Access Atlanta > Entertainment > Radio Talk > Archives > 2009 > January > 29
Thursday, January 29, 2009
1/30: Elle Duncan takes over for Porsche Foxx on V-103
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Though some people thought Ramona Debreaux had an inside track to take over for Porsche Foxx on V-103’s mid-day slot, it’s Elle Duncan who got the job. She takes over Feb. 2.
“This is a good opportunity for me to branch out and do this thing on my own,” Duncan told me Friday.
Cameron has a history of nurturing talent, including current Hot 107.9’s Rashan Ali and 95.5/The Beat’s morning co-host C.J. Simpson. “Another birdie,” Duncan said, “has left the nest.”
From the press release:
In 2003, Elle was granted a great opportunity to intern for a year at 790 the Zone with the popular brother duo “The Two Live Stews”. She gained a wealth of radio broadcasting knowledge during her internship and in 2005, she joined V-103 as the Afternoon Drive “Traffic Girl”. Her energy, quick wit, comic delivery and great chemistry with Ryan Cameron cemented her a permanent position on The Ryan Cameron Show in 2006. Today at just 25 years old, Elle will provide a young, but mature, female perspective on a variety of topics during her show each day.
Duncan’s TV show “Kitchen Sink” on Gospel Music Channel is currently on “hiatus,” she said.
DeBreaux will continue to do traffic and weekends.
Foxx, who was let go under murky circumstances in November, recently told me she was not let go over drugs or alcohol, issues she has grappled with in the past. But she was not clear why management let her go and V-103 honchos won’t say why either. Foxx still had seven months to go on her two-year contract.
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1/30: Locally produced TV show “Drop Dead Diva” with Margaret Cho picked up as series
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Last year, Atlanta was used to shoot a pilot for a comedy called “Drop Dead Diva” starring Margaret Cho. It was just picked up by Lifetime as a full-blown series and I hear it will continue to be filmed here. (Thank those statewide tax incentives enacted last year!)
Here’s an excerpt from the press release:
Lifetime Television announced the pick up of Drop Dead Diva, a spirited new comedic drama series that puts a uniquely compelling twist on the age-old battle between brains and beauty. Drop Dead Diva tells the story of a shallow model-in-training who dies in a sudden accident only to find her soul resurfacing in the body of a brilliant, thoughtful and plus-size attorney. Drop Dead Diva is produced by Sony Pictures Television and is set to premiere on Lifetime Television in the Summer 2009.
And here’s the plotline. It sounds like it takes a bit from the “Heaven Can Wait” idea.
When beautiful-but-vapid model wannabe Deb has a fatal car accident, she suddenly finds herself in front of Heaven’s gatekeeper, Fred, who declares her a self-centered “zero.” Outraged, she attempts to persuade Fred to return her to her shallow existence but is accidentally relegated to the body of the recently deceased Jane Bingum (Brooke Elliott). A brilliant, thoughtful and plus-size attorney with a loyal assistant (Margaret Cho), Jane has always lived in the shadow of her more comely colleagues whereas Deb has always relied on her external beauty. Now, by a twist of fate and a bolt of divine intervention, both personalities must learn to coexist in Jane’s plus-size frame in the ultimate showdown between brains and beauty.
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1/29: What happened to Ike Newkirk? Scott Slade breaks a leg, “Trust Me” no’s relatively weak
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Veteran radio man Ike Newkirk has been doing a radio show in Atlanta for 30-plus years but he has been taken off the air on 790/The Zone. On Sunday, he’s been doing a broadbased radio show, covering all sorts of topics. His viewpoints were usually liberal, sometimes conservative, not always predictable.
Why was he taken off the air? The radio station folks who run the shop there won’t say. And I haven’t gotten any call backs or email responses from Ike.
He has been hosting “Open Line” since 1976. I hear he was given a generous early retirement buyout package that may have included a clause limiting his ability to say anything tangible to the press. That may be why he isn’t returning my inquiries.
-Scott Slade, the award-winning morning host on WSB-AM, broke his leg last night. Pete Spriggs, the general manager, said he was carrying a 100 pound bag of feed and a bucket to the barn, slipped and broke his right leg. He will be out of commission for at least a few days while getting surgery. Chris Camp, the news director, will be covering for him until he’s well enough to get back to the office.
-Atlanta sports talk brother duo The 2 Live Stews (heard locally on 790/The Zone) are challenging radio personalities to join them to support Big Brothers Big Sisters in a program called Mentoring Brothers. They are especially pushing African American men to be mentors. As noted in a press release, “While more than a third of the Little Brothers served by the Big Brothers Big Sisters volunteer network are African American, only 15 percent of the nonprofit organization’s male mentors are black. And in many of Big Brothers Big Sisters’ nearly 400 agencies, African American boys disproportionately represent the children waiting for a mentor.”
-Atlanta-based TNT’s “Trust Me” about two ad execs starring Tom Cavanagh and Eric McCormack looked like a big risk on paper in the sense it wasn’t about cops, lawyers or doctors. It’s about two ad execs. Indeed, it opened at a relatively weak 3.4 million viewers, losing more than 46% of “The Closer” opening of 6.4 million. That’s very poor retention. (It is more than AMC’s “Mad Men” typically gets but AMC isn’t nearly as high profile as TNT.)
TNT’s “Leverage” opened at 5 million and “Raising the Bar” opened at 7.7 million. Both shows lost a lot of that audience. “Leverage” on January 20 only had 2.8 million viewers. “Raising the Bar” had dropped to the low 2 millions by the end (yet was renewed.) Whether “Trust Me” survives depends if it can stay, I’d say, above 2.5 million, with or without “The Closer” lead in. I doubt it but you never know.
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1/29: Tyler Perry’s “Meet the Browns” gets 80 more episodes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tyler Perry told executives at the National Association of Television Program Executives in Vegas that his TBS show “Meet the Browns” has received an 80-episode commitment, according to Broadcasting & Cable.
The sitcom, shot in his Southwest Atlanta studios, debuted earlier this month with a 10-episode “test” run, with two new episodes over five weeks. The show opened with 3.7 million average viewers January 7, slipped to 3.1 million January 14 and 3 million January 21. Although it debuted well short of “House of Payne” (5.5 million), its performance in its second and third weeks was virtually identical.
The show will come back this summer once the ten episodes are done as a companion to “House of Payne.”
I expect it will probably settle at about 3 million viewers a week, comparable to that of “House of Payne.” In other words, those Tyler Perry fans are very consistent and very loyal.
Atlanta-based TBS, according to the trade publication, has not confirmed this news.
Locally, the show ranked 27th last week with 182,000 viewers. The show last week was top 10 among African Americans, drawing more viewers than “American Idol.”
In 2006, Perry aired a test version of “House of Payne” in several cities and TBS was so impressed with the results, it gave him an unprecedented 100-episode commitment. The show debuted in 2007 and aired 100 episodes in about a year’s span, typically two a week, sometimes four a week. “Payne” is scheduled to return next month once “Meet the Browns” is finished.
Also, during the panel, Perry said he would never screen his films, saying it’s not worth the money:
“I staged Madea Goes to Jail at the Kodak Theater and hosted critics from the LA Times and Variety. Each saw the same play from virtually the same seat. The LA Times said it was the worst thing that had ever happened to the Kodak Theater, while Variety said it was the best thing he had ever seen. I realized that it’s all just a person’s opinion. Am I going to pay for someone to see one of my movies to tell me they don’t like it? No. I get millions of messages on my message boards from people all over the world. That’s who tells me what they want to see.”
