Disney Seeks Dismissal Of Florida Lawsuit

Walt Disney Co asked a Florida judge on Friday to dismiss a lawsuit by a state oversight board as part of the entertainment giant's effort to pursue its case against Governor Ron DeSantis, the latest development in a year-long feud.

Reuters reports Disney urged Judge Margaret Schreiber in Orlando to dismiss a lawsuit filed in May by the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, which controls development around the company's theme parks.

At the end of an hour-long hearing, Schreiber asked both sides to submit by Wednesday proposed orders to resolve Disney's request, but she did not say when she would rule.

The district lawsuit seeks to void "backroom deals" favorable to Disney that the district alleges were struck with a prior district board and in violation of state law.

It's A Hot Labor Summer In Hollywood

Dramatically escalating a bitter labor battle that has already brought Hollywood to a virtual standstill, thousands of striking film and television actors took to the streets Friday to fight for better pay and job protections in an industry that has been upended by the rise of streaming, according to The L-A Times.

On picket lines outside more than a dozen studios and production facilities in Los Angeles and New York, including the Warner Bros., Walt Disney and Sony lots as well as the headquarters of Netflix and Amazon Studios, actors held aloft signs and chanted in unison alongside Writers Guild of America members who walked off the job in May.

As temperatures rose throughout the morning in Los Angeles, so did the number of picketers from SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union.

Sonja Roden, 50, who has appeared as a background actor on shows such as “Westworld” and “Castle,” was among those who gathered outside the Disney lot in Burbank. While the union’s starry A-listers often grab the spotlight, Roden emphasized that the majority of her fellow SAG-AFTRA members are just trying to make a living wage.

“A lot of people don’t realize that the people who make the millions are a very small percentage of the actors in the industry,” she said. “The rest of us are literally living paycheck to paycheck. And we need to be paid fairly. We’re working sometimes 10- to 16-hour days and barely making minimum wage.”

Philly TV: Retired Anchor Jim Gardner Launches Podcast

After more than six restful months following his retirement as the long-time main anchor at 6abc’s top-rated Action News, Jim Gardner is heading back to work, albeit in a new medium.

The Philly Business Journal reports the 75-year-old legendary anchor, who led Action News for 45 years, last month launched a podcast called "More to Explore," which will feature interviews with a wide variety of guests.

He said podcasting has taken him back to his days in radio between 1970 and 1974, when he worked for 1010 WINS in New York City and another station in nearby White Plains, New York, before starting his television career.

“Whatever skills that I learned however many years ago all of a sudden are useful again,” Gardner said. 

“And I'm really enjoying doing that in terms of audio editing and trying to figure out how to take an hour and 15 minutes of material and get it down to 45 minutes. When you're in television news, you're dealing with a minute here, two minutes there, 25 seconds here. If producers are being very tolerant of you, you might be able to do a three-minute piece. Now, I'm able to do 45 minutes.... It’s just an opportunity that I haven't had in years. And it's not just fun, but it's a chance to really delve and explore in ways that television most of the time doesn't allow you to do.”

Radio History: July 15

➦In 1913... Lloyd Estel Copas born (Died at age 49 – March 5, 1963).  He is known by his stage name Cowboy Copas, and was a country music singer popular from the 1940s until his death in the 1963 plane crash that also killed country stars Patsy Cline and Hawkshaw Hawkins. He was a member of the Grand Ole Opry.

Copas was born in 1913 in Blue Creek, Ohio, in Adams County. He began performing locally at age 14, and appeared on WLW-AM and WKRC-AM in Cincinnati during the 1930s. In 1940 he moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he performed on WNOX-AM with his band, the Gold Star Rangers.

In 1943, Copas achieved national fame when he replaced Eddy Arnold as a vocalist in the Pee Wee King band and began performing on the Grand Ole Opry. His first solo single, "Filipino Baby", released by King Records in 1946, hit No. 4 on the Billboard country chart and sparked the most successful period of his career.

➦In 1929...“Music and the Spoken Word” debuted on KSL Salt Lake City.  It is still on the air today, the oldest continuous nationwide network broadcast in the world.  It is a 30-minute of inspiring messages and music produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; the music is performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Jocko Henderson

➦In 2000…Radio personality Douglas “Jocko” Henderson - WOV, WADO died.

Henderson began his broadcast career in 1952 at Baltimore station WSID, and in 1953 began broadcasting in Philadelphia on WHAT.  He hosted a show called "Rocket Ship" out of New York radio stations WOV and WADO from 1954 to 1964, which was an early conduit for rock & roll.

