News this week–well, last week, really–that The Dallas Morning News is offering buyouts to some 40 (or 60 or more) of its folks before firing ’em outright has rekindled memories of the October 2004 massacre that left 250 Belo Corp. employees jobless. And it’s raised the specter of the circulation…
The good Friends of Unfair Park over at FrontBurner have been on the news from the News this afternoon that buyouts-layoffs are forthcoming; sorry, but we’ve been seeing Superman Returns, because some of us are film critics in our spare time. But we too have learned that this afternoon, Belo…
OK, maybe not. But the Dallas Mavericks’ billionaire owner Mark Cuban will surely make a big splash when he makes his first appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman Wednesday night. The Mavs might be up 3-0 by then. If so, watch out. It’ll be a newsmaker. –Richie Whitt…
The morning-after round-up won’t be as much fun should the Dallas Mavericks drop a game or four to the Miami Heat; who wants to search thousands of articles detailing your home team’s butt-whooping, when it’s bad enough to read just one? Thankfully, this morning’s newsstand is filled with good news–and…
The West End Marketplace was a happening place. A long time ago.
Says in the Houston Chronicle that Houston-based conservative radio “pundit” and District 7 candidate for the Texas Senate Dan Patrick is coming to Dallas by Labor Day. (No, not the ESPN dude. Or the race-car chick, either.) Patrick’s buying 25,000-watt KMGS-AM (1160), the “Smokin’ Oldies” station based with a Highland…
Unfair Park’s spending today reading, swimming, cooking and, of course, memoraling; we’ll return tomorrow. Till then, accept as a token of our appreciation the above interview with Dallas music legend Trini Lopez. It kicks off our weeklong appreciation of Dallas music, its way-back past and its way-out present (seriously, have…
Apparently, there are two folks in this virtual world you don’t wanna cross: Mark Cuban and Austin American-Statesman columnist (and occasional Observer contributor) Michael Corcoran. On Sunday, the Statesman ran a lengthy profile on the Mavs owner written by film critic Chris Garcia. That very afternoon, Cuban sent Garcia a…
Damn the man, UNT. Damn him. It seems The Man and his penchant for something called “decency” (I asked around the office what that means, and nobody seemed to know) have shut down one of the best local-indie radio shows in town: Sunday nights with Frequency Down, hosted by comic…
In today’s New York Times, there’s a profile of the guy who helped kill The Dallas Times Herald: Dean Singleton, or, as the Times calls him, “a bantam figure with flinty blue eyes.” (That was the title of my first album, matter of fact.) The story, which is essentially a…
If you want to see what an Observer writer looks like–brainy with a touch of rugged, in my estimation, or the perfect mixture of jock and intellectual–Jesse Hyde will appear tonight on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360� talking about a piece he wrote for the Deseret Morning News in July 2004,…
At the risk of feeling dirty–and not in a good way–I’m going to part company from Jim Schutze and Morning News columnist Sherry Jacobson and, ick, take the mayor’s side in the whole Dave Levinthal/AMR stock tempest. Jacobson this morning picked up on a point made by Schutze on Unfair…
According to this story, Dallas is about to be the subject of a half-hour HBO comedy series called 12 Miles of Bad Road, created and exec-produced by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason (Designing Women, Evening Shade). The Hollywood Reporter’s reporting only that it’ll be about “a Dallas matriarchy,” that the…
In a move announced with little fanfare, on May 1 Belo Corp.-owned WFAA-Channel 8 became one of five ABC affiliates to offer a link to the mothership that makes available free videos of some of the network’s bigger hits. It’s part of ABC’s attempt to drive traffic to its own…
Remember how the Susquehanna-to-Cumulus (spell that three times fast) switch was going to go oh-so-smooth? Um, notsomuch. The Cumulus folks officially take over Susquehanna’s metroplex radio empire today, and things, they are a changin’. Just in the last week, for example, former Susquehanna senior vice president and general manager of…
Belo Corporation, the owner of The Dallas Morning News and WFAA-Channel 8, doled out some $7.4 million to end a 12-year-old defamation lawsuit…in Kentucky. Belo bought WHAS-TV, an ABC affiliate, in 1997–three years after a roller-coaster accident at the Kentucky Kingdom amusement park spawned a series of pieces that painted…
I know, I know. I’m Unfair Park’s sportsy guy–like Anchorman’s Champ, only without the hat and the mutton-chop sideburns. And the humor. But I also know horrible TV, and when I see it, I’m glued to it. That’s why I spent (by which I mean wasted) 35 minutes of my…
I believe in the enterainment biz this is called “repurposing.” Yesterday we mentioned former Observer music editor Sarah Hepola’s piece on Slate about how she intends to give up her blog to do other things, like watch TV. Turns out some folks at National Public Radio dug the piece too…
May 1 is scheduled to be “A Day Without a Mexican,” so named for the great-idea-lousy-execution 2004 movie in which Californians wake up one morning to find all the Mexicans simply vanished overnight. Some folks are also calling May 1 El Gran Paro Americano 2006 (“The Great American Boycott 2006”)…
Just when you thought local radio couldn’t get any worse, it does. Two words: Opie. And Anthony. Come back, Diamond Dave, all is forgiven. Except for “Just a Gigolo.” –Robert Wilonsky…
Former Observer music editor Sarah Hepola has decided that the blog is the great blob that writing blots ambition even as it spawns prose bloat. So she turned hers off. Or will. Eventually. “Blogging had been the ideal run-up to a novel, but it had also become a major distraction…
Belo Corp. just posted its first-quarter earnings, if you can call ’em that. The news for the News’ owner? Not so hot. That said, Belo’s stock was up considerably in morning trading–by some 27 cents at post time. –Robert Wilonsky…
