Time Warner Cable will start selling a new high-speed, wireless Internet service in the Triangle on Dec. 1.

This region's main cable-TV provider is expanding its reach into new services as it tries to offset weaker growth among cable subscribers and increasing competition. That includes digital phone and new digital TV products such as one that allows viewers to restart a show from the beginning.

See photos from the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards.

In a farewell e-mail, the now-common way for workers to sign off in the modern age, some employees use famous quotes or literary references. So it's not a shock that a Raleigh TV executive borrowed from Carol Burnett.

Michael Munoz has been general manager of TV station Univision 40-WUVC in Raleigh for the past two years. He was recently promoted to vice president of client development for Univision Corp. and will be based out of Dallas.

This is his last week at the local station. Univision 40 and its low-power sister channel WTNC TeleFutura are still looking for a new GM to replace Munoz.

In a note he sent today to "colleagues, partners and friends of Univision 40," Munoz wrote about his accomplishments and thanked the TV station's staff -- all standard stuff for a classy farewell e-mail.

Can a Cary entrepreneur swim with the sharks?

Over at our TV blog, Brooke Cain writes about Kevin Flannery, founder and CEO of WiSpots, and his television debut.

On Sunday night at 9 p.m., Flannery will compete with other aspiring business types for the attention of investors on "Shark Tank."

WiSpots was founded in 2002, has 11 employees and sells Wi-Fi service for physicians' offices. Patients surf for free, and the company makes money through advertising.

Who needs a newspaper to answer that question?

In the age of cable and satellite TV, few people actually need the newspaper's guide to decide what to watch on a day-to-day basis. They look to the newspaper for stories about TV, TV celebrity gossip, occasional reviews and news of trends in television entertainment. In addition to print, we provide a TV blog that includes  short reviews, news and gossip tidbits and a forum to discuss TV shows.

But a significant number of people want their daily newspaper to provide a generous listing describing what's on the tube and at what time they need to be on the sofa. Some really want it. In fact, they demand it.

We knew this to be true even as we made the difficult decision to sharply reduce the one-page guide that we had printed six days a week for several years.

In recent years, TV viewing habits have changed drastically. Many people rarely watch a TV show when it is scheduled to air. They rely on DVR devices with generous capacity to record hours of programs. They can program the DVR to record all episodes of their favorite shows to view at their leisure. Some watch their favorite shows on their computer screens. Others have digital cable and satellite services with elaborate on-screen guides that can be sorted not only by time and channel but by genre.

Even people with basic cable have a TV guide channel. I've been hearing from cable subscribers who emphatically state that they know that they can get guide information from the TV screen, but they just don't want to. They want to lay out the paper and plan their viewing day.

Traditionally, the general interest newspaper has provided a wide variety of informaton. However, with revenue declining, we cannot continue to absorb the high costs of content that is not essential to our core mission of providing in-depth local news, and for which the audience is shrinking.

We now provide by subscription only a weekly guide to readers who get the paper at home and we have reduced the daily guide a quarter page.

In choosing the channels for the reduced guide, we gave priority to the local channels and listed what we had indications were the most popular basic cable channels.

Many of you are unhappy. We hear you and appreciate the depth of your disappointment at having something you personally valued taken away.

We cannot restore the full-page guide. Reducing the size of the type to include a lot more channels will hurt readabilty.

However, we are re-evaluating the mix of channels we offer. We may eliminate a few channels with content similiar to other channels on the list in order to add channels with a different type of content. We may be able to make a small adjustment in the type size to increase the number of channels to 30, from the current 29 channels.

Thanks for your responses.

Linda Williams

Senior Editor/News

Brother Wally is a sculptor and real estate and business guy. Eddie Haskell, the annoying neighbor boy, spent 18 years as a Los Angeles motorcycle officer. Lumpy's a financial planner. Mom's doing fine. And there's the update on the characters from "Leave It to Beaver," a family situation comedy that bridged the 1950s and '60s. People know the characters by their show names, so why start using their real names now?

And the Beaver. The Beaver...OK, let's use HIS real name anyway...was in Raleigh last week, working as a spokesman for PhRMA, the drug industry trade association, which was announcing new developments in diabetes drugs. Jerry Mathers, the Beaver, has Type II diabetes. The disease is now virtually epidemic in the United States, which is why medical associations (and likely your own family doctors) are talking more about it. Kids are eating their way into it. Some adults who have it, including yours truly, may have had a family member with diabetes and thus had a better chance of getting it, particularly if they also developed bad eating habits. 

A column last week talked about Mathers' role in promoting diabetes awareness, but didn't include his thoughts on modern television. To briefly come up to speed, Mathers is 60, and is enjoying life, continuing to act, and financially secure thanks to good management of his Beaver money and a sound university education followed by prudent business ventures. 

I had a chance to spend some time talking to him before he attended a press conference about the new diabetes drugs. When I asked him what he thought of today's television offerings, he nodded his head in the negative. "I don't watch television," he said. "Reality TV? It's distorted. What kind of message does that send?"

He thinks his old show still is relevant because, "You can watch it with the whole family. It's still on, everywhere."

These are things Mathers has talked about all over the place. He's a frequent guest on TV shows about TV shows. And, like most of the actors from the 1950s and '60s (and '70s and '80s for that matter) he's not much for what's on the old tube these days. 

My colleague Brooke Cain, who writes a superb blog on television for The News & Observer, likely would disagree. And truth is, there's some very interesting entertainment out there, as long as folks look at it as entertainment and not as a guide to life. 

Still, the Beaver must have been doing something right. People still love that show. My friend Jayne, who was raised in a large family in Chicago, was mighty happy when I told her that Mathers had signed a picture for her. "We all watched that!" she said. "I've got to call my sisters!"

How many stars from the old days can get such a reaction? Not many, once you subtract Andy Griffith, who is of course the greatest star on the greatest show in the history of the medium. Make that in the history of world. Of the universe. Of the...say, anybody know what comes after universe?

Tonight's TV channels for the FS Carolinas broadcast, available in HD:

Time Warner: Ch. 50 (SD) and 272 (HD)
DirecTV: Ch. 645 (SD) and 645-1(HD)
Dish Network: Ch. 447 (SD) and 9519 (HD)

Maybe it's a good time to pack up the ole Beetle and schlemiel-schlamazel on out to Milwaukee and see Laverne & Shirley's apartment building in person. Toss back some Schlitz, skip down the sidewalk, go bowling, take in a Brewer's game...

The inspiration for this, uh, unique vacation dream is a website called WhereItsAt.com. The site -- their motto is "Pop culture is all around you" -- features a map marking spots of major (and minor) pop culture significance: the "Twin Peaks" coffee shop in North Bend, Washington, the "Perfect Storm" bar in Gloucester, Massachusetts, the "Shawshank Redemption" prison in Mansfield, Ohio, and the "Exorcist" stairs in Washington, D.C., are but a few of the temptations featured.

FS Carolinas will broadcast Games 3 and 4 of the Hurricanes-Bruins series in HD, the network announced today.

Game 5 is a Versus exclusive and will be in HD on that network. No word yet on HD status for a potential Game 6 or 7. 

The Hurricanes are aware that Time Warner Cable lost the standard-definition broadcast of tonight's game on Ch. 50 during the first period and have notified FS Carolinas of the problem.

The game is available in HD on Time Warner Ch. 272.

UPDATE: The standard-definition feed on Ch. 50 was back up late in the first intermission.

“It looks to be a Time Warner-specific issue,” Hurricanes spokesman Kyle Hanlin said.

The HD signal was unaffected and there are no reports of complaints from customers of DirecTV or Dish Network.