KCWE went multicast with "this" classic movie-TV brand ...

No, it's not a "Jeopardy!" question, or an Abbott and Costello routine. The name of the channel actually is "thisTV" and it will sign on locally on Tuesday.

So what is this, um, "this" new channel all about?

According to the PR, "this Kansas City is home to great movies, with 4,000 film titles and 10,000 classic television episodes from the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios." It will air as a multicast channel on KCWE-DT, the sister station of KMBC, at 29.2 and on cable at Time Warner channel 1432.

The PR continues: Complimenting the showcase of movies on this Kansas City are classic television shows that include: "The Addams Family," "Green Acres," "Mister Ed," "Flipper," "The Outer Limits," and "Cagney & Lacey." Plus, this Kansas City has three-hours of children's programming every morning.

Now let's cut through the hype and look at the actual schedule for the first few days of thisTV.

"Biggest Loser" producers say: "We apologize"

UPDATED to include Dane Patterson's apology.

A followup to my Thursday story about the fabricated account of "Biggest Loser" eliminee Dane Patterson running a marathon, when in fact he only ran 23 miles: The producers of "The Biggest Loser" are taking full responsibility for the misrepresentation.

Here's the apology put out late Thursday night by Reveille, the company behind "TBL":

And your new KCPT president and CEO is ...

His name's Kliff Kuehl, he's about my age and he runs the public TV broadcaster in northern Nevada. This will be about a 150 percent leap for him in market size and budget. But as you will read in my story just posted, Kuehl (pronounced KEEL) believes his job will essentially be the same at KCPT as it was at KNPB.

Read "KCPT names news president" at KansasCity.com

Tavis Smiley's "State of the Black Union" on C-SPAN this weekend

Here's the skinny from Cable's Gift to America

Gary Lezak to receive cancer survivorship award

Wow, has it been 10 years since Gary Lezak was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer? Yep, and the KSHB weathercaster is being honored in June with the Richard Bloch Cancer Survivorship Award on Cancer Survivors' Day in June.

Your March TV roundup ...

Basketball may not be the least of it, but when I write the March television preview story, it's the last of it.

Also coming in the month Nielsen considers this year's February sweep: a BET reality show that doesn't suck, the return of "Reaper," "Breaking Bad" and "Saving Grace," new shows from ABC, NBC and the folks who brought you "Life on Mars."

Oh yeah, and bunches of meaningless elimination games en route to crowning someone from the Big East champion of college basketball.

Read my roundup in ye olde Kansas City Star-Times

"The Biggest Loser" -- or is that "Biggest Liar"? -- fabricates account of contestant finishing marathon

FINAL UPDATE 10:35 PM ET: NBC has responded; statement below.

One of my long-longtime readers, David Kleeman, writes: "I'm a huge fan of 'The Biggest Loser.' Love the show and all that it stands for. I'm also big into the marathoning community and knew back in January that one of the members of the Black team (either Blaine or Dane) had attempted a marathon in Arizona, but did not complete it. Instead, he had been picked up by a van along the course and dropped back down somewhere prior to the finish and then he crossed the finish line and collected a medal a la Rosie Ruiz. He is not listed in the finishers results (it was the Arizone Desert Classic on 1/31).

"What I didn't know was how the producers at NBC would report it. I was so disgusted to see that at the end of the Biggest Loser last night they did the whole segment on Dane and his wife doing a marathon and then reported that Dane completed the 26 mile race in 3 hours and 53 minutes. What else is completely falsified???"

Louis C.K. in K.C. this wknd

I didn't have time to chat with my lookalike, but last I checked his Friday show at the Midland hadn't sold out (unlike the time I interviewed Joel McHale and ... well, you know the rest).

Anyway, here's a video from 2007 of LCK in action.

Arguing the State of the Union with Chip

I caught KOGO Radio's Chip Franklin in a grumpy mood this morning, thanks to the president's not-State of the Union speech last night. We argued over "the ravages of climate change," if Steven Chu knows what he's talking about, if George Will knows what he's talking about, should Sarah Palin feel better after seeing Bobby Jindal, how to do health care right ... and some other stuff. You won't need caffeine after listening to this!

(download audio)

Alvin Sykes and the hunt for civil rights cold case killers

Did a little hanging this weekend with Alvin Sykes, the improbable civil-rights hero who has been playing a crucial, and often overlooked, role in the effort to bring the perpetrators in racially-motivated killings to justice. Sykes scored his biggest triumph last fall with the passage of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. Last Friday's event at the Bruce Watkins Cultural Center was designed to kick off the efforts of the Emmett Till Justice Campaign, which Alvin formed not only to help close the unsolved civil-rights cold cases currently known to exist -- there are 26 by Alvin's count -- but to spread awareness about the Till Bill with the idea of getting people to bring forward new cold cases that had, for obvious reasons, gone unreported at the time.

