Originally filed Tuesday, January 15, 2019 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
11Alive last week revamped its 11 p.m. newscast, changing its name from “The Late Feed” to “UpLate.”
With Vinnie Politan’s departure back to Court TV, this gave management a chance to change things up.
Ron Jones now opens the show with Jennifer Bellamy as his primary support. The anchors are always standing and walking around the newsroom and talking to various reporters at their desks.
“We increased our commitment to make this show a multi-way conversation to ensure the audience's voice is heard,” said John Deushane, general manager. “It is a fast paced socially-driven program that delivers context, perspective and personality. Journalist Aisha Howard will join the Up Late team in early February as well.”
“It’s not top down with anchors playing the role of all knowing sage,” he added. “Viewers are involved via social conversation. From a presentation perspective, the show feels fresh and vibrant. Like with the Morning Rush it has a smart, engaging ensemble team rather than the stiff, static two anchor approach taken by most stations.”
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Star 94 morning host Jeff Dauler’s wife Callie Dauler wrote a heartfelt story about a miscarriage earlier this month.
Dauler, who works as talent executive assistant to HLN’s Robin Meade, detailed the story on her blog about how they decided to get pregnant, how excited they were when they found out and how they began mapping out their future.
At eight weeks, she got the bad news. The little baby’s heartbeat was gone.
Both she and Jeff cried.
“I am still crushed and that’s an understatement,” she wrote. “A part of my heart feels like it’s missing and I may never get that part of it back. This has been the hardest week of my entire life. I used to have passing thoughts about what life would be like if we didn’t have kids. What if we traveled the world together? Those thoughts are gone forever. Seeing Jeff find out he was going to be a dad and watch him take care of me and our baby has changed me forever in the best way. I am meant to be a parent with this man and I have never been more excited to start our future. The next time we find out we're parents will definitely be the best moment of my life. I cannot wait for that moment.”
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Streetz 94.5 has promoted evening jock Ferrari Simmons (real name: Sean Simpson) to music director.
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I never got around to updating folks on last month’s Christmas-oriented charity drives that I visited run by various media outlets. Here were the results:
Clark’s Kids led by Clark Howard ended up getting gifts for more than 11,000 foster children in Georgia courtesy of generous WSB listeners.
That is the most foster children ever served after more than a quarter century of doing this. Unfortunately, the number of kids in foster has gone up rapidly in part due to the opioid crisis. It was just 6,808 in 2015.
The 11Alive/March of Dimes Making Miracles Can-a-thon this past Christmas season brought in 211,000-plus cans from four locations.
Atlantic Station: 21,952
Cumberland Mall: 47,984
Infinite Energy Center: 52,224
Rome: 89,027
That’s down from 238,000 last year and 288,000 in 2016.
The Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Making Miracles Radiothon last month raised more than $243,000 during a one-day fundraising event on air where families told their stories about how the hospital helped them.
This year, they decided to focus just on Q99.7 and Kicks.
Atlanta-based Cumulus had changed the set up from last year when Rock 100.5, Q100 (now Q99.7), Talk 106.7 and Kicks 101.5 were involved.
That’s down from $261,000 last year but ahead of the $231,888 in 2016.
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