Kate Bilo will move to daytime duty and create some forecasts and features for Channel 3’s streaming channel while Bill Kelly, currently at D.C.’s WJLA-TV, replaces her as the CBS Philadelphia station’s chief meteorologist, starting Jan. 9.
Bilo, who has occupied KYW-TV’s top weather slot since 2015, will appear on the noon and 4 p.m. weekday editions of “Eyewitness News.” Kelly will take over the 5, 6 and 11 p.m. weekday shows while also presiding over the 10 p.m. “Eyewitness News” team report on Channel 57.
The shift marks the first shuffling of talent in a while. It occurs just as Channel 3 news anchor Ukee Washington inherits the “dean” mantle as longest-serving anchor from Channel 6’s retiring Jim Gardner.
Kelly, who came to WJLA, an ABC affiliate, in 2017, is known for livening weather reports by antics such as using an entire golf course as his green screen and pretending to paddle a kayak in front of weather graphic created for the occasion.
Besides D.C., Kelly has been in Columbus, Ohio; Phoenix; Spokane, Washington; Sacramento, California; Cincinnati, Medford, Oregon; and Eureka, California, with the first three as chief meteorologist.
He is a graduate of California State University in Sacramento, where his major was broadcast news communications, and completed the two-year broadcast meteorology program at Mississippi State University.
He also has Philadelphia ties.
His parents were born and raised in the Delaware Valley.
Kelly has been married for 19 years to his wife, Jolene. They have three daughters, two of them being twins.
In one interview about his move, Kelly is quoted as saying he looks forward to introducing his daughters to the city where their grandparents were born.
The move is more some stirring of the pot than it is a necessity.
Bilo has done a good job of presenting the weather on Channel 3’s primetime shows. She may not have the cachet of Channel 6’s Cecily Tynan and Adam Joseph or Channel 29’s Kathy Orr, but she delivered a good, solid forecast, explained weather phenomena well, and was in sync with the pleasant, friendly tone Washington sets as the helm of Channel 3’s newscasts.
A change seems best as a way to add something, someone, new to a television market that features staid, formulaic news programming on all four stations producing news and carrying the blandness to the shows Channel 6 mounts for Channel 17 and Channel 3 brings to Channel 57.
The shtick Kelly’s known for sound as if it can be fun, and Philadelphia television news needs some brightening.
The other interesting part of the change is the streaming channel to which Bilo will be adding more weather content. WJLA, from which Kelly will arrive, fields a 24/7 cable news outlet of which Kelly was a part.
Philadelphia stations stream what’s on their air, and some offer extra streamed material, but none have a 24/7 streaming news channel I’m aware of.
Is that what KYW-TV is planning, an all-the-time news station in addition to its CBS and local programming?
Or does it have regular, or even sporadic, streaming plan in mind?
Cataldi saga clears, a bit
Further news, Joe DeCamara confirms WIP’s (94.1 FM) plan to let the Eagles’ future determine the exact date DeCamara and his on-air partner, Jon Ritchie, debut as hosts of the station’s important morning broadcast.
That host job has been Angelo Cataldi’s for the past 33 years. Cataldi announced ages ago he intended to retire. The path to that retirement could be the subject of a “Saturday Night Live” skit.
Last month, Cataldi finally made his exit official and was also given the privilege to announce DeCamara and Ritchie as his replacements.
Before that, he hinted that he would like to stay until “the Eagles’ parade,” a reference to the local football team having a certain ticket to the NFL playoffs and strong odds to appear for the NFC in Super Bowl LVII.
From what DeCamara said on the air, the Eagles’ fate and the morning show’s fate are linked.
At most, the new morning show can launch in 10 weeks.
The scenarios are simple.
The Eagles are likely to earn a bye from playing in the first round of the playoffs because of having the best regular-season record and victories over other contenders.
If they lose in the second round or the championship games, their season ends, and WIP can get its change in gear.
If they win all rounds, including the championship, they’re in the Super Bowl. Win or lose, WIP can get its future rolling.
A parade might let the transition process linger until the latest possible date.
Meanwhile, DeCamara and Ritchie are assembling their new show. DeCamara said he’s looking for people to surround him the way Al Morganti, Rhea Hughes, and others, such as Keith Jones, were sounding boards and foils for Cataldi.
