Christmas comes to XMKids radio

The holiday shopping season just began a couple of hours ago, and already you're probably sick of Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree. Possible solution: XMKids, XM satellite radio's channel for kids, which for the next month will specialize in off-the-beaten-path Christmas music, from the New Birth Brass Band's jazzy Santa's Second Line to the Smithereens' rockabilly version of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. And if you're toting the kids home from a long day at the mall at 11 p.m., the Absolutely Mindy variety show has a group interview with Nick at Nite's resident boy band, the Naked Brothers Band.

CNN's Thanksgiving marathon

CNN is rerunning six of its most popular documentaries on Thanksgiving Day, starting at 1 p.m. They include Growing Up Diana, on the childhood of Princess Diana; James Brown -- Say it Proud, on the Godfather of Soul; Fed Up: America’s Killer Diet, on why we keep eating food that's bad for us; Chasing Life, on the longevity industry's various potions and exercise regimens; Larry King -- 50 Years of Pop Culture, a celebration of the network's top host; and Danger: Poisoned Food, on how tainted products enter the food supply.   

A new way to watch the Mojo channel

Another cable channel has teamed up with Amazon Unbox, the service that allows you to rent or buy videos and have them sent directly into your TiVo. Among the Mojo shows now available through Amazon Unbox are Chef Daniel Boulud's cooking program After Hours with Daniel; comedian Dave Hill's hipper-than-thou King of Miami; and Wall Street Warriors, an inside look at the lives of financial wizards.Coming Soon: Test Drive, a high-def show on high-performance cars.

Mike Rodriguez leaves WSCV

When WFOR-CBS 4's Maggie Rodriguez left Miami for New York and an anchor slot on the weekend version of the CBS early-morning news, it seemed a good bet that her husband Mike, the general manager of WSCV-Telemundo 51 would soon be following. And now he has: He's Telemundo's new vice president for sales. No word yet on who will replace him at WSCV.

Direct TV adds more high-def channels

Direct TV, the country's biggest satellite-TV provider, looks like it will make good on its pledge to offer 100 high-definition channels by the end of the year. It has just added 15 HD regional sports channels (including 11 from Fox Sports) as well as high-def versions of MTV, VH1, Spike and Nickelodeon. When an HD version of the Bio channel appears later this month, it will give Direct TV 89 high-def channels.The Dish Network, with more than 70 HD channels, isn't doing badly, either.

Walter Cronkite's return to TV

Walter Cronkite's commentaries on the Retirement Living TV cable channel  start November 20. They'll air on Daily Cafe, a live two-hour show based in Washington D.C. and hosted by former CNN anchors Bobbie Batista and Felicia Taylor. On hand to introduce of Cronkite's pieces: Katie Couric.

A news victory for NBC

NBC's Brian Williams took a lot of criticism for hosting Saturday Night Live a couple of weeks ago. But viewers responded. With an average of 9.22 million viewers per newscast last week, the NBC Nightly News had its biggest audience of the past nine months -- and edged out Charlie Gibson's ABC newscast for the first time in several weeks.

Strike blog

Want to know what's going on with the Writers Guild strike -- at least from the writers' point of view? Here's a blog set up by the union's East Coast members.

FX renews 'Damages'

Damages, the legal thriller starring Glenn Close, has been renewed for two seasons -- that's a total of 26 episodes -- by FX. Adding in all the multiple airings, the show averaged more than 5 million viewers per episode during its first season.

No '24' this year

Fox has announced that 24 won't rejoin its schedule in January as originally scheduled. Not enough 24 scripts were completed before the Writers Guild strike began.

Cousin Brucie comes back to South Florida

Cousin Brucie Morrow, one of New York's grooviest Top 40 disc jockeys at WINS and WABC and later the foremost voice of oldies radio at WCBS (and, very briefly in 1960, a South Florida deejay, too), is visiting South Florida Friday to promote his new book Doo Wop: The Times, The Music, The Era. He'll appear on local oldies station WMXJ from 6 to 6:30 a.m. (you can just listen, or actually see him -- the broadcast is being done from the McDonald's at 111 N. Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale) and later do a book signing at the Barnes and Noble down the street at 2051 N. Federal Highway. Cousin Bruce has been off the broadcast air since WCBS dumped its oldies format a couple of years ago, but you can still hear on Sirius Satellite Radio's 1960s channel

Maury's 10th anniversary

Maury (which airs in South Florida at 10 a.m. on WSFL-CW 39) celebrates its 10th anniversary on the air Wednesday. Host Maury Povich welcomes back some of his most memorable guests -- not only celebrities like Jimmy Kimmel and Larry King, but a Denver woman with an eating disorder who was down to 58 pounds before the show paid her way to rehab, a dwarf who's now a cheerleader and actress, and a blind girl who wanted the show to give her dad a makeover before she lost the last bit of her eyesight.

'Cashmere Mafia' goes on hold

The last show of the new season, ABC's Sex And The City imitation Cashmere Mafia, won't be debuting this fall after all. ABC has postponed the scheduled Nov. 27 premiere "indefinitely."

