Lori Acken, Author at StayTuned Magazine

Pro athletes’ realtor of choice Jason Abrams stars in HGTV’s “Scoring The Deal”

January 4, 2013 Lori Acken

When he was just 21, Jason Abrams launched his real estate company The Abrams Team in his hometown of Detroit. One decade and two branch offices later, his unique brand of soup-to-nuts (and every black-walled living room and gigantic bathtub in between) service has earned him the devotion of a roster of professional athletes, and the nickname “The Jerry Maguire of real estate.” “In that movie, he became everything to his clients — he was a shoulder to cry on, he showed up at their games, he was negotiating their contracts — and in our world, that’s what we’ve really […]

Dance Moms recap: Angels and Demons and A Guy Named Mark

January 1, 2013 Lori Acken

Well, all you Dance Moms fans who skipped out on Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition, you missed yourself quite a spectacle. Not to mention some context about Abby’s snazz-tastic new look and Hollywood attitude — and all the helpless AUDC references I am going to make until I get it out of my system. But back in Pennsylvania, it’s the first day back after competition season break and there are hugs all around — except that Kelly and the Hyland girls are nowhere to be found. Christi, however, has been growing out her hair, looks like Jill cut hers, and I […]

Neve Campbell plays a small-town cop with scary secrets in Lifetime’s “An Amish Murder”

January 1, 2013 Lori Acken

With her fresh-scrubbed beauty and natural self-possession, actress Neve Campbell makes a believable ex-Amish heroine in Lifetime’s new original film, An Amish Murder. The twisty mystery, based on Linda Castillo’s best-selling novel Sworn to Silence, features the Party of Five favorite as Kate Burkholder, an Amish exile from tiny Painter’s Mill, Ohio, who comes back home as its chief of police and finds herself embroiled in a gruesome serial murder case that dredges up horrific memories from her youth. Joined by a visiting detective (Rookie Blue’s Noam Jenkins) with demons of his own, Burkholder finds it increasingly difficult to separate […]

MTV’s Colin Nash on Buckwild: “We aren’t trying to make a show about the state of West Virginia”

December 29, 2012 Lori Acken

Everybody in tiny Sissonville, WV — population 