SueTube – Let’s talk TV with critic Susan Young

Former KRON-Channel 4 anchor Tom Sinkovitz joins KNTV-Channel 11 as a political reporter and fill-in anchor. He starts Wednesday live from Republican debates in LA and Thurs from Democratic debate.

Tom’s been missed since his departure from KRON back in Sept. 2006. You can check out the details on the Peninsula Press Club site.

Folks have been wondering where he would turn up. Good to hear it’s back on his old stomping grounds.

Tom and his brother Jim, who is also a TV news man, at a recent high school reunion.

Emmy award-winning Tom began his career with the Armed Forces Vietnam Network when he was in Saigon in 1969. Before coming to the Bay Area eighteen years ago, he anchored and reported in Pennsylvania, Cincinnati, Baltimore and Atlanta.

He won an Emmy award for his coverage of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. He also reported live from the Nashville campaign headquarters of then Vice President Al Gore on the infamous election night of November 2000.

Coverage continues on Feb 5 live on NBC11’s digital channel and nbc11.com starting at 7 pm and continuing through a live simulcast of the 11 p.m. newscast on the digital channels also known as NBC11 WeatherPlus and nbc11.com.

Welcome home.

When the driver got lost on the way from San Jose to Livermore, the video interview with “Journeyman” Reed Diamond also took a strange turn: We ended up shooting the interview on the NBC float traveling down the holiday parade route in Livermore.

At night. With a journalist (me) who, until recently, limited my videotaping to soccer games and birthday parties. So be kind when you watch this week’s SueTube with Reed.

Anway, Reed says when he and wife Marnie were in Solvang last week, he says women were yelling at him from the stores to give his “brother” a break.

That would be his fictional brother Dan (played by “Rome” star Kevin McKidd), a man who suddenly started traveling in time to right certain wrongs in “Journeyman.” Think of it as a sort of “Quantum Leap,” with Dan as a time-traveling San Francisco reporter trying to cope with it all.

Reed and Kevin McKidd from the Christmas episode airing next week

“It’s like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Would YOU believe someone who told you they were time traveling?” says Reed, who plays Dan’s cop brother Jack. “C’mon. But give him some time. Things change.”

Reed and Marnie did double-parade duty last weekend in Livermore and, the much larger San Jose parade. First up was Livermore’s parade, which lasts about five minutes. Reed loved every minute of it, waving and chatting to the crowd from atop the KNTV-Channel 11 float, complete with a mock Bay Bridge (with toy cars traveling on it), a faux helicopter and even a tiny vineyard.

Certainly the good times took his mind off the writers’ strike which is crippling Hollywood right now.

“It’s a righteous fight. Last time around, the writers didn’t get their fair share from DVD sales. Now it looks like the same thing is going to happen with Web sales,” Reed says. “They lost a lot of money on DVD sales, but this fight is important because in a few years, kids are going to look at those shiny discs and say ‘what is this Daddy?’ The Internet is the next big revenue source for producers, and the people who make those shows deserve to get some of that money.”

Reed and other actors are supporting the writers because their contract comes up in June, and the actors will be fighting for those same Internet dollars.

As announced in my Nov. 14 blog entry, Allen Denton has left KNTV-Channel 11 news and tonight was Allen’s final newscast.

At the end of the 11 p.m. news, his co-anchors bid him a fond farewell, with Lisa Kim saying that Denton would be “movin’ on to near Nashville to actually having a real life outside of news.”

“We’re going to try,” Denton says, adding he will miss “all of you,” then added “y’all” before laughing about taking on the twang.

A few snapshots, then it was over.

According to the bio posted on the KNTV-Channel 11 Web site, Allen started in the business while still in high school as a radio DJ and spent the next 10 years working at several radio stations, holding positions in sales, news, programming, and eventually management. Allen landed his first TV job as an anchor/reporter in Bowling Green, Kentucky and anchored at three other stations before calling the Bay Area home.

When he’s not at work, Allen usually trades in his suit and tie for a tank top, cotton shorts and a pair of sandals. In his spare time, Allen enjoys gardening. Allen and his wife, Mary Jo, have two sons, Spencer is following in his dad’s footsteps, working as a TV Meteorologist in Alabama and his other son is attending college in San Diego.

What is going on around here?

Just got word that yet another Bay Area anchor is casting off, this time from KNTV-Channel 11. For seven years, Allen Denton has helmed the desk as the station’s lead anchor. His last newscast will be Nov. 30.

Allen Denton and Lisa Kim

Allen was paired in 2002 with Terilyn Joe. Joe, who came from KGO-Channel 7, was known as Terrible Joe for her, shall we say, fiery temperament. The union lasted just two years before Joe left.

He was then teamed with Lisa Kim and the two seemed to be doing just fine on the 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts. No word yet on who will replace Allen.

Allen’s son Spencer, a weatherman from Alabama, posted this on his blog about his dad’s departure.