Anderson Cooper may not be the next Oprah, but the folks at WESH are hoping he’ll at least be the next Dr. Oz. Cooper’s new talk show will be joining the Channel 2 lineup next fall. TVNewsCheck.com reported Wednesday that show distributor Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution added 21 markets,…
Now back to regular programming…
Paraphrasing Mark Twain, reports of RogerSimmons.com’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Your favorite Orlando TV website is back up and running after more than week of technical problems. Here’s what happened: RogerSimmons.com is one of several websites I have, but it’s the one with the most traffic. And with a…
SuperChannel 55 tower may be ready in ’12
Construction on WACX’s Majesty Building, the unfinished high-rise office tower along Interstate 4 in Seminole County, started in February 2001. Does it have a prayer of ever being finished? SuperChannel 55 President Claud Bowers told the Orlando Sentinel that he expects the tower to be ready for tenants by October…
Blast from the Past: Channel 9’s daytime in ’61
We continue our Blast from the Past series with this Orlando Sentinel advertisement for WLOF-Channel 9 from Nov. 1, 1961. WLOF? Yep, you read that right. When it signed on in February 1958, Channel 9 was known as WLOF (which stood for We Love Orlando Florida). It would not become…

Spotlight on top Orlando TV advertisers
They’re what you watch — or maybe don’t watch — between the news, weather and sports on Orlando TV. Either way, you can’t avoid them. They’re the iconic commercials that dot the television landscape in Central Florida. Orlando Sentinel TV Guy Hal Boedeker takes a look at several of the…

Orlando is test market for new Fran Drescher show
Fran Descher — aka “The Nanny” — is taking baby steps into the talk show world right through Orlando. “The Fran Drescher Tawk Show” premieres Friday at 11 a.m. on WOFL-Fox 35 and five other Fox owned-and-operated stations. It’s a three-week experiment to see if the show generates enough audience…

Blast from the Past: Channel 6’s Sunday night
Continuing our Blast from the Past series of newspaper ads for Orlando TV stations, today we roll back the clock to 1968. Here’s an advertisement that appeared for CBS’ Sunday night lineup on WDBO-Channel 6. “Channel 6 has the look of a winner,” was the Orlando station’s slogan — and…

WFTV’s sister station adds more news
When Oprah takes her final bow, we know that in Orlando we’ll see Dr. Oz appearing in her place on WFTV. That won’t be the case at Channel 9’s Atlanta sister station, Cox flagship WSB-ABC 2. The Atlanta station announced Tuesday that it will add an hour of news starting…

Blast from the Past: WESH’s Cinema 2 ad
In addition to cataloging Orlando TV history, I also collect old newspapers. Lots and lots of old newspapers. And I have many copies of the Orlando Sentinel (or, as it was known for a time, the Sentinel Star). Over the next couple of days, I’ll post different newspaper advertisements from…

Another news channel for Orlando cable TV?
Between lots of travel for business (and some for pleasure), I’m playing catchup with the latest Orlando TV news… Interesting — and unconfirmed — rumor passed on by a tipster: Bright House may be getting ready to add its Tampa Bay news channel, Bay News 9, to its Orlando channel…