Television

Starting sometime in the fall, Austin TV station KVUE is adding an hour of news programming—so it will start at 4:30 and run until 7.

The on-air team of Melissa Gale, Olga Campos and Albert Ramon will not change, KVUE’s president and general manager Patti Smith told the Austin American-Statesman.

But the station will hire a number of additional production staff to handle the extra work.

The start date for the expanded newscast will “depend on the hiring process,” so essentially, KVUE is counting on you. The jobs don’t appear to be posted yet but there’s an application you can download at this page.

A former video editor has filed suit against KVVU Channel 5 in Las Vegas, claiming he was fired for complaining about a hostile work environment.

The suit alleges that anchor Rachel Smith harassed Eric J. Schyman in front of coworkers for “wanting to meet Joan Rivers, stating that it must be (Schyman’s) ultimate gay-Jew fantasy,” and remarking that “she was going to write a book on how gay (Schyman) was,” the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports.

The suit also alleges that Smith ridiculed Schyman’s dyslexia and that chief photographer Justin Grant shoved Schyman against a wall “to show how to properly restrain a person.”

Schyman apparently complained to HR about the behavior, and was fired a week later–ostensibly for mailing a video tape to the wrong address, which the lawsuit calls retaliatory.

Proof that Jetblue Steven Slater has created a lasting impression: “grab a beer and hit the chute” has wormed its way into even PBS ombudsman Michael Getler‘s writing.

Getler says that e-mails about The McLaughlin Group are enough to make him want to spectacularly quit, Jetblue style: See, the show isn’t produced by PBS but it airs on 315 of 360 member stations, so people seem to think it’s a PBS program (“and who can blame them,” says Getler). That means lots of angry e-mails to the ombud, even though PBS isn’t, technically, at fault.

And only somewhat relatedly, the same Taiwanese company that made the amazing Tiger Woods reenactment has worked its magic again with Slater’s dramatic exit:

The Atlantic profiled the man behind-the-scenes of all those tabloidesque interviews on news shows today. In it, they describe Larry Garrison‘s role as a “fixer” who connects television hosts with newfound celebrities.

The story talked of Garrison’s attempt to get a couple that believes they found Natalee Holloway’s remains on the ocean floor on Good Morning America. And it discusses his job, which is to make these people thrust into the spotlight comfortable, but also get them on television. Although no one will admit it, he gets paid pretty well by the networks or news programs for the quests.

But, what’s funny, even his job as the underbelly of the interview program has hit a snag during the rise of online content. He’s just not getting paid what he’s used to.

“In the old days,” he [Garrison] told me, networks “paid a lot more money for stories-they’d pay $100,000. Now they don’t [pay the really big bucks] unless it’s an ‘Oh my God’ story-like if I had Tiger Woods’s first interview.”

The Internet has commoditized some of what Garrison does, and competition has become more intense. Gossip sites such as TMZ and Radar Online provide a nonstop fix of tabloid titillation, while anyone with a valuable photograph or video can sell it easily and directly to a photo agency like Splash News.

Man, can no one make an honest living in media these days?

After thirteen years in its HQ near Penn Station, WNET.org has signed a lease on office space half the size of its current headquarters, the organization announced yesterday.

“Over the last two years, we have streamlined our operations to adjust to the new economic realities, and the move is another step in that process. The move will happen later this year and we see it as an opportunity to decrease our footprint, increase creativity and collaboration within the organization and get closer to our Lincoln Center studios and New York’s thriving arts community,” said WNET.ORG president and CEO Neal Shapiro in a statement.

The station also netted a quarter million dollars last week in an equipment auction, reported CurrentPublicMedia. Much of the gear—400 cameras, lighting equipment, and camera pedestals—dated from before WNET’s last move, but the stuff has apparently held its value.

“The Morning Show” on WSFL-Channel 39 in Miami ended its run Wednesday. That’s nothing surprising, simply given the state of original programming on TV these days.

What’s surprising is that the show’s staff weren’t informed it was their last episode until after they’d finished taping.

“Sorry we didn’t say goodbye on the air,” WSFL features reporter Eugene Ramirez wrote on his Twitter account, according to the Miami Herald. “We didn’t know until after the show was over. Thx to loyal fans who made waking up early worth it!”

