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'Hickory, dickory, dock/The Diceman is in for a shock/His reality-show plan/ Mistress, wife and rude, crude man/In cable land hasn't a shot.' Foul-mouthed comic Andrew Dice Clay wants to revive [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi The Insider's love affair with television developed relatively late in life. For four Air Force brats who spent three formative years in Germany, English-language TV was often [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Ted Koppel sounded like a young boy who's just been told that the rest of the school year will consist only of snow days. In a phone [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Hume on Fun and Fantods The Insider had planned to wait a bit longer to do her exit interview with Fox News Channel 'Special Report'' anchor and [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi How badly will the economic downturn affect stations through 2009? 'It's absolutely going to affect stations. One of our largest categories is automotive. What we're hearing from [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi It seemed so simple and sensible, if overdue and perhaps futile, given The Insider's congenital inability to comprehend higher math or lower politicians. She would allow herself [...]

ABC: Let's Do the Time Warp! ABC is cranking up the wayback machine on behalf of its new retro drama 'Life on Mars.'' Readers of the Oct. 16 issue of [...]

LIN Stations Pulled From Time Warner Systems LIN TV pulled the signal for its local stations from Time Warner Cable systems in 11 markets after retransmission-consent negotiations failed Thursday. A [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi An honest-to-goodness family thrives at 'One Tree Hill.'' The CW's sudsy and often heart-wrenching drama has created real history and roots in Wilmington, N.C., the youthful coastal [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Part 1: Is The Insider the only one who has just had it up to here with feuds as TV content? The ongoing battle of the cable [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi They may seem faint lights at the distant end of long tunnels, but the end of the marathon 2008 presidential campaign and of the Bush administration's eight [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Rumors have been swirling about what 'Good Morning America'' co-anchor Diane Sawyer wants to do, careerwise. She has been known to tell people that unless they've talked [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi All eyes are on New York this week as the networks unveil their fall prime-time lineups at the upfront presentations and prepare for a blitz in which [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi While the rest of Washington's Who's Who was mingling with bold-faced names from entertainment (and so-called entertainment) circles at the White House Correspondents Association's dinner April 26, [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi No A's for Apologies ... If there's anything The Insider finds more off-putting than offensive remarks made by folks privileged enough to be employed by or be [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Here's a prescription for a sort of homeo-techno instant mood-booster that makes you want to jump up and embrace the world. At least that's the effect it [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi The Insider has watched 'The View'' since the day it debuted in 1997. The sort of conversation that has always been at the heart of the ABC [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi It was sheer coincidence that The Insider was at her parents' home in Orlando, Fla., when the sales call from Bright House Networks was received and when [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi With two weeks to go before a deadline, Post-Newsweek Television stations and Bright House Networks are trying to strike a deal that will keep programming from WKMG-TV [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi And the Emmy soon will go to ... promos, those spots that tell viewers what, when, where and why to watch news, sports and daytime television programming. [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Hoak Media Corp. is optimistic it is about to restore the local signals of CBS-affiliated KREX-TV and Fox-affiliated KFQX-TV in Grand Junction, Colo., little more than a [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Jermaine Crawford is a charming and affirming antidote to the steady media diet of stars who are 15 going on lifelong, life-threatening tragedy. He's merely 15 going [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi High on `Life' and ... May the presiding spirits of whatever observances are celebrated at this stock-taking time of the year-take issue with that, Bill O'Reilly and [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Forget the residual deal points for a few minutes. Four weeks into the writers strike, The Insider has more (im)pertinent questions to kick around. Like: Who'da thunk [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Among the shows that appear to be immune to the writers strike are 'Live With Regis and Kelly'' and 'The View,'' two daytime programs that originate live [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi The Insider never has been one for keeping New Year's resolutions, so she stopped making them way back when cavemen were just cavemen and not a sitcom [...]

Byline: MICHELE GREPPI 'BBC World News America'' anchor Matt Frei comes to the assignment with the sort of international experience U.S. newsmen seldom have the luxury to accrue. The German-born [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi There's no better time for a little exercise in who wore what and why than when The Insider has spent almost four whole hours taking note of [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi HBO has been telling the world for years that 'It's Not TV. It's HBO.'' Showtime has begun telling its subscribers that its original series are 'the best [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Our topic today, dear readers, is on-air pleasantries and the subliminal messages they send. 'Good morning,'' for example. When one co-worker, perhaps the news reader on a [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi The CW took its run-and-gun sales act on the road to regional affiliate gatherings in Chicago, New York and Orlando last week. No time was wasted on [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi The distinct sound of 'ka-ching'' reverberated around ABC's 'The View'' Wednesday after Barbara Walters announced on the air that Whoopi Goldberg would be the show's new moderator. [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Shame, shame, shame on the Primetime Emmy voters who didn't nominate NBC's 'Friday Night Lights'' for best drama. The Insider knows the process is imperfect and that [...]

`Today' Throws a Wedding Road Trip 'Today'' will hold cattle calls starting Tuesday in Las Vegas, Miami, Chicago and New York City for couples who would like to be the [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Natalie Jacobson is a rare TV news creature in so many ways. For that matter, she is a bit out of the norm as a Baby Boomer [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Faithful readers-if they'll forgive that redundancy-know how partial The Insider is to 'The Late, Late Show With Craig Ferguson.'' And The Insider trusts they'll forgive another demonstration [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Random thoughts from a mind rendered more random than usual by landing in too many time zones in too few days, and aggravated by a late-spring bug: [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Before The Insider snaps into the cold-turkey fetal position because of the sudden drop-off in original programming, she's going to scribble down a few thoughts about the [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi In what has become a sure harbinger of spring, The Insider answers lingering questions about the highlights, the lowlights and the inexplicable aspects of networks' upfront presentations [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi It's The Insider's world and Roger King just lives in it. Oh, sure, he was ostensibly the reason that hundreds of folks donned black tie (or not) [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi The unveiling of networks' fall lineups is one week away. The upfronts is a four-day ride on a nonstop roller-coaster. So many new shows so well clipped [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi April 16 was supposed to be a day like most others in Roanoke-Lynchburg, Va., the 68th-largest TV market in the country, which serves Blacksburg, home to Virginia [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi 'Meet the Press'' executive producer Betsy Fischer says she comes by her love of politics naturally: She's a native of New Orleans, and in Louisiana, 'Politics is [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi The Insider wasn't going to watch 'Dancing With the Stars'' at all this season, in protest of Heather Mills using the ABC hit-and her will-it-or-won't-it-fall-off? prosthetic leg-to [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Six months ago local station executives heavily promoted (and explained) MyNetworkTV's femme-focused launch schedule of all English-language telenovelas. Now those same broadcasters are airing a prime-time slate [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Executive producer Michael Gelman thinks more than 4 million viewers each day can't be wrong. He hopes to end 'Live With Regis and Kelly's'' Susan Lucci-ish string [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi The friendly banter on the broadcast networks' morning shows belies how competitive the ratings and prestige race among these advertising cash cows has become. On-camera talent changes [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Could there be a more natural candidate for a classy, four-hanky ABC made-for-TV movie than the story of Bob Woodruff's brush with death in Iraq and his [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Cable networks' increasing appetite for original shows that set them apart from the competition is fueling growth at the broadcast news units that produce specials for sale. [...]

Byline: Michele Greppi Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes says he's paying for cable operators' mistakes with CNBC. Burned by the number of infomercial hours programmed by CNBC, the [...]