Media Moves is in mourning

For the past almost 2 years, I've brought you news of comings and goings of other journalists, media personalities and what's going on in the business. Today, I'm taking the liberty of dedicating this space to report a painful move in my personal life.

It is with deep sorrow that I write of my father's passing, after an agonizing 8 month battle with cancer. Julio A. Villafañe died a little more than an hour after the end of father's day.

He was a brilliant man, who had an amazing international career as a chief civil engineer, heading multi-national projects. He once even worked for NASA and retired from his job as a U.S. foreign service officer, having worked in Africa, the Middle East and Central and South America.

Dad even had a tie to the media. He had a great voice and in the 1950's moved to Los Angeles to try to become a Spanish-language radio newsman. That didn't work out, but it just showed he was a little ahead of his time.

In his memory and during this period of grieving, I will not be doing any other posts this week.

Ortiz joins Currents

Nathalia Ortiz has joined the team of "Currents," the new NET NY television show as a reporter and fill-in anchor.

Nathalia moved to NYC in late 2008 to work as a freelance reporter at News 12. Before that she was a reporter at the Univision station in Miami and previously worked as a segment producer for the network.  

Mo' money for Perez Hilton

It looks like celebrity blogger Perez Hilton will be launching a new, "more advertiser-friendly" site in the next few months.  

The buzz has spread online.  According to Mediapost, at a OMMA Publishing conference this week, Henry Copeland, founder and CEO of BlogAds.com, which handles the operations and ad sales for the popular PerezHilton.com site, spilled the beans.  He said the new venture would have longer-form content and "appeal more to mainstream advertisers who might not be as comfortable with the sensational, salacious coverage that characterizes PerezHilton.com."  However, the product would continue to appeal to the same core audience of his current site.

But wait... there's more.  The scandalous blogger has 6-figure deals in the works to do sponsored Twittering for 3 advertisers.

Bilingual news network to launch in Texas

A Fox affiliate in Beaumont, Texas is betting on Spanish-language viewers when it goes on the air in the next 4 to 6 weeks.

With no local Spanish-language newscast, the station's business manager for low-power KEBQ TV 9 and MY-TV 22 sees an opportunity and will be offering a bilingual option in news.

According to the Beaumont Enterprise, channels 9 and 22, which were affiliated with the now bankrupt Urban Television Network, will continue to broadcast analog instead of digital signals for the next two years, although there are plans to make the switch to digital in about a year.

The station's hiring!  Plans are to hire 10 to 15 people for management, sales and production jobs.

Haubegger adds presidential committee role

President Obama has appointed Latina magazine founder and former publisher Christy Haubegger to the President's Commission on White House Fellowships.  

Christy, who is now an executive at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), is one of 28 people appointed.  A White House press release points out the members of the commission are responsible for recommending "exceptional men and women to the President for selection as White House Fellows."  

Former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw is among the members of the just appointed commission.

Maxime lands NYC gig

Francesca Maxime has moved to NYC to become co-host of "Currents," a brand new television show for NET NY run by the Diocese of Brooklyn, airing on Time Warner.

You can catch her in action on live streaming video Mon-Fri at 7:30 and 11:30 pm.  The show is available the following day on YouTube.

Francesca was most recently 10 pm anchor at WEAR-TV ABC 3 in Pensacola, Florida.  She is a Harvard grad.

Quiroga named WZDC station manager

ZGS has named Nicole Quiroga the new station manager of its Telemundo affiliate in Washington, D.C.

Nicole has worked for ZGS for over 11 years.  She was most recently serving as the General Sales Manager of WZDC.

Mora-Tagle returns to Telemundo

Rogelio Mora-Tagle is back at Telemundo.  Starting today, he will be a freelance correspondent out of the network's Telemundo bureau in Mexico City.

He will be working for Al Rojo Vivo, but will also report for Noticiero Telemundo.

After Rogelio left Telemundo in July of last year, he went on to anchor news segments for terra.com's internet TV channel.

AP to deliver non-profit investigations

Shrinking newspapers have also shrunk their investigative journalism.  Non-profits have started doing their own in-depth investigative reporting.  So now... the Associated Press will deliver their work across the country.

The AP announced over the weekend that it will distribute the work of 4 journalism non-profits. Work from the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and ProPublica will be available to the AP's 1,500 member newspapers for free publication.

The deal is a 6 month experiment that could include other investigative non-profits in the future.

Televisa, Univision rest internet case

Attorneys for Televisa and Univision on Friday rested their cases in the lawsuit which will determine who has the right to air Televisa's shows on the U.S. internet market.  

