Local TV Thread

Kate of KRM blogs on her favorite television shows. I have to admit, I kind of had a blog crush on her (there's a good definition of "blog crush" here) until I learned of her passion for Dancing with the Stars and Desperate Housewives. She may have won me back with her fondness for Amazing Race. And like her, I enjoy watching Christina Applegate in Samantha Who?, though I suspect for entirely different reasons (hey....I'm a 34 year-old American male....I grew up watching Married With Children! And having grown up in Buffalo, I have to love a woman who agreed to star in a sitcom set in that ill-fated city.).

All that is my long-winded way of introducing a discussion topic: what's your favorite local show or TV personality? And who's your least favorite? There is, of course, precious little local programming any more, but there's some. For that matter, who are your favorite all-time Cincinnati television personalities, including folks who aren't on TV anymore?

My own favorites? I like Newsmakers. I think Dan Hurley does a pretty good job. And even though I disagreed with him (and many of you) about the Bodies exhibit (he thought it was excellent), I thought he provided a great forum for both sides to be heard. Frankly, I wish WKRC would give him a full hour. Sometimes he jumps the shark on me (for instance, when he did a couple of shows on naturalism and showed pictures of birds the whole time...yawn). But overall, he's an asset to local television journalism. I also dig Bob Herzog, but that may just be my bias in favor of lawyers.

Least favorites? One name immediately springs to mind: Dave Lapham. Maybe I'd like him more if I'd grown up in Cincinnati and was a Bengals fan when he played. But seeing him on TV and listening to him on the radio fuels one reaction: change the channel!

Finally: I guess I shouldn't make fun of others' TV viewing habits too much. The other night, I found myself switching back and forth between two television shows: Live from Lincoln Center (the NY Philharmonic with James Galway) and The Ultimate Fighter, watching each with equal rapture. Yes, something's seriously wrong with me.

So please, weigh in with your local TV favorites, as well as you diagnoses of my psychological profile based on my confessed viewing patterns.