Q: Barry Pintar at KDKA has not been on the air for at least a month or more. Any news as to where he has been?
— Linda, via email
Rob: I heard from several viewers who had this question and at first I thought maybe some viewers didn’t realize that Pintar began anchoring at noon earlier this year. But it turns out he was away on medical leave until April 6.
“I was off a month for hernia surgery,” Pintar explained on Monday. “Today was my first day back, but [I anchored] the 7:30 p.m. [newscast] instead of the noon. Tomorrow I start my regular schedule which includes … anchoring the noon, doing ‘The Talk’ newsbreak, and anchoring ‘Word on the Streets’ with Kristine during the 4 p.m. [newscast]. Additionally, I’ll continue to report during the evening newscasts. I keep busy.”
Q: On April 4 at 8 p.m. my TV was tuned to CNN. It was a repeat episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher” from March 13 (season 24, episode seven). I checked to see who was on it. Instead of the guests’ names, this is what the description on the TV listing said: “Three malignant narcissists walk into a room, one tosses easy questions of the other two, who are at a loss to provide coherent answers.” April 5 at about 8:45 a.m. I checked Xfinity’s On Demand listing. There was another different but similarly derogatory description of the program. When I checked about noon, it was gone.
Did I just see an AI dirty tricks occurrence?
— Lois, via email
Rob: Lois wasn’t the only one who noticed these rogue episode descriptions in online listings. The Daily Beast reported on it and questioned if it was “a genuine hack or a metadata glitch gone rogue.” The cutting nature of the commentary suggests a deliberate hack. A publicist for “Real Time” did not respond to a request for comment. (The three guests on that episode, as reported by Daily Beast: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Anthony Scaramucci and Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein.)
Q: I have noticed on local and national TV advertisements the same people doing multiple ads for different companies. The Kris Kringle fellow from Target is then on a Pizza Hut commercial and locally the woman on a Rivers Casino ad is then on an Eat’n Park spot. Are they professional actors?
— Mike, Beaver
Rob: Yes, performers who appear in TV commercials, especially the high-polished, national ads, are generally actors. And those jobs pay well. I have a cousin who’s an actress in Chicago — both on stage and as a guest star in prime-time series that film there (“Boss,” “Fargo”) — and her biggest payday was for a national TV commercial a few years ago.
Q: Why do advertisers air their ads multiple times and show the same commercials over and over? Isn’t this overkill? I know stations make their money through advertisements, but this is ridiculous.
— Jim, via email
Rob: TV commercials have always reaired many times. This is nothing new. Repetition is how all of us of a certain age can recall slogans and/or jingles like Oscar Mayer’s “My bologna has a first name,” Kit Kat’s “Give me a break” and State Farm’s “Like a good neighbor.” The ubiquity of some TV ads is why there are programs shows like “Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials.”
If we’re talking about watching local newscasts online where the same commercial spots air repeatedly without a break between them, that’s because online video is more complicated than linear TV, but steps are being taken to address it by some platforms.