The judge ordered both sides back to court for closing arguments on July 8.  It's possible he could issue a tentative ruling at that time.

DTV switch deadline arrives

So... tomorrow is d-day for TV.  Despite a government 4 month extension of the original DTV switch date, it's expected millions of viewers will still be left in the dark.   The switch from analog to digital TV signals was supposed to be February 17th, but after many complaints of unpreparedness for the event, it was postponed to June 12.

According to Nielsen numbers, close to 3 million households are still not ready for the digital switch.  In a statement, the FCC acknowledges there will be disruptions, but that the agency will do everything possible to help make a smooth transition.  So far, the FCC and NTIA have distributed 59 million $40 coupons for TV converter boxes.  However, only about 31 million coupons were redeemed.  Those coupons will continue to be available for consumers who apply until July 31st. 

Televisa vs. Univision, part II

Televisa and Univision head to court again tomorrow.  This time, to set the record straight as to who has the internet rights to Televisa programming in the U.S.

Both companies settled another suit out of court back in January.  In that one, Televisa was threatening to break their 25-year programming deal, claiming breach of contract and owed royalties.  Thankfully for Univision, a deal was reached and they'll keep on airing Televisa's popular telenovelas until 2017.

There's a lot at stake with the internet rights.  In a statement released last week, Univision argued that "Televisa does not have the right to compete with Univision by broadcasting over the Internet in the United States programs it has licensed to Univision."

But Televisa's stand is that the 1992 agreement exempts internet and that it was limited to TV broadcasting.

Iniga gets gig in Texas

David Iniga moves to Tyler, Texas to become a reporter/producer for KYTX-TV, an Azteca America affiliate.

David was most recently line producer and field producer for the KWHY-22 and Telemundo 52 duopoly in Los Angeles.  He was also a reporter/producer for KWHY's Lakers show during the 2007-08 NBA season.

Burt Shapiro is his agent.

Judge dismisses Chavez's lawsuit

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a civil-rights lawsuit filed by Oakland Tribune photographer Ray Chavez, who accused officers of illegally barring him from taking pictures at a freeway crash scene.

In the lawsuit filed in August of last year, Ray contends police officers interfered with his right as a member of the press to cover news.  Instead, he was "arrested and handcuffed without justification solely due to the exercise of First Amendment rights." 

In dismissing the suit, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco said the media has no First Amendment right to be at an accident or crime scene if the general public is excluded.

According to the S.F. Chronicle, Ray's attorney plans to file suit in state court, noting that Breyer did not address the issue of whether police might have violated a state law that allows the media access to "a menace to the public health or safety," including accidents and disasters.

Stations in L.A., Tampa to share news crews

Three TV stations in Tampa announced effective today they will be sharing video resources. Fox's WTVT-13, Scripps' WFTS-28 (ABC) and Gannett's WTSP-10 (CBS) have chipped in to create a local news service that will share video crews at news events.

Los Angeles will soon follow suit, with KTTV-11 (Fox), KNBC-4 and KTLA-5 (Tribune's CW) doing a similar arrangement.

According to TVNewsday, the stations argue that by creating the shared service, the stations will reduce costs and will be able to "strengthen their focus on specialized enterprise reporting."

An independent managing editor will decide which stories will be covered on a daily basis, will send out the crews and arrange delivery of the footage, to be used on multiple platforms (broadcast, online and mobile).

Just last month, four Chicago stations announced they would be sharing news crews. The ABC station opted out of the arrangement. Looks like they're keeping the same philosophy in L.A., the nation's number 2 DMA.

L.A. Mayor's new romance with TV reporter

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's love life is once again the focus of L.A. news. On Monday, NBC reported he is dating KTLA weekend anchor/reporter Lu Parker. Immediately, TV, print and online reports remembered his previous affair with former Telemundo anchor/reporter Mirthala Salinas and how the relationship affected her job.

The L.A. Times reports KTLA management is defending Lu's journalism ethics - saying that now that they know about the romance, she would no longer be covering city politics. However, her situation is really no different than Mirthala's 2 years ago. On Sunday, the KTLA anchor was seen hanging out with the mayor and later that evening, she read an on-air story about the possibility of Villaraigosa running for governor in 2010.

Without a doubt, there's a question of ethics here. Two years ago, Mirthala lost her job for dating the mayor, not telling her bosses and then reporting and reading stories about him on the air. Is KTLA just going to leave it at that with their anchor?