get a jump on possible Oscar nominees for 2017… should check out ‘Miles Ahead,’ the closing-night film” Sunday at the New York Film Festival, wrote A. O. Scott.

Cheadle made his directorial debut and starred as iconic jazz innovator Miles Davis in the film shot here in July 2014. He also co-wrote the script, set in 1979, about the trumpeter and a Rolling Stone reporter (Ewan McGregor) trying to recover an unreleased recording stolen from the musician’s home at the end of his five-year, self-imposed “silent period” out of the public eye. The Times said:

Cincinnati’s first movie superstar – silent screen actress Theda Bara – will be celebrated with a panel discussion and rare film clips and photos at the Main Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County downtown Sunday.

Between 1915 and 1920, when she made 40 silent films, Bara's popularity was "second only to Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, according to The Guardian. She died of stomach cancer in 1955, at age 69.

Her breakthrough role was the sultry femme fatale in “A Fool There Was,” a 1915 silent film inspired by Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Vampire." Her performance inspired the expression "vamp" -- a woman who could entice and exploit honorable men, bringing their ruin – and made her one of the first film sex stars.

Mariah Carey started filming “A Christmas Melody,” her Hallmark Channel movie, on Tuesday in Cincinnati, according to TMZ.

Carey is making her directorial debut on the film, which will premiere 8 p.m. Dec. 19 on the Hallmark Channel..

“A Christmas Melody” stars Lacy Chabert (“Mean Girls,” “Party of Five”) TMZ says.  Brennan Elliott (“Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb,” “Flight 93,” “Strong Medicine”) also appears in the film, according to the International Movie Database.

Rave reviews are greeting  “Carol” in advance of its New York Film Festival screening Friday.

Flavorwire calls it “flawless” and “gorgeous,” with “astonishing” performances.   The Village Voice gushes about Todd Haynes’ direction.

Haynes' work  “has never been more assured, defined by silken camera work and expert framing that conveys his characters’ loneliness. … ‘Carol’ offers a mature portrait of love struggling to materialize, and survive, in a disapproving society,” the Voice says.

Cate Blanchett’s “Carol” and Don Cheadle’s “Miles Ahead” filmed here last summer will have special Cincinnati screenings.

“They will premiere here,” says Kristen Erwin Schlotman, executive director of the Greater Cincinnati & Northern Kentucky Film Commission.

Details have not been finalized. “I have no dates,” she says.

“Carol” and “Miles Ahead” will be screened this week at the New York Film Festival.

Unlike “Carol” and “Miles Ahead,” Cincinnati will play a major role – as itself – in the “Marauders” bank heist feature filming here with Bruce Willis, Christopher Meloni, Adrian Grenier and Johnathon Schaech.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump helps Sinclair Broadcast Group launch its new Sunday morning public affairs program this weekend airing here on Sinclair’s Channels 12.2 and 64.

Trump discusses immigration on “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson,” the first national series produced by Sinclair. The Baltimore-based company owns or operates 162 stations, including WKRC-TV, WSTR-TV and Dayton’s WKEF-TV (Channel 22) and WRGT-TV (Channel 45).

“Full Measure” premieres at 11:30 a.m. Sunday on Channel 12.2, and repeats at 10:30 p.m. Sunday on Channel 64.

On Oct. 11, it moves to 11 a.m. on Channel 12, replacing “Good Morning Cincinnati Sunday.”

Bill Cunningham’s flagship station has benched his national Sunday night talk show for NFL football.

“Live On Sunday Night, It’s Bill Cunningham” airs on nearly 350 stations – but not on Cunningham’s hometown WLW-AM, his long-time employer, this fall. Both WLW-AM and his national syndicator, Premiere Networks, are owned by iHeartMedia (formerly Clear Channel).

“It’s a contract issue with iHeartMedia,” Cunningham says.

 After roles on BET, CW, Spike TV and Showtime, College Hill native Gabrielle Dennis says she’s having “super fun” on the biggest acting role of her TV career on Fox’s new “Rosewood” medical drama.

The 1996 Hughes Center graduate plays Pippy, younger sister of Dr. Beaumont Rosewood (star Morris Chestnut) on “Rosewood” (8 p.m. Wednesdays, Fox).

She’s a toxicology expert in Rosewood’s sophisticated private autopsy lab in Miami, and the one who nags him about missing family dinners with mom (Lorraine Toussaint) and getting tickets for running red lights. 

The public is invited to a “community conversation” about media coverage of the July shooting death of Sam DuBose by former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing 7:30-9 p.m. Oct. 8 at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center’s Harriet Tubman Theater.

Four new fall TV series debut this week – including the heavily promoted Fox comedies starring John Stamos and Dayton native Rob Lowe – but the biggest TV event is the reboot of “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah Monday night.

The South African comedian has the unenviable task of taking over the anchor desk from Jon Stewart, who won 22 Emmy Awards there, including best Variety Talk Series and best Variety Talk Series Writing last week.

If you live in Northern Kentucky and want to see Soledad O’Brien’s one-hour “Heroin USA” documentary filmed in Northern Kentucky, you’d better have Dish Network or DirecTV.

“Heroin USA: A Soledad O’Brien Special Report” airs 10 p.m. Sunday on the Al Jazeera America channel -- which is not carried by Cincinnati Bell Fioptics or by Time Warner’s Northern Kentucky franchise, the former Insight cable system.

Hollywood rolls into Fourth Street downtown again Friday, the first day of shooting for the “Marauders” bank theft thriller starring Bruce Willis, Dave Bautista and Christopher Meloni.

The first scenes will be filmed all day at the Dixie Terminal Building, 49 E. Fourth St., according to the film location managers.

No parking restrictions will be posted on Fourth, Walnut and Third Streets from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday.  

That means some downtown parking spots won’t be available for the 7:10 p.m. Reds-Mets game at Great American Ball Park.

It’s time again to look for the lights, cameras, action!

Filming is set to begin on “Marauders,” the bank theft thriller starring Bruce Willis (Die Hard,” “The SixthSense,” “Armageddon”), Dave Bautista (“Gaurdians of the Galaxy”) and Christopher Meloni (“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “Man of Steel,” “42”) and Johnathon Schaech (“That Thing You Do”).

Director Steve C. Miller announced on Twitter last Friday that he was “one week out from principal photography.”

Soledad O’Brien came to Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati suburbs for her one-hour “Heroin USA” documentary because Greater Cincinnati “has recently become the center of the nation’s heroin epidemic," says the show publicist.

“Heroin USA: A Soledad O'Brien Special Report,” airing at 10 p.m. Sunday on the Al Jazeera America network, will be told through three area residents: Olivia DeLand; Sarah Kordenbrock , a former Covington high school volleyball captain; and the late Mike Heffron, who died from a heroin overdose in 2013.

The network describes them this way:

 The 2015-16 TV season arrives this week with many of your returning favorites and most of the highly anticipated new series: “Scream Queens,” “The Muppets,” “Heroes Reborn,” “Limitless” and “The Player.”

The first week ends Sunday with a goodbye to a long-time favorite, “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” in a two-hour CBS movie.

Below is my list of new fall series (titles in bold italic) and returning shows this week. All returning series are season premieres, unless noted.

If your favorite show doesn’t return this week, here’s my list of Fall TV premiere dates.