Melinda Jacobs quickly tired of playing Ed McMahon to Rusty Gatenby's Johnny Carson. "The Rusty Gatenby Review with Melinda Jacobs" is a goner after two or so months.
Gatenby, whose 30-year traffic/entertainment reporting career with KSTP-TV came to an end earlier this year, and entertainment reporter Jacobs had been shooting, recording and producing webcasts on location and in her home broadcasting studio. (Here's my startribune.com/video interview with T.D. Mischke, which was recorded at Jacobs' studio after the former radio guy appeared on the review: startribune.com/video/263076021.html.)
"I pride myself on getting along with everybody," Jacobs told me. "I don't have a mean bone in my body. But you want your fiancée to be part of the show and do these stories that are all about you — it was all about him — just come forward and say it. Don't make me be a fool [so you can] have me laugh at your stupid jokes, when I could be volunteering. I wish him well."
Gatenby quipped: "Imagine how Jennifer [Vock] feels … she has to laugh at my jokes for the rest of her life! Thankfully, she also is beautiful, talented and funny and together, Jennifer and I may just become the 'Steve & Sharon' of podcasting! I wish her [Jacobs] well and hope she wished me well with 'The Rusty Gatenby Review.' "
While Gatenby called Vock the COO of the review, I'd described Vock's unofficial role as that of chief sarcasm officer — and more importantly the techie for the podcast.
Jacobs said her new entertainment focus will be a dating show, with many other facets, on the Tom Barnard Network starting Oct. 24.
A credible Kanye sighting
Kim Kardashian's third husband may have been in Minnesota a couple of Mondays ago.
"I shook hands with Kanye West in the Minneapolis airport today. Kinda wished it had been @3RDEYEGIRL," tweeted Noah Gray, a senior editor at the international science journal Nature. Gray told a Twitter follower, "I got my Ph.D at Mayo Clinic. Giving a lecture there to help celebrate the 25th anniversary of the graduate program."