At the risk of further snarking off some who have complained about this, I'm announcing TWO local TV appearances today: a stop at WTVT-Ch. 13's noontime show Your Turn to discuss the major awards shows coming up and a stop by Rob Lorei's politics show for WEDU-Ch. 3, Florida This Week .

It will be the first time I've made two local TV tapings in one day; I expect to be talked out and maxed out on Tampa's bizarre traffic patterns by the time it's over. Stopping by Rob's show will also be a bittersweet move for me; I've heard the show's longtime producer Valerie Wolf has been let go, and this may be the last time I'll see her there.

As always, I'm hoping you'll take a moment to watch one or the other appearances and maybe continue the discussions here. On WTVT, I hope to mention how happy I was to see some great character actors get well-deserved nominations -- Richard Jenkins, Melissa Leo, Viola Davis -- while I remain concerned that the academy is ignoring popular, well-done movies like The Dark Knight out of some unfortunate genre snobbery.

On WEDU, we'll be tackling everything from Obama's first week in office to Florida legislators considering new taxes (finally!) and Kevin Beckner's aborted attempt to take another look at domestic partner benefits in Hillsborough County.

My take on the last point: It felt like Bill Clinton's attempt to repeal the ban against gays in the military -- an obvious and needed move that was nevertheless too obvious, too soon and too clumsy. Now conservative opponents have a ready-made issue to hammer the openly gay commissioner with, after he ran a campaign based on refusing to be defined by his sexual orientation.

I'll be joined by Tom Tryon from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Linda Saul-Sena and Terry Kemple. I think this is going to be a fun discussion. Catch it at 8:30 tonight on WEDU-Ch. 3.

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Gawker once again comes up with a doozy of an allegation, stringing together a bunch of clips from Good Morning America star Diane Sawyer to ask whether she was under the influence of something during the network's coverage of Barack Obama's inauguration.

Amid growing controversy over the item, Gawker appended a "correction" to note the network says Sawyer never attended one of the 10 inaugural balls and stayed up for 24 hours straight covering the event. Not to fall for a network news line, but as a child of Indiana, I can tell you that standing in the cold for long periods can make it tough to move your mouth, resulting in slurred speech -- without intoxicants.

That said, the clips pulled together by Gawker look pretty bad. And they've also found clips of Anderson Cooper slurring and screwing up repeatedly as well. Whether it's alcohol or fatigue, let's hope these guys take the lesson: Nobody wants to see a talking head stumbling like Foster Brooks at a Dean Martin roast -- get some sleep and let Wolf Blitzer take over.

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This was something that was announced while I was out of town, and I should have mentioned it before now.

But reporter Doug Smith and the investigative team at WTVT-Ch. 13 will receive a singular honor in New York today, earning an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award for its series of reports on the wrongful conviction of truck driver Jean Claude Meus -- snagging one of broadcast journalism's most prestigious trophies.

The series, titled Small Town Justice, outlined how Meus received a 15-year conviction for vehicular homicide after a 2001 wreck in which he lost control of his truck and struck a van, killing two people. Meus maintained that a car cut him off, leading him to collide with the van, but an investigator who knew one of the victims pursued the theory that the victim had fallen asleep at the wheel. Smith's consistent reporting eventually helped win Meus a new trial, where a judge threw out the conviction.

  I first wrote about Smith and Meus in 2005 , when Meus' attorney John Travena first tipped WTVT to the case and tried in vain to win national attention. Back then, I speculated that TV outlets -- which had just gone crazy over the case of a kindergarten kid handcuffed in an elementary school, were cool to Meus' story because there wasn't any sexy videotape and zero interest in a wrongly convicted black man.

To Smith's credit, he didn't let such concerns stop him . He documented a similar incident in which a white truck driver who killed two people admitted falling asleep at the wheel and got a traffic citation. He also showed how two sisters of the woman killed in Meus' crash took up his case.   

The series has also won regional Emmy awards, a Freedom Fund Award from the NAACP, a regional Edward R. Murrow Award and an award from the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists.

Now they've got a huge piece of hardware to hang on their shelves, evdience that investigative reporting can make a difference in rooting out the widespread disparities that continue to plague our legal system and our society.

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Click below to read more about the series in a release provided by Smith:    

Nearly 38-million people watched Tuesday's inauguration of President Barack Obama, according to figures from the TV ratings company Nielsen Media Research , making his inaugural the second most-watched presidential ascension since Ronald Reagan's 1981 oath of office.

Of course, today's TV universe is markedly different than in 1981 -- back then, there were no cable channels, digital video recorders or Web sites to splinter viewing, with Americans forced to experience the inauguration through a limited range of platforms. Now, even though Nielsen's ratings include some recorded viewing through DVRs, several questions remain:

How many saw it online? Who watched it outside their home? And why --  in 2009 -- can't Nielsen give us reliable figures on those numbers?

