Austin360 blogs > TV Blog > Archives > 2006 > December > 26
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Holloway is back … and while I was gone …
Yoo hoo! I’m ba-a-a-a-ck! Vacation’s over, I’m in the daily blog saddle again.
And not a minute too soon. December is supposed to be the dead month for television, with most series taking a winter snooze in reruns.
But this was a month that proved to be anything but quiet.
No sooner had I written the glowing please-watch-this-fab-new-show piece about “Day Break” then ABC axed it. No more Taye Diggs waking up to a new day of murder and betrayal.
ABC’s Ted Danson sitcom “Help Me Help You” got a pink slip for Christmas, too.
And “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” blew into town, built a house and left.
Our local stations, which should have been taking it easy during the holidays, got busy as well.
NBC affiliate KXAN hired a new news director, Michael Fabac, who replaced Bill Seitzler, the guy who stirred things up, oversaw the departure of several familiar faces (including weatherman Dan Robertson and weekend anchor Jim Bergamo, now at KVUE) and then left after less than a year on the job.
Fabac, who starts in January, comes to Austin from the Fox station in Little Rock, Ark.
KXAN reporter and former weekend co-anchor R.J. DeSilva turned in his resignation a couple of weeks ago. This is a big loss to the station and Austin’s local TV news. He was a terrific reporter and solid anchor.
KTBC’s Fox7 News hired a new co-anchor for Mike Warren, who had been flying solo on the weeknight 5 and 9 p.m. newscasts since Linda Stratton left in July.
The Fox 7 newcomer is Lori Ana Hernandez, previously of the NBC station in Dallas where she anchored the weekend morning news. She settles into her new anchor desk here on Jan. 8.
Now that I’m back, probably nothing new will happen for months.
Looking for some meaty TV?
Tom Brokaw puts a human face on the slippery topic of immigration in his latest NBC investigation, “In the Shadow of the American Dream,” at 7 p.m. tonight.
Focusing on a construction company in ski-resort heaven Colorado, Brokaw pays a personal visit to the company owner and immigrant workers who enable the building boom but are not legally allowed to be there.
The issue is looked at from several angles but is clearly sympathetic to the hard-working immigrants and the employers who skirt the law to hire them.
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