D-FW news notes: starring Gary Cogill, Shon Gables
05/10/13 04:25 PM
By ED BARK
@unclebarkycom
Gary Cogill popped in to co-host KTXD-TV’s (Ch. 47) D: The Broadcast Friday morning, and in the process took a shot at his old employer.
The former longtime WFAA8 movie critic and sometime host of the station’s Good Morning Texas is now a movie producer via Dallas-based Lascaux Films. The company recently wrapped production in Vancouver on its first feature film, Words and Pictures. Directed by Fred Schepisi (Roxanne, Six Degrees of Separation), the romantic comedy has two estimable stars in Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche.
Cogill, seated between regular co-hosts Courtney Kerr and Lisa Pineiro, noted that he had brought some behind-the-scenes still from the film.
“You know there’s another station I could have gone to -- and I did not,” he added.
The reference clearly was to WFAA8 and GMT, which airs directly opposite the first hour of D: The Broadcast at 9 a.m. weekdays. The latter program slowly has gotten better, with oft-pointed conversation and a better mix of guests that on Friday included Temple Grandin. But it remains deep in hiding, according to the D-FW Nielsen ratings. Thursday’s program as usual registered “hashmarks” (no measurable audience) while that day’s GMT had 41,305 total viewers.
Former WFAA8 news personalities are very much the rule rather than the exception at KTXD, whose other homegrown program, The Texas Daily, is teeming with them. Cogill also appears on Texas Daily, along with rotating ex-WFAA-ers such as Tracy Rowlett, Troy Dungan, Iola Johnson, Debbie Denmon, John Criswell, Midge Hill, Phyllis Watson, Jolene DeVito, Robert Riggs and John Sparks. Former WFAA8 anchor Jeff Brady is the everyday host of the program.
Still very much entangled in legal matters with her second ex-husband, WFAA8 weekend Daybreak anchor Shon Gables has put together some short “Confessions of a News Anchor” videos. They portray her as terminally exhausted, but in an intended comedic way. And they’re pretty entertaining.
Here are a couple of them, with the second one intentionally accentuating the audio in an otherwise pitch black setting.