Weekend Notes

• Was WOWT using video equipment borrowed from a Texas Goodwill Store? Highlights of Saturday's Nebraska-Texas A&M looked alternately blurry or washed-out. At first we thought it was the TV, but quick checks of three other sets revealed the same thing. The fact that all the station's shots were taken from about a mile high didn't help any.• The lobotomization of Malorie Maddox appears to be

Local Paper Runs Ads on Talking Picture Box

Omaha's daily newspaper may not cover television, but it doesn't mind advertising there.We noticed one spot over the weekend that features a young couple pushing a stroller through a kid-infested playground, only to be accosted by columnist Mike Kelly, who appears out of nowhere to offer them a paper. The ad doesn't make us want to read the paper, but it does make us wonder why Kelly is hanging

Paging John Clark...Mr. John Clark, Red Courtesy Phone Please

If ever there were an article that just about everyone at Channel 6 should read, it's Mistakes Are Bad News by newswriting coach Mervin Block. Block's article describes 16 mistakes that news directors make that diminish the strength of their product. The piece reads like a prescription for much of what ails the sluggish WOWT evening newscasts. Our favorites, which we'll call "The John Clark Five"

If Diversity Includes the Untalented, Then She's a Double Threat

KETV Newswatch 7 is truly sinking before our eyes. Ont Thursday at 10 p.m., train wreck reporter Farrah Fazal was dispatched to cover the story of the three-year-old who wandered away from home before being picked up by police, who then set about trying to figure out where he belonged. Fazal, whose voice is somewhat manly and comes with a halting delivery and yet-to-be-identified accent, kept

Bits

• Sportsguy Matt Schick, who's cutting back on his involvement at KETV, will be hosting a daily sportstalk show on 1620/The Zone, according to promos running on the ESPN radio affiliate. The show is being called "Schick and Nick," to account for co-host Nick Bahe's presence. Bahe is a former Creighton basketball player.• If you have the stomach, check out Channel 3rd's 10 p.m. newscast to get a

Riding the Short Bus with My Sister

Okay, this has nothing to do with Omaha TV, unless you count the fact that it was viewed on TVs in Omaha, but this TVgasm.com highlight reel from Rosie O'Donnell's made-for-TV movie "Riding the Bus with My Sister" made us laugh so hard we became incontinent. Enjoy. And don't send us outraged emails about our lack of sensitivity; you know we're insensitive, but you're here anyway, right?

Maltard Word of the Day

(With Tracey Madden on vacation, SuxNews viewers are being treated to a dose of serial-mispronouncer Maltard Maddox on the evening newscasts.)jawn: J-Pa's first name

News from any source

Best of Google TV Series

Television is stil the main source for the daily news in the home, according to PEW research. Until lately, print and web news content have been absent from the big screen. We’ve been working with developers to enhance your TV news experience, optimizing both traditional and innovative news sources for Google TV.

• The New York Times offers daily TimesCast video-news updates alongside video blogs and featurettes.
• USA Today has improved reading for the big screen: you can browse through the day in photos, stay up-to-date on sports news, and track the world of business.
• The CNBC News App lets you watch the latest web videos in business news. Follow the markets as they happen and track your personal, customized stock portfolio.
• The Huffington Post brings together the best of traditional news, the blogosphere and opinion reporting in their sleek News Glide web-app.
• The Onion covers “the important stories lesser outlets fail to report” through their comedic style.

Video journalism has also proliferated across YouTube. On YouTube Leanback, viewers have access to rich content from channels like the Associated Press, Al-Jazeera English, and NPR. Alongside traditional news sources, YouTube has built a thriving community of citizen reporters. The News & Politics channel, CitizenTube, aggregates video news from across the YouTube community, providing raw footage from the scene of breaking news and unique perspectives from people and places around the world.

On Google TV you can get breaking news from many sources: cable broadcast, the web, blogs, and even citizen journalists.

Posted by Olivia Ma, YouTube News Manager, recently watched Google TV Entry - Stop Motion Animation

CWS Live Reports Hit and Miss

This weekend's live reports from the NCAA Men's College World Series were something of a mixed bag in terms of quality. None of the stations delivered any home runs. The most ambitious of the broadcasts was Channel 6's attempt to broadcast most of its 6 p.m. program from Rosenblatt Stadium. The result was mostly awkward and not particularly well executed. Anchors John Knicely and Tracy Madden

Traffic Face

According to the latest info, this will be the new face of KETV's morning traffic reports. If she looks familiar, it's because she is Miss Nebraska USA Jena Murrell. Murrell will apparently staff an in-studio traffic monitoring station, from which she'll deliver her reports.Pageant winners have had mixed results in Omaha. Channel 7's Brandi Petersen has emerged as something of a star at the

Samsung and Google TV

Earlier this week, we shared that Vizio is working on several devices powered by Google TV. Today, Samsung also announced that they’re building a 3D Blu-ray player and companion box with Google TV. Check out their press release for more details. We look forward to working closely with all of our partners to bring Google TV powered devices to more consumers this year.

Posted by Mickey Kim, Google TV Partnerships Team