My pal Lisa DeMoraes of the Washington Post as usual nails the point of all this with a delicious sarcasm . She notes that since Nielsen doesn't count people who watched the inauguration out of their homes -- including the viewing parties at theaters, college dorms and bars, the people at work AND most of the 2-million who watched it on giant screens on the mall -- the audience for the show was probably the largest in history. 

CNN.com, which drew compliments for a partnership with Facebook allowing users to trade comments with friends while watching the noontime inauguration broadcast, said more than 27-million people used their site to watch the event , generating more than 140-million page views. A leading company in providing streaming video online, Akamai Technologies Inc. told CNN that 7.7-million people watched the ceremony at the same time. NBC said more than 16-million unique users visited its site Tuesday, accessing 9-million live streams for the day.

Because every major newspaper and TV news channel offered its own streaming video coverage, it will be difficult to assess just how many people worldwide viewed the event -- made an online magnet by Obama's popularity and the midday start time, which allowed people to check in from work.

But it seems obvious that it was the most-watched moment in online video history, setting records at big sites such as YouTube, the New York Times and CNN.com and slowing the Internet's Top 40 sites by as much as 60 percent, according to the Associated Press.

NBC claimed victory as the top broadcast network, drawing more than 12-million viewers during the noon hour and an average 8.6-million people over its seven hours of coverage, starting at 10 a.m. Overall, NBC News says more than 18-million watched its coverage over the network and sister cable channels such as MSNBC and CNBC.

Yet another generational turn in a presidency that seems to make history almost every day.

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It's the kind of story you thought only happened in bad teen soap operas anymore: fresh-faced kid, a   month out of college, goes through with an audition she doesn't expect will go well . . . and lands the role of a lifetime.

But that's exactly how Monica Raymund of St. Petersburg landed in the cast of Fox's highly anticipated crime drama debuting at 9 tonight, Lie to Me .

"I wasn’t a snob. I just really didn’t think I was any good on TV," Raymund told me in the lobby of the Universal Hilton Hotel last week, just after a press conference before more than 100 critics to promote the show.

"I really didn’t think TV would be my first medium that I would explore with. I thought I was gonna land a musical theater gig on Broadway or, like, go join a Shakespeare company for a little bit 'cause that’s what I’ve been doing for four years. It didn’t make sense to me that anybody would want me for TV. I had seen myself on film and I had done a couple of auditions. I just didn’t think I had it, but there you go. . . .  I don’t know everything about myself and I proved myself wrong and it just goes to show that, you know, surprises happen on your journey."

Alerted to the audition by a casting director in New York, she snagged the role a month after graduating from the prestigious Juilliard School with a renowned award for classical theater acting named after legendary character actor John Houseman.

I've got a full-blown feature on Raymund coming in Sunday's paper. But here's an early look at the actor -- who has done so well in the show's episodes, even the sound guys at a recent studio session cleaning up dialogue complimented her skills. She's playing the third or fourth most-visible character on the show, Ria Torres, a former airport screener with an instinct for deciphering non-verbal clues displayed by others.

Lie to Me is an ambitious effort by Fox to develop another in its own brand of crime dramas, in the same spirit as the buddy forensics series Bones. Such shows can be lucrative: CBS's CSI franchise boasts some of the highest-rated series on network television and NBC's Law & Order franchise has disguised a lot of programming problems at the fourth-place networks for years.

This series features Oscar-nominated actor Tim Roth as an expert in non-verbal behavior clues. Wary of locking himself into the torture that Brit Hugh Laurie endures trying to play an American and a handicapped guy in pain on Fox's House, Roth insisted he keep his native accent for the show.

He's joined by Kelli Williams, former co-star on ABC's legal drama The Practice, in her first series role after taking a few years off to raise her three kids.

You can tell Fox wants this show to work badly; billboards featuring Roth's mug are plastered all over Los Angeles, including along the main road leading from the airport. Raymund's just trying to soak up as much knowledge as she can while making the best of the latest in a growing string of lucky breaks that have brought more success than anyone could have expected.

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It may seem an obvious conclusion given the injuries to his face, but officials at WTVT-Ch. 13 say morning anchor Russell Rhodes will not appear on air this week, as controversy about his arrest Friday Jan. 16 and the injuries he sustained lingers.

Officials at WTVT and station owner Fox TV declined to comment beyond confirming he would not be on air. Rhodes did not return telephone calls from the Times seeking comment on news that internal affairs investigators at the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office are reviewing the circumstances of his arrest.