Hughes will remain on the morning team when DeCamara and Ritchie take over. On board from the beginning is the third member of the DeCamara-Ritchie troika, James Seltzer.
Last week, on the same show on which he announced the likely timing, DeCamara said Devan Kaney, frequently heard on weekends, would be a part of the new morning ensemble.
WIP has made no announcement about who will helm the 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
DeCamara, Ritchie and Seltzer are vacating. Evening host Joe Giglio and frequent commentator and fill-in, Jack Fritz, have been among those mentioned as possible in-house candidates.
Didinger tribute film
FS1 and NFL Films pulled a quarterback sneak of sorts when the Fox sports outlet aired a documentary about Philadelphia’s premiere sportswriter, Ray Didinger, at 12:35 a.m. one early morning last week.
The documentary, “The Godfather of Sports in Philadelphia,” a title taken from a comment by former Philadelphia Eagle Seth Joyner, was issued by NFL Films earlier this year.
It chronicles Didinger’s lustrous 50-year career covering the Eagles and Philadelphia sports and concentrates closely on Didinger’s relationship with the great Eagles scoring machine, Tommy McDonald.
Didinger wrote a play about the role he and McDonald played in his life. Called “Tommy and Me,” it has been seen in several local theaters and even in Hershey, where the two met during an Eagles summer training camp.
In “The Godfather of Sports in Philadelphia,” someone says he’s never heard a bad word about Ray Didinger.
I haven’t either. From anyone. Ever.
There are reasons for that. One is Ray is totally even-tempered.
He can have a spirited discussion, but he never shouts or puts his opponent down. He listens and explains.
Second, he knows his stuff. He is on safe ground with his opinions because they are based on experience and study of sports, especially football.
Third, he’s a professional. The job of conveying his passion for sports, whether in print, on radio, on TV, on via NFL Films, where he once worked as a senior producer, is Ray’s priority.
He only wants to tell the story with clarity and style.
All of this comes through in the documentary, which you can see, as I did, in its entirety on YouTube.
Stallone, ‘Tulsa’ script top notch
Sylvester Stallone shines in Paramount’s “Tulsa King.”
The series and the part Stallone plays, a top organized crime king pin released at age 75 from 25 years in prison and sent to bring Tulsa into his mob family’s orbit, is tailor-made for the star who adds one more indelible character to his “Rocky”/”Rambo” collection.
The writing gives Stallone his best moments.
A guy who has studied everything from Cicero to current events during his prison time, Stallone’s character, Dwight Manfredi, named for Dwight D. Eisenhower and nicknamed “The General,” has an answer for everything.
It’s a smart, apt, and beautifully delivered answer.
Even before “Tulsa King” adds complications — such as Dwight’s unintended relationship with a Tulsa ATF agent, his desire to reconcile with his reluctant daughter, some bad blood between him and another Cosa Nostra capo, and his delving into the marijuana market, legal and otherwise, in the Southwest — Stallone makes “Tulsa King” sail with his
sarcastic comments and way of persuading people to see and do things his way.
In early episodes, comedy also comes from Dwight, who refers to himself as Rip Van Winkle, adjusting to a technological world so different from the one he left behind in 1996.
He has to be introduced to the cellphone, Google and Uber.
Stallone gives other actors space and time to make their marks, particularly Angela Savage as the ATF agent and Jay Will as his driver-assistant, Tyson.
But just as Dwight aims to rule Tulsa, Sly rules “Tulsa Kings.”
Whatever is in Dwight’s part, as a criminal or a convict, Stallone gives the character an air of class that at times even becomes suave. He’s a guy who walks with confidence knowing he can control every situation and probably come out on top.
His challenges are less the law and respectable society and more his stubbornly cold daughter, uninterested in renewing any relationship or introducing her father
to her children, and the mob capo he offended and who wants what he regards as due revenge.
Restoring good graces with his daughter is important to Dwight because he seeks to have a family, a blood-related family of his offspring and grandchildren, to augment and soften being part of a crime family.
Appeasing the capo is also prime because that capo is the son of the mob boss.
“Tulsa King” is no “Sopranos,” but like that show, it makes you root and care about the criminal, even one who is seriously disturbing a certain level of peace in Tulsa by establishing mob presence there.
