Post-Gazette TV writer Rob Owen answers reader questions online every Friday in Tuned In Journal blog at post-gazette.com/tv. Here’s a selection of recent queries.
Q: Why isn’t Jon Burnett on KDKA-TV’s “Pittsburgh Today Live” anymore? Since Kristine Sorensen left he seems to be just doing the weather.
— LINDA VIA EMAIL
Rob: KDKA-TV news director Anne Linaberger said, “Recently Jon has been working almost exclusively weather shifts,” which doesn’t explain the “why” of it, but that’s all I could get. Mr. Burnett declined to comment.
Q: What happened to “Cooper’s Treasure” and “Billion Dollar Wreck”?
— THOMAS, BELLEVUE
Rob: “Cooper’s Treasure” will be back on Discovery, but there is no return date locked.
History canceled “Billion Dollar Wreck,” so it won’t be back.
Q: “Star Trek: Discovery” is not a TV show; it is a CBS All Access show that you can only see on anything but TV. So, why are we referring to it as a TV show, which it is not? Also I read in the timeline for “Star Trek” that “Star Trek: Discovery” is after all the Enterprises and everything. Did we somehow jump back to Captain Pike?
— MIKE VIA EMAIL
Rob: “Discovery” is set 10 years before the original “Star Trek” series at which time Spock was serving on the Enterprise with Capt. Pike.
The platform “Discovery” airs on, CBS All Access, is streaming, but the program is for all intents and purposes a TV series. Yes, calling it a streaming series is more specific to the platform, but in every other way — budget, production, writing, production staff, etc. — it is a TV show so you can call it either.
Q: Are there going to be second seasons of Vice’s “Abandoned” and Science’s “Mysteries of the Abandoned”?
— JIM, BROOKVILLE
Rob: Vice has no current plans to make more “Abandoned” as the production team has moved onto a new project on the subcultures within the skateboarding culture, but Science’s “Mysteries of the Abandoned” will be back, although no return date has been announced.
Q: I watch a lot of crime dramas. An odd thing I’ve noticed is how often the suspects and/or victims don’t have full first names. A detective will announce that the suspect is Bill Somebody. I think to myself, “How do they know he doesn’t go by Will?” They pull up his DMV photo on a computer and sure enough, his driver’s license says his name is Bill. Or the deceased victim is found to be Patty Whatshername and her license confirms that her given name is Patty. I realize that some people do not have formal first names but not as many as I see in crime dramas. One show I know does this is “Major Crimes,” but I see it on others as well. Do you know why? Are there legal implications to using a name for a TV character that also belongs to a real-life human being?
— TONI, PITTSBURGH
Rob: Yes, all names of TV characters have to be legally cleared. So if a show is set in Pittsburgh, they’d go through local directories to make sure there is no character by the name of a real person in Pittsburgh. That may have something to do with the use of informal first names.
Ask TV questions by emailing rowen@post-gazette.com, including your first name and location, or submitting the form at post-gazette.com/tv.
First Published: March 4, 2018, 11:00 a.m.