Counting serious (and not so serious) Thanksgiving media blessings

Out with crankiness, in with thankfulness.

Today, anyway. That's assuming this columnist can type while balancing a forkful of stuffing as cranberry sauce dribbles down the keyboard. (Anyone got a Wet-Nap?)

Draped in the holiday spirit, we suspend critical analysis and simply say "thank you" (sorta) for the past year's blessings:

• Channel 3 tossing "Watching Out For You" onto the slogan scrap heap. We've been waiting forever for "WOFY" to go POOF-Y.

• Fox-5's merry morning elves, Dave Hall and wedded wackadoos Heidi Harris and Ted Pretty. Off-camera, they're a couple and a single. On-camera, they're a menage a trois. ... Not like that. Not unless it's sweeps.

• Nina Radetich. Seriously. No local personality has triggered such amusing media wind-baggery (this windbag included), sending us all to the dictionary to look up the spelling of "harrumph."

• Channel 3 for filing an FCC complaint against its competitors that so outraged Channel 8 that it sent this columnist back to the dictionary in search of "cow-nniption" (shorthand for simultaneously having a cow and a conniption).

• Channel 8's Gary Waddell and Paula Francis for unpretentious grace and dignity. ... Channel 3's Sophia Choi. (See previous entry.) ... Channel 3's Gerard Ramalho. (See previous two entries.)

• Fox-5's daft, departing Mike Doria, whose entertaining, sometimes inappropriate quips make his mouth a verbal roulette wheel.

• The exit of Channel 13's self-impressed Ben Deci, the secret son of that reporter from "Die Hard."

• Las Vegas One/Channel 8's Jon Ralston, host of Vegas TV's most ferocious reality show. Any guest who lies or evades instantly becomes the biggest loser.

• Ex-Las Vegas One anchor Jeff Gillan. A newsman of substance who survived having his primo prime-time newscast yanked out from under his anchor chair to wind up as Channel 3's assistant news director. Before or behind the camera, Gillan adds class without sass.

• The un-retirement of Bob Stoldal to become Channel 3's new news chief. Tangled in a morass of morale problems and a directionless newsroom, the station is steadily untangling under a savvy vet combining old-school journalism with new-school ideas we hope are soon implemented. Should he manage that, it will be the best save since the Yankees' Mariano Rivera made every Phillie look silly. (Sorry, but this Bronx-born columnist just couldn't help himself.)

• Nielsen also-ran Channel 13, for proving that scare-tactic journalism -- ominous music, shadowy imagery, alarming buzzwords -- nets scarier ratings.

• Channel 8's refreshing "if it bleeds, it usually doesn't lead" approach.

• George Knapp for covering Las Vegas in Peabody Award glory.

• Alicia Jacobs supporters, without whose feedback this columnist wouldn't know what a subhuman creature he really is.

• R-J readers (Alicia Jacobs supporters included). Paraphrasing George M. Cohan: My job thanks you. My paycheck thanks you. My mortgage thanks you.

And I thank you.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.