The show didn’t build audience “the way we had anticipated,” WSFL spokeswoman Kery Knutson said in a statement.

Some staffers are leaving. In the same statement, Knutson told the Herald: “Every effort is being made to help affected employees with this transition, including assisting them in exploring placement within our organization and at other Tribune properties. We’re also helping facilitate the production of résumé tapes and other material for departing staff members.”

Earlier we told you about the “Imaginator” Tribune Co. is seeking for one of its stations in Houston. Now, via Tribune’s job board, we’ve found another gig for an aspiring newser: a “preditor,” or “producer/editor.”

The gig appears to be in Chicago, not Houston, but it borrows some language from the earlier listing—like you must have a “fiery passion to help re-invent the ’80′s rooted, focus-grouped, yuppie anchors and a news desk, super Doppler ultra weather style” and you’re “in sync with the pulse of the streets.”

But where an imaginator apparently needs to “think in stereo and live in color” a preditor should be an “earbud wearing, app downloading, rss reading, podcast playing, text messaging, flip-flop wearing professional of any age or sex, with a real-world education, interests that are anything but mainstream, and the ability to translate your bent outlook onto the TV screen.”

Once again, newsroom experience doesn’t matter, says the company. They want anti-establishment preditors, people.

If this gig interests you, you can apply on Tribune’s web site.

Earlier today, we told you about Tribune Co.‘s plans to create an anchor-less news broadcast in Houston. It’s an odd idea, but it appears that it could have an even odder job posting.

On the Tribune career website, there’s an opening for an “Executive Producer and Imaginator,” for its KIAH channel in Houston. But if you have television experience, you might not have the right imagination for this job. The ad states, “experience in running a TV newsroom is not necessary and might actually be detrimental as this position requires someone with no traditional TV news baggage, because there’s little tradition involved in the idea.”

The ad then spouts some strange candidate personalities, like wanting someone “with a fiery passion to help re-invent the 80′s rooted, focus grouped, yuppie anchors and a news desk, super dopple ultra weather style,” and who “who thinks in stereo and lives in color.” What about those 21st century digital boys, like this guy?

This adds a little more intrigue to Tribune Co.’s CEO Randy Michaels‘s plan to launch a newscast that has no anchors and functions off of “great pictures and great writing.”

But for those who “gets ‘it,’” as the ad says, you can apply here.

Print’s dying on paper, but could the format fit on television? Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels says the company plans to try something that sounds exactly like a print version on the small screen by building a television news network that has zero anchors.

Instead of anchors, Michaels told The Wall Street Journal that the program’s personality would be great pictures and great writing. However, one would assume you need someone to read that great writing, if it’s going on television. But it sounds like an interesting concept.

Here’s the interview excerpt:

WSJ: You and your team have said Tribune is going to “blow up” the traditions of local-TV news. What do you mean?

Mr. Michaels: We are about to launch a TV newscast in Houston that has no anchors, that has great pictures and great writing, but doesn’t involve a set or a desk or anyone standing in the way of the picture. Now is it going to work? We’re going to find out.

This isn’t really about meteorology. It’s about Terry Kneiss, the only contestant in the history of The Price Is Right to ever exactly guess the value of the Showcase in the Showcase Showdown.

A former TV weatherman, Kneiss was known for being more accurate than most thanks to the way his brain worked—he was able to memorize weather combinations, causes and effects. He won two regional Emmy Awards in 1993 and 1994.

His brain also made him an ace at blackjack, and at memorizing prizes on The Price Is Right.

“Good TV is rehearsed TV,” Terry likes to say. For four months during the summer of 2008, they recorded The Price Is Right every morning and watched it together in bed every night, Terry hunting for patterns and Linda doing the math. It didn’t take long for them to find their edge. In The Price Is Right’s greatest strength, he and Linda also found its greatest weakness: It had survived all those years because it seemed never to change. Even when Drew Carey replaced Bob Barker — the show’s own version of Vatican II — he rocked a similar skinny microphone. Behind all the screaming and seeming chaos, there was a precise and nostalgic order. Terry says he first sat upright in bed when a distinctive grill called the Big Green Egg came up for bid again and again. It was always $1,175.

Esquire tells the story of how it went down here.