Dick Clark is again scheduled to do the countdown to the new year tonight on ABC, six years after a stroke ended his broadcasting days.
The stroke affected his speech, a key tool in his business. But he hasn't stopped the 81-year-old from coming back and trying again and again and again.
I wish he had someone who could convince him to stop.
There are those who applaud him for his courage. But they wouldn't be so supportive if he was a surgeon and it was his dexterity that was impaired.
From the 1950s into the 21st century, Dick Clark has been a force in television. It's long past time for him to celebrate the holiday at home, away from the camera.
Channel 12, by the way, is delaying its airing until 11:30 p.m., rather than airing it live. It's repeating its "Season to Celebrate" holiday special at 10:35. p.m.
Sorry, Snookie: In what was going to be one of the goofier TV events scheduled for tonight, with talk that "Jersey Shore" star Snooki would be dropped out of a ball in Times Square during MTV's coverage of the countdown in New York City.
But the Hollywood Reporter says the special's co-producer nixed the plan as "impractical." Now it's not clear what MTV is planning for its "New Year's Bash 2011," which starts at 9:30 p.m.
That special follows an all-day "Jersey Shore" marathon, by the way.
Be good, Kathy: Speaking of New Year's coverage, Kathy Griffin is again sitting down with Anderson Cooper on CNN after two years of dropping F-bombs on the live broadcast.
She told Howard Stern that if she does it again, there's a clause in her contract calling for her to be immediately yanked off the show, which starts at 10 p.m.
Her comes Oprah-vision: The Oprah Winfrey Network formally launches at 11 a.m. on New Year's Day. Time Warner Cable, southeast Wisconsin's biggest pay TV service, will carry it on Channel 66 and digital Channel 162.
It replaces the Discover Health Channel.
You can also find OWN on AT&T U-verse Channel 256, DirecTV 279, and Dish Network 189. On Charter Cable, try Channel 147.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