Police spokesman J.D. Callaway said such an action did not indicate that the Sheriff's Office had concluded there were problems with the arrest, but that the sheriff was being careful in handling a high-profile case.

Callaway said the sheriff's office is still waiting for the results of Rhodes' blood test, revealing whether the anchor was intoxicated on Friday, when an off-duty police officer working security at the Channelside entertainment complex stopped Rhodes, eventually forced him to the ground and arrested him.

According to a previous Times report , the deputy stopped a BMW that he said was driving erratically and the driver, Rhodes, got out, reportedly with his belt undone and his pants unbuttoned, though they were still up. Rhodes appeared to be intoxicated, Callaway said.

The Times story also said the deputy maintained Rhodes tried to walk away from him twice after being ordered to stay put and surrender his car keys. Rhodes didn't identify himself or try to use his name to get out of the situation, Callaway said. When Rhodes tried to run out of the garage, the deputy grabbed him, Callaway said.

WTVT has seen staffers arrested in controversial circumstances before. In May 2008, then-general manager Bob Linger was arrested in a Tampa adult video store on charges of exposure of a sexual organ and lewd behavior. Police said Linger was among six men who formed a circle around undercover officers and began masturbating; Linger eventually was moved to a different job in the company after entering a misdemeanor diversion program to resolve the charges.

Such controversial arrests bring a host of issues for employer and employee. Often, the first public accounting of the incident leading to arrest comes from the police; even if the employee wants to offer an alternate account, lawyers or the employer may insist on silence.

Tampa lawyer Steve Romine, who represented Linger last year, said TV stations often wait until legal issues are resolved before deciding on an employee's ultimate fate after such arrests.

"The media is often the biggest advocate of making sure things are done fairly," said Romine, who has represented other bay area TV personalities accused of crimes. The attorney also said the details of an on-air staffer's contract -- which may contain a clause allowing the station to fire him or her for behavior that damages the station's image -- may also guide the employer's response.

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After 25 years with Clear Channel Radio, Gabe Hobbs’ status as an industry pioneer was solid.

He discovered Fox News Channel star Glenn Beck when Beck was spinning Top 40 cuts in New Haven, Conn. He created sports talk powerhouse WDAE-AM (The Sports Animal), building it into one of the top-rated stations of its kind nationwide. And he developed WFLZ-FM’s classic “Power Pig” format that shot the station to prominence in the early '90s.

But when the company cut 1,850 positions Tuesday ?- at nearly 9 percent, it’s a massive job reduction some in the industry are calling the Inauguration Day Massacre -- even Hobbs found he wasn’t exempt.

Still, he remained loyal to the company he has defended for years, despite criticisms that the layoffs seemed timed to ensure the news would be drowned out by coverage of the historic, massively watched presidential inauguration.

“You pour 25 years of your life into something and it’s like a marriage; you can’t just say ‘I hate you,’” said Hobbs, 52, who began working at a corporate ancestor of Clear Channel in 1984, Republic, coming to Tampa in 1988. “I made it all these years in business without getting fired, and now it’s happened.”

Officials at Clear Channel declined to comment on the firings or name who lost jobs, giving journalists an internal memo sent by CEO Mark Mays to employees. “We are facing an unprecedented time of distress in the general economy,” Mays’ letter said, noting that “a significant portion” of the eliminated positions came from their sales departments.

Industry Web sites such as RadioandRecords.com collected unofficial lists of those affected, a roster that included Joey “Joey B.” Bellardita, executive producer of Todd “MJ” Schnitt’s morning show on WFLZ-FM.

“It’s just business, not a personal thing,” said Bellardita, 42, a 20-year veteran who hopes to land another job in Tampa area radio and shrugged off criticisms about the timing of the layoffs. “When is a good day for somebody to lose their job? Is there ever a good day for that?”

Hobbs had a towering list of duties at Clear Channel: senior vice president of programming for news, talk and sports; operations manager for WFLA-AM, WDAE-AM and WHNZ-AM; and caretaker of the company’s relationships with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tampa Bay Rays and the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Possibly the highest ranking executive affected by the layoffs,  Hobbs recalled flying to Connecticut to speak with an angry disc jockey years ago who refused to sign a new contract unless he was allowed to do talk radio.

He decided to give this brash guy named Glenn Beck a shot, bringing him to WFLA-AM in 1999 and airing his show across a broad platform of Clear Channel stations after the 9/11 attacks, igniting his career.

Hobbs also hired local legend Jack Harris to work mornings at WFLA-AM, helping develop the top-rated AM Tampa Bay show. And the brainstorming session that led WFLZ-FM to be christened “The Power Pig” in 1989 was held in his Riverview living room, sparking ratings success that permanently undercut dominant station WRBQ-FM (Q 105).