Alvin Sykes is nothing if not independent. Besides inviting several key Republican allies to the event (that's Jacob Turk, who lost to Dennis Moore in the Kansas 3rd race Emanuel Cleaver in my friggin' House district last year, in the photo above), he showed a videotape message from Sen. Tom Coburn to the assembled guests. Sen. Coburn, as you may recall, was cast as the bad guy last summer when he used his famous legislative hold to keep the Senate from passing the Till Bill. His reason for objecting was that he didn't believe it had an adequate guarantee of funding. Which was not a terrible point to make -- after all, DOJ has long had oversight on civil rights murders and made little progress -- but with the backdrop of Coburn's toxic history with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Coburn predictably became a lightning rod. Then Sykes injected himself in the process, worked closely with Coburn (to the consternation of Congressional Democrats like John Lewis, who sponsored the House version of the Till Bill), and the hold was lifted. And Sykes got a lot of love from Dr. No.

Oscar talk and what's next for NBC in late night

I got WBAL Radio's Shari Elliker all caught up today on the latest in the world of television. Saying you're going to "trim the fat" from the Oscar broadcast is like my favorite barbecue joint (Oklahoma Joe's, for the record) saying that it's introducing a diet plate.

(Download the audio)

Finally! Some national love for Al Jazeera English

You know I've gone on (and on) about the English-language channel from the Arabic news giant al-Jazeera for more than two years. I did a big blowout on it in the summer of '07 and was thrilled when it started streaming 24/7 on Livestation, where I monitored its unparalleled coverage of the Gaza situation.

Today my buddy David Folkenflik at NPR devoted a segment on "Morning Edition" to a story about AJE, prompted by an awareness campaign the channel has been running to get people to call their cable or satellite operators and yell, "I Want My AJE!" (Besides featuring yours truly in a couple of places on that website, I notice they use a picture of the Kansas City Royals' John Buck at Yankee Stadium trying to tag out Robbie Cano. Thanks for the shout-out, guys!)

As nice as all the media attention is, I'm not sure it's enough, though. Here's why.

The road to Oscar still goes through cable

Once again, the two winners for best documentary film at this year's Oscars both were funded and distributed by cable TV channels.

What's working ... Feb. 23

1. Late-night competition. Jimmy Fallon signs on next Monday, with Craig Ferguson ready to overtake him in the ratings. Conan O'Brien will follow in June, pursued by a newly invigorated David Letterman. The only loser here is sleep.

Last night's Oscarcast: What was with all the banquet toasts?

This morning, KOGO Radio's Chip Franklin and I chewed over the Academy Awards. We talked about the new producers' efforts to liven up the show which, predictably, made it more tedious than ever. In the second segment we discussed Sean Penn's comments about gay marriage.

At the very end we talked about an HBO film which I reviewed here.

Late night I wrote several observational items rather than one long review for the newspaper. These items were based on my numerous tweets, which you can read here or by scrolling down. While you're on my Twitter page click "follow" to get more pithy wonderfulness from me.

(Download audio)

KC television ratings: The more things change...

Finally, I've gotten around to doing a year-to-year comparison of Nielsen's November ratings books for the Kansas City market, which measures not only the size but the demographic makeup of the audience. Lucky for me, there won't be a book this significant again until June (when the May book comes out). Nielsen pushed the Feb. book into March so it wouldn't be affected by the DTV transition, but I've heard talk about how March won't be very valuable either because it comes so soon after the DTV transition. Except there is no DTV transition to speak of in Kansas City, other than KCWE and Channel 50 ... but oh well.

David Caruso's stalker's stalker gets her woman

A postscript to my piece last summer about the woman who was pursuing the woman who was pursuing international television heartthrob David Caruso. The troubled stalker, Heidemarie Schnitzer, was picked up by Mexican police this weekend after failing to show for a court date last year to answer to charges she threatened Caruso's life. Sara Kanne has numerous updates on her blog.

"Unreal Housewives of Kansas City"

UHKC - Episode One: Martinis and Monologues
by jplas313

I just stumbled over this at the Present Mag site. It's loaded with parochial humor, so you out-of-towners may shrug, but it's better than half the stuff at Barely Political -- I especially like the fake headlines and ads. (But apparently no fake breasts -- I guess that's how you know it's a satire!)

I don't know much about the series' creator, Jennifer Plas, but I've put in an email to her.

Welcome to late night, Jimmy! Craig Ferguson counters with Paris Hilton, Archbishop Tutu, Amy Adams, Holly Hunter....

Craig Ferguson isn't wasting any time in moving in for the kill against his new late-night competition Jimmy Fallon. Though Fallon is expected to draw a mostly male audience to his "Late Night" franchise, which begins a week from Monday on NBC, and Ferguson has built his base with 30- and 40-something women viewers, the guest lineup for March 2-6 strongly suggests that CBS wants to ensure that not a single member of the Ferguson core even thinks about straying over to Fallonland.

It was that or playing it by ear ...

Here's a service I just discovered called 12seconds.tv -- they want to be the twitter of video. I took this video of the grandkids in Chicago last weekend on my LG Dare (don't tell their parents we let them do this!). Then I edited it on the Dare down to 12 seconds and mailed it to myself, and thence to the site.

That's a lot of work. My suspicion is that it will be used instead by people to communicate much as they do with twitter, only with video. And I would rather sculpt exquisite little 140-character messages instead. Speaking of which, come back tonight when I'll be following the Oscarcast on my twitter channel.

Fwd: video on 12seconds.tv