Jay Newman

There is no excuse for the kind of coverage TV has delivered the last two weeks on the sequester. Television news has been polarizing, sensational and mostly focused on personality rather than the policy behind the $85 billion in federal spending cuts...

Super Bowl commercials are nearly as anticipated as the game, and local companies grabbing some of that attention Sunday included Royal Farms and Union Memorial Hospital. Advertisers know the Super Bowl is one of the best-watched programs of the year &#...

Sunday's Super Bowl telecast drew a record audience of 1.5 million viewers at its peak in the Baltimore market, according to preliminary Nielsen figures provided by WJZ-TV. The audience is believed to be the largest for any show on Baltimore TV since the...

The TV ads are quirky, the advertiser unusual: Advance, a Cockeysville-based document management company, has run a campaign during Ravens games showing executives kicking around off-the-wall ideas in a boardroom. Business-to-business advertisers don't...

An average audience of more than one million area viewers watched the last two hours of the Baltimore Ravens double overtime victory over the Denver Broncos Saturday. The audience peaked at 1.1 million viewers at 8:30 p.m., according to preliminary...

Katie Couric’s visit last week to Baltimore’s WMAR proved at least one thing: She is serious about making her new daytime talk show, “Katie,” a winner. She did not do such intense promotion in the summer of 2006 even when she was...

Local TV news ratings in Baltimore are rarely news. The market has been dominated for a long time by a back-and-forth battle between WJZ and WBAL. Since the mid-1990s, most years ended in some version of a split decision, with both stations claiming...

At the height of its popularity, "Soul Train" felt like a religion in Baltimore. The Saturday daytime show hosted by the late Don Cornelius was not to be missed — like church or the early seasons of "Saturday Night Live," according to Tim Watts,...

WJZ-TVreports that 1.112 million area viewers watched the Ravens-Patriots game on Channel 13 Sunday, setting what is believed to be a record for the station, according to general manager Jay Newman. The game was seen by 78,000 more local viewers than...

For stations in Baltimore and across the country, Monday is the first day of the post-Oprah Winfrey era. Llike their counterparts nationwide, stations here will be trying new and (allegedly_ improved shows to grab a piece of the huge audience that the...

As reported yesterday, WBAL's new afternoon strategy of "Ellen" at 4 p.m. opened strong on Monday. And it did well again on Tuesday in Oprah's old spot with viewers 25 to 54 years of age. But WJZ, which had tennis on Monday, came roaring back Tuesday...

In the new world of endless channels and multiple ways to watch TV, you almost never see as dramatic a change in viewing as the one unfolding in Baltimore this fall. After a year of speculation about how the end of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" would affect...