Breaking News, Only On 7...

We've lost our minds!

We’re dumping hometown boy Jay Leno’s new show before it even premieres, and plan to give you an hour of news instead. We're also going to simulcast on our sister station, so if you have picture in a picture, you'll be able to get twice the news!

Our new tag line will be “7News, Whether You Want it or Not!”

What the heck are they thinking? People in the Boston area feel a connection to Jay. He’s an Andover boy, after all, and if there’s one market in the country that he’ll get a good share in, at least initially, this is it. Plus, recent polls done by other Boston news outlets prove that viewers are not happy with this move.

Looking beyond what the viewers think, channel 7 already runs a 10pm newscast on their sister station ch56, which is in 3rd place (read last) in the 10pm news slot. They now plan on "simulcasting" the news on both stations at 10. So, that will give us 4 stations running 10pm news, with 2 being mirror images, and no NBC broadcast.

Regardless of whether you like Leno or not, you have to admit that rebroadcasting a poor quality news show on a second channel, at the same time, in the same market, and expanding it from a half hour to an hour and a half, doesn't make a lot of sense. Who are they hoping to attract, and what are they going to do to fill all this time? They're already repeating the same newscast every half hour in their 4 to 6:30 pm time slot, so we’re probably in for more of the same in this later slot. Oh joy.

Either Ansin is completely incompetent, or he's angling for something we’re not seeing yet. Perhaps he wants NBC to let him show Leno on 56 while he moves the news to 7. It’s highly unlikely that NBC would bite on this, as 56 is a CW affiliate, but you never know. Maybe they just want more local commercial time. Money is tight, and sometimes you use whatever lever you can find.

Why this would be more important to Ansin than actually fixing the news broadcast so that it might attract more than just viewers loyal to NBC programming, is beyond me.

Come to think of it, if he were to follow through on his threat, he'd even lose them...

Thank You Roger Goodell!

Thank goodness the NFL has decided to simulcast the Pats-Giants game on CBS and NBC as well as the NFL Network.

I was kind of disinterested in the whole issue as we get the NFL Network on our cable system, but something has come up that’s made me extremely glad the game will be widely available. It turns out I’ll be continuing with my campaign of watching this year’s Pats games in weird places.

I saw the first half of the Pats-Steelers game in the Winchester Hospital emergency room and the second half in my own semi-private room. This time I’m going to be watching the Pats-Giants game in my Dad’s room at the Cape Coral Hospital in sunny Florida. Hey, at least it’s a private room this time. I just hope I don’t get booted at a critical juncture…

I’m traveling fast and light so I don’t know if I’ll have a chance to post again this weekend. If not, I hope everyone has a safe and happy new year. Check out the Video page on my website, www.berryjooks.com, there’s a great old video of Aretha Franklin and Billy Preston doing Auld Lang Syne at a house party. It’s a little grainy but definitely worth a listen.

And speaking of Auld Lang Syne, have you ever wondered what the heck it means? Here’s a little info from Wikipedia:

auld lang syne literally means "old long since"—but a more idiomatic English translation would be something like "long long ago", "days of long ago", "in olden days", or even "once upon a time".

Usage of the phrase appears to have begun in the late 1600's. It became a popular Scottish folk tune (attributed to Robert Burns) in the early 1700's.

So there you go, now you can wow everyone at your New Year's Eve party.

Go Pats!