Univision, Telemundo and the Writers Guild

Don't expect the Writers Guild strike that began Monday to have much impact on Spanish-language television. "We are not currently being affected by the strike," said a spokeswoman for the Miami-based Telemundo network. "Telemundo is not a signatory to the Writers Guild basic-minimum agreement."

Miami media consultant Julio Rumbaut, who works closely with Spanish-language TV, said almost none of the telenovelas that dominate its programming are written in the United States. "The writers for Televisa, which supplies Univision, are mostly in Mexico, and the writers for Telemundo mostly in Mexico," Rumbaut said. "So there really isn't going to be much effect on them from the strike."

A TV strike looms

It sure sounds like Hollywood screenwriters will go on strike Monday. Thursday night's closed-door meeting of the Writer's Guild was reportedly full of strike rhetoric, with writers booing and hissing when their officers mentioned concessions they'd offered to the studios to get negotiations on a new contract moving. "Take it all back!" one writer yelled. The writers are demanding a bigger cut of the revenue from DVDs, downloads and other digital byproducts of movies and TV shows.

The last strike, in 1988, lasted 22 weeks. (Remember how the networks plugged holes in their schedules with stuff like a remake of the Mission Impossible series, using old scripts?) Most observers think this one will be longer and more bitter: The writers think they settled for too little in 1988, and the studios are now mostly owned by conglomerates with plenty of cash reserves to keep them above water during a strike.

If there's a strike, the late-night shows of Jay Leno, David Letterman and other hosts will disappear almost immediately -- they're written on a day-by-day basis. (Same goes for Saturday Night Live.) Dramas and comedies will probably continue normally until sometime around February -- the producers already have several episodes in the can, and several more completed scripts that they can continue shooting.

Like cockroaches scuttling around in the ruins of a nuclear war, reality and game shows will not only survive but thrive. They're edited together rather than written, so the strike won't affect their production. That's why Fox will be in the best shape of any network during a strike: Can you say American Idol? Not to mention Cops and Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader? Even a ratings dog like The Next Great American Band is likely to seem appealing in a landscape full of reruns. Hey, I wonder if this blog could be made into a reality show? Are You Smarter Than A TV Critic? has a nice ring to it.

I dreamed of couch-potato heaven

Looking for a Christmas gift for that certain TV critic in your life? You can get an up-close look at the perfect present this weekend when Panasonic bring its High Definition Truck Tour to South Florida. No, idiot, the truck isn't high-def. (I thought this blog had smarter readers.) It's what's inside that's high-def -- a 103-inch plasma HD television set, the biggest in the world. That's the size of a queen mattress, for heaven's sake, and it costs a mere $70,000.

The truck is rigged with fancy sound and various HD accessories like camcorder so you can play around inside what Panasonic calls the ultimate HD environment. You might even take home some of the goodies for free: Panasonic is handing out $20,000 in HD gear as prizes to folks who stop by. The truck will be parked in the Brandsmart parking lot at 4320 NW 167th Street in Miami, from 10 to 6 p.m. on Saturday and 10 to 5 p.m. on Sunday. My favorite color is blue, by the way, but I'm not picky.

Well, THAT didn't last long

Radio's supposed new hostility to shock jocks ended Thursday -- if it ever really began -- when New York's WABC signed Don Imus to do a morning show that will be nationally syndicated. It was just six months ago that Imus was fired from a CBS morning show (and MSNBC, which did a TV simulcast) after a reference to the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos" didn't sit well with -- well, with anybody. His salary at the new gig is being reported at $5 million to $8 million annually. Crime may not pay, but racism and porcine crudity sure does.

And speaking of weathermen, errr, weatherpersons

Somebody new to blame when it rains: Julie Durda, who joins WSVN-Fox 7 Monday as weather wizardess of the station's 5 to 9 a.m. news bloc. Replacing Elita Loresca, who jumped ship for a Los Angeles station, Durda comes from KPHO, the CBS affiliate in Phoenix.

Whither the weatherman?

A career path that began 50 years ago when lightning struck his treehouse drew near to the end Thursday night when WPLG-ABC 10 weatherman Don Noe announced his retirement during the station's 11 p.m. newscast.

''I'm always going to get up in the morning and check the forecast,'' Noe -- who's been a TV meteorologist for 34 years, 27 of them at WPLG -- told The Miami Herald. ``But I want to do other things in my life. . . . I'm weathered out. I'm old and weathered. I don't want to work for somebody anymore. I don't want a boss.''

Noe will deliver his last forecast Nov. 28, then give way to Trent Aric, his understudy at WPLG the past 3 ½ years. His bosses say they'll miss him, and that viewers will, too.

''South Florida was lucky to know Don Noe for 27 years,'' said Bill Pohovey, WPLG's news director. ``He was always the calm, reassuring voice when hurricanes were threatening our community. He worked around the clock, catching the occasional nap on the floor, because he knew he had such a tremendous responsibility.''

Not that it's all been grim hurricane duty for Noe, 56. Stunts like doing a broadcast standing on his head -- we'll get to that in a minute -- won Noe a national reputation for unconventionality. He appeared in a People magazine spread on ''wacky weathermen,'' even did a guest shot on Hollywood Squares. Read the rest of the story from Friday's Miami Herald.