“These guys would have made it without me,” Hobbs said of his many hires over the years. “I just tried to coach them and let them know what works.”

Named news/talk radio executive of the year in 2008 by Radio and Records -- the third time he had won the honor -- now Hobbs hopes to land another job in the city he has called home for so many years.

“I don’t blame the company for anything,” he said. “I might quibble with who they let go . . . but it’s a tough economy. Tough decisions have to get made.”   

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What does it say, when the man taking the oath of office to become our 44th president is less nervous than the guy swearing him in?

That's what I was thinking after viewing the only significant hitch in today's majestic swearing in of Barack Obama as chief executive: The moment Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts screwed up the oath of office.

It's supposed to go this way: ""I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States . . ."

But Roberts said, instead: ""I will execute the office of president of the United States faithfully . . ." And there was a moment where Obama stopped, right before saying "faithfully," Roberts said the line right and then Obama repeated what he said first, putting "faithfully" at the end of the line.

Through it all, Obama was smiling a bit, well aware that this was a moment when the world was watching. I just thought it was cool that he apparently knew the oath of office by heart already.

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At first, it sounded a bit like a gimmick; CNN partnering with social network Facebook to give users a chance to trade messages with friends while watching Barack Obama's inauguration.

But this partnership has proven to be one of my most favorite ways to sample this historic event today, marrying a video feed from CNN with rolling commentary from my network of Facebook friends -- which I'm amazed to admit now numbers more than 1,800 people. Check it out here .

The problem I've often had with assorted Twitter pages devoted to live events, is that snarky comments mean a little less coming from people you don't know. And at this moment, Twitter seems to be having problems keeping up with demand; partnered with Al Gore's Current TV to offer a video stream/commentary log of their own , the page has been tough to access from my corner of cyberspace.

My favorite video site, Hulu, also has streaming coverage, featuring Fox News, the network of co-owner the Fox network. Indeed, most every TV news outlet is streming its video coverage, from all the major braodcast network to black-focused cable channel TV One .

For me, a bona-fide media geek who hates big crowds, this is a great way to hang with friends electronically while sharing an extraordinary moment. And for folks stuck at work with no access to TV, online video streaming is a connection to the moment that will likely rack up record usage.

But I don't see a way to embed CNN's page on this blog, so feel free to sample MSNBC's inauguration coverage below to share in the magic.   

Years from now, those who are gathered around TV sets, computer screens, radios or big-screen projectors to watch today’s inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States, will have a simple answer to a momentous question:

Where we you when this history was made?

In today's super-fragmented media environment, little beyond American Idol and the Super Bowl can draw us together around TV's electronic hearth. Once upon a time, everyone could remember where they were when news broke that President Kennedy was shot or Saigon had fallen. These days, when even the selection of a vice president is announced by text message, that memory is gone, swallowed by technology's new ability to bring us instant reporting from just about anywhere to wherever.

Like the first moon landing was for one generation, Obama's inauguration may revive that feeling that comes when you know you're witnessing history.

Here are five other seminal television moments for today’s generation of TV watchers, developed with sizable input from entertainment Web page guru and Stuck in the '80s mastermind Steve Spears.

Where were you when these happened?

1. Space Shuttle Challenger explodes : In a blink, seven astronauts are erased and news is given a new subject to chew on for days. I was in my college newspaper's newsroom when it went down in 1986. I eventually saw the footage often enough I could draw it in my sleep.

2. The O.J. Simpson verdict: The former football star's 1995 acquittal for the murder of his ex-wife and her lover capped a continuously televised trial that had become a national soap opera and birthed the modern-day cable TV news punditry industry. I watched it in a newsroom in New Jersey, where mostly white co-workers were too uncomfortable to ask if I supported the verdict (I didn't).

3. The 9/11 attacks: Made for TV by occurring in the the morning newscasts on the East Coast, the 2001 attacks sparked five days of continuous coverage and serious scapegoating of Arabs. I remember sitting down to my desk with a cup of coffee as NBC was showing the second plane hit the World Trade Center.

4. Princess Diana’s funeral: A day of mourning for a celebrity royal who seemed to be killed by our own ceaseless fascination with her. Watched this one in the Times office so i could crank out a 25-inch analysis of the TV coverage. (Those were the days!)

5. The  Persian Gulf War: The first U.S. war televised live, this 1991 conflict helped create viewers' expectation that they would see every nook and cranny of modern warfare. I watched this one in the apartment of a fellow journalist in Pittsburgh, gathered there with other young journalists who weren't in need for news coverage but still wanted to band together to do . . . something.

Eventually, we went home and went to sleep.

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