Aaron Barnhart's TVBARN.COM

Two more local exex out at Sinclair

While Sinclair Broadcast Group was the talk of the recent NAB show for its maverick efforts to have the digital-TV standard in the U.S. overturned, here in Kansas City it was business as usual for Sinclair, as the general sales manager of its local WB affiliate was fired and the general manager announced her departure in a midweek bloodletting. It's the third GM since Sinclair took over the station in 1996. Read my column in Saturday's Kansas City Star

Pick To Click: Smoking Is Very Glamorous

About 10 years ago, Joseph Epstein wrote an essay complaining that nobody ever smoked in the movies anymore (to say nothing of movie theaters). Since then, of course, Hollywood has begun lighting up again, so we shouldn't be too surprised at the arrival of "The Last Cigarette" (9 p.m. Friday, TLC), a habit-forming comic documentary from director Kevin Rafferty ("Atomic Cafe"). "The Last Cigarette" is basically a clip reel of dozens and dozens of nicotine scenes from old films. Rafferty then works the montage around a notorious tableau: the 1994 congressional hearing in which executives of all the top cigarette makers testified under oath that smoking was neither addictive nor all that bad for you.

The result is a deliciously savage attack on tobacco toleration. At one point Rafferty changes course slightly, flipping between old educational movies on the dangers of smoking and the more glamorous depictions of Hollywood. But through clever editing, it's the instructional films and their clunky messages that wind up looking sophisticated. A neat trick.

The daily digest ... for April 21: I'm not sure why USA Today wouldn't tell you that, in addition to appearing on two popular game shows on consecutive days, their sportswriter Eddie Timaeus also happens to be blind. But they didn't ... Howard Mortman, Mr. Hotline, Mr. See-You-at-the-Comedy-Club, has submitted his list of the campaign season's ten funniest moments. Tops on the list was Dennis Miller's "endorsement" of Sen. John McCain.

Coming up next ... subject to last-minute changes:
Monday: The V-chip (I); Kansas City doc goes national
Tuesday: The V-chip (II)

Previously on TV Barn:
20 April: Reader mail
19 April: More on "Survivor"
18 April: Second thoughts on Zehme, Takei
17 April: Sitcoms bomb
14 April: Ellen's new show
13 April: Reader mail
12 April: "Freaks and Geeks"
11 April: "Star Trek" protests
10 April: Zehme on Letterman

On this date... in 1956, Leonard Ross takes home the "Big Surprise" quiz payout of $100,000 for his knowledge of stocks. Not only enough money for the 10-year-old to buy milk and cookies for each of his Tujunga, Calif., classmates, but also enough in the '50s economy to buy them each their own Congressman.

April 22: in 1973, Raymond Burr is the Pope, John XXIII to be precise, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli to be even more precise — in NBC's "Portrait: A Man Whose Name Was John." Burr throws his weight around as the pontiff who became "Time Magazine's Man of the Year" in 1962 by summoning Vatican II, to "renew" the Roman Catholic Church.

April 23: in 1985, no single network is enough to contain the powerful force known as ... Liberace?!? Promoting his return to Radio City Music Hall, Wladziu Valentino Liberace journeys to "Another World" to fawn over fellow romantic diva Linda Dano, and later in the day treks across New York City to the studios of MTV to rock the house as a guest VJ. -- Tom Heald