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| Bill "Willie" Cunningham's TV Show To Air Next Week |
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| Written by Larz | |||
| Tuesday, 06 July 2010 17:33 | |||
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Bill Cunningham's new television show is tentatively set to make its debut test run next week on WGN-TV and other Tribune-owned television stations.
Bill Cunningham is the controversial Cincinnati radio host who just recently turned down WGN-AM's offer to become their Noon-3:00pm radio host after verbally accepting it previously. A few days before turning down WGN-AM, he was in town at WGN-TV's studios, taping the first five episodes of his TV Show for the Tribune Company, then called "Big Willie." It is these episodes that WGN-TV will be running next week. Well... most of those episodes, anyway. Only four out of the five that were taped will be shown. One of the episodes, where Cunningham and the show's staff allegedly verbally abused some child beauty pageant contestants, along with their mothers, and encouraged the audience to do the same, will not be shown. Cunningham's treatment of these participants and the way they claim they were misled to be part of the show, has resulted in the Tribune Company being sued by five women. The other four episodes supposedly contain show topics as classy as: grandmother prostitutes/porn stars, pregnant girls who like to smoke & drink, a look at conjoined twins, and a show where Cunningham makes an morbidly obese woman eat like a dog off the floor. As one can surmise from these show topics, the shows are not aiming for an intellectual crowd. Tribune CEO Randy Michaels is looking to create a new show in the Jerry Springer/Mort Downey Jr vein... and perhaps even cruder than that. These four shows will have their test run next week, from Tuesday July 13th through Friday July 16th. It will run in the afternoon, displacing one of the two episodes shown each day of "The Tyra Show." The show most likely will air from 3:00pm-4:00pm, following an episode of "Maury." It is possible that the show could also run in place of "Maury" for those four days. Almost everything about these shows is subject to change at the last minute. The show will air in numerous markets, wherever the Tribune owns stations. Most will air the shows in the afternoons. Showing times could vary from market to market, however. There will be no advance promotional push for the airings. The Tribune will simply be looking for feedback to see if the show needs to be changed, tweaked or improved prior to the true start of the show tapings, which probably begin in September. The show has dropped the name "Big Willie," which was the title of the show during the tapings. Apparently, the title being a juvenile nickname for a man's genitals was just too much for many station managers. The title is now "The Willie Show," which was the original title, although insiders have said that the final title has not yet been decided upon and may not be until September. The television episodes of the full run of "The Willie Show" (or whatever title the Tribune executives settle upon) will all be taped in Chicago at WGN-TV's studios, beginning in September, if all goes according to producer's plans. The telecasts could start as early as October of this year. UPDATE 10:20PM 07/06/10: The Chicago Tribune's Phil Rosenthal is now reporting that these four episodes will not air in the afternoons in Chicago, but will instead air at 12:30am next week on WGN-TV. Don't wake the kids. 
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