He was known for a distinctive style of rhythmic patter in his radio voice, which he had learned from a Baltimore deejay, Maurice "Hot Rod" Hulbert.   Henderson continued on the stations WDAS and WHAT until 1974, as a personality  in Philadelphia and New York as well as hosting concerts in both cities and a TV music program in New York. 

Report: Tucker Carlson Is Creating a New Media Company

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former White House adviser Neil Patel are seeking to raise funds to start a new media company that would potentially use Twitter as its backbone, according to The Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the matter. 

The new company would be anchored by longer versions of the free videos that Carlson has been posting regularly on Twitter since shortly after his departure from Fox News, but would ultimately be driven by subscriptions, some of the people said.

Carlson and Patel are looking to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the company, the people said. 

Users of Twitter and other platforms would still be able to watch free, shorter versions of his show, interviews and documentaries, but would need to subscribe to watch them in their entirety, the people said. The company would eventually add shows from additional hosts, they said. 

Poll: Cable News Beats Broadcast Networks For Trust

In one of the most unexpected and ground-shaking changes in the media landscape, the three biggest cable TV news outlets are trusted more than the Big Three networks, and it’s not even close..

The Washington Examiner reports Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC all topped ABC, NBC, and CBS in trust, with Fox king of the hill, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports survey shared with Secrets.

Remarkably, said the pollster, the trust gap is huge between cable and network news, ranging from double to quadruple.

All told, about 70% of the public trusts some news outlet. Nearly 30% said they trust none or just don't know.

Here are the responses to which news outlet likely voters trust most:

That Didn't Take Long..Geraldo Shows-Up On 'The View'

Former Fox News anchor Geraldo Rivera talked about his ouster from the Fox News Channel during an appearance on “The View” and his “toxic relationship” with a co-star on “The Five,” reports The Daily Caller.

Rivera announced his departure from the Fox News’ top-rated show, “The Five,” in a June 21 statement, and later revealed he was fired. A week later, he left the network after 23 years.

“I was fired from “The Five.” I had a very toxic relationship with another of the cast members … so I got a call from two of the female executives and they said ‘you’re off ‘The Five,'” Rivera told the “The View” co-hosts. “But there are plenty of other things you can do, I had a year-and-a-half left on my contract. And I said, ‘well, stop it. If you fired me from the number one show then I’m going to quit.’ And that’s basically what happened, but in the interim, in the days that led up to my last day of work, they were so kind to me. They were really so nice and remembering all the things we did together over the 20 odd years.”

Austin Radio: iHM's KVET New Flagship For Texas Longhorns

University of Texas Athletics and LEARFIELD/Longhorn Sports Properties announced Thursday that iHeartMedia Austin will become the new radio home for the Texas Longhorns.

The multi-year partnership will bring fans across greater Austin live game day broadcasts for Longhorns football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, baseball, and softball, as well as coaches’ shows and other programming.

iHeartMedia’s KVET-AM 1300 The Zone will become the flagship station, with Longhorns football and men’s basketball programming simulcast on KVET-FM 98.1. Broadcast stations for other sports will be announced at a later date, including Spanish-language broadcasts for football game days.

LEARFIELD’s Longhorn Sports Properties, which manages the Longhorn Radio Network and Texas Athletics’ multimedia rights, negotiated the partnership.

“The move of our network’s flagship radio station to KVET is a huge win for our fans in Austin and central Texas,” said Chris Del Conte, Vice President and Director of Athletics at The University of Texas. 

“The powerful signals of AM 1300 The Zone and 98.1 KVET will give our Longhorn faithful access to crystal clear radio game broadcasts from the northern tips of Williamson County down to the southern regions of Caldwell and Hays counties and out east to our friends in Bastrop and west into the beautiful Hill Country. No matter where you are in that footprint, you’ll get your Horns loud and clear from kickoff, tipoff or first pitch. Then you add the cherry on top to this deal with our network’s partnership with the mighty brand of iHeartMedia, and we’ve hit a home run in every way.”

R.I.P.: John Criswell, Former D/FW News Anchor

(1940-2023)

John Criswell, a longtime anchor at WFAA (Channel 8) and originator of its popular Wednesday’s Child segment, has died, his family confirmed Thursday.

Criswell, 83, died Wednesday in his Carrollton home, reports The Dallas Morning News.

Criswell was a news anchor for WFAA from 1973 to 1990. Criswell anchored nearly every broadcast on the station — morning shows, weekend shows and weekday newscasts at 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and 10 p.m.

He covered several major stories at WFAA, including serving as an anchor for national political conventions, reporting on multiple hurricanes and being an integral part of the station’s coverage of the Delta 191 crash at DFW International Airport in August 1985.

“He was the face of WFAA for a long, long time,” said Bob May, who worked in production at WFAA during Criswell’s time at the station.

Criswell moved to KDFW Channel 4 in 1990 and worked at the station through 1997. At WFAA, he originated Wednesday’s Child in 1980 and Crimestoppers segments.

Before retiring in 1999, Criswell worked in the newsrooms of KTVT-TV in Fort Worth, KDFW-TV and KTXD-TV, both in Dallas.

7/14 WAKE-UP CALL: It's A Cover-Up At TWH

NY Post 7/14/23

The conclusion of an 11-day Secret Service probe that failed to find which White House staff member or visitor left cocaine in the West Wing looks like a whitewash, former federal investigators told The Post Thursday. “This is a cover-up. How can they say they have no leads?” one ex-agent said. “It is a restricted area and they have a log book, you don’t have to be Columbo to figure out who was there.

“Suppose it was anthrax,” the same person raged. “Would they have the same answer?”

“We have a tale of two countries,” another former fed said. “They identified hundreds of people who were in the Capitol building on Jan. 6 after an extensive investigation, but they don’t know who left something in an 8 x 10 room in the White House?” The Secret Service concluded its inquiry Thursday without identifying a suspect, citing “a lack of physical evidence” after FBI forensic testing yielded no fingerprints and insufficient DNA evidence.

NYT columnist says media is 'wrong to ignore' Hunter Biden scandals: 'Dishonest and dangerous' https://t.co/0S1Ott8EGT

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 14, 2023

➤FDA OKAYS OTC BIRTH-CONTROL PILL: The FDA approved the first over-the-counter birth-control pill. The decision significantly expanding access to contraception among women across the U.S. comes a year after the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion, leaving the issue to the states to decide. Opill’s manufacturer said it would be available without a prescription by early 2024, but declined to discuss pricing. The FDA approved Opill for prescription use in 1973.

➤FEDS PROBE AI: The FTC is investigating whether OpenAI’s ChatGPT has harmed people by publishing false information about them. The focus is on whether the popular app that generates eerily humanlike content using AI “engaged in unfair or deceptive practices” that could damage people’s reputations. FTC Chair Lina Khan said the agency is concerned that ChatGPT and other AI-driven apps have no checks on the data they can mine. For critics of the FTC, the probe represented another venture into uncharted territory. OpenAI didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Elon Musk is launching an artificial intelligence company called xAI, vowing to develop a generative AI program that competes with established offerings like ChatGPT. https://t.co/Tg5c8jzRpl

— ABC News (@ABC) July 14, 2023

➤ARTIFICAL SWEETENER COULD CAUSE CANCER: A World Health Organization agency declared on Thursday that aspartame, an artificial sweetener widely used in diet drinks and low-sugar foods, could possibly cause cancer. A second W.H.O. committee, though, held steady on its assessment of a safe level of aspartame consumption. By some calculations using the panel’s standard, a person weighing 150 pounds could avoid a risk of cancer but still drink about a dozen cans of diet soda a day. The declaration by a W.H.O. agency of a cancer risk associated with aspartame reflects the first time the prominent international body has weighed in publicly on the effects of the nearly ubiquitous artificial sweetener. Aspartame has been a contentious ingredient for decades. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, or I.A.R.C., said it based its conclusion that aspartame was a possible carcinogen on limited evidence from three observational studies of humans that the agency said linked consumption of artificially sweetened beverages to an increase in cases of liver cancer — at levels far below a dozen cans a day. 

SAG-AFTRA Strike Shutters Hollywood

SAG-AFTRA’s national board of directors on Thursday voted unanimously to approve a strike action by tens of thousands of Hollywood actors, widening the scope of labor unrest in an entertainment industry that is already facing numerous headwinds.

The L-A Times reports the vote came after negotiations between the actors’ union and the major studios failed to reach an agreement on a new film and TV contract.

Actors — similarly to screenwriters already on picket lines — have been battling studios for a pact that would deliver far better pay and residuals from streaming and address other issues, including the use of artificial intelligence, that have been roiling the entertainment landscape.

Despite the last-minute involvement of a federal mediator, the 160,000-member union was unable to secure a deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents studios in labor dealings. The old collective bargaining agreement expired Wednesday night without a deal in place.

Union leaders announced the board’s vote at a noon news conference in Los Angeles.

“We are the victims here,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said during a fiery speech. “We are being victimized by a very greedy entity.

The union has been pushing for an increase in minimum wages to counter the effects of inflation. The actors also want increases to streaming residuals — royalties for when TV shows and films are replayed — and for their members to participate in the success of hits. They also want their health and pension plans boosted and desire protections related to the use of artificial intelligence, which has become an increasingly prevalent tool for studios and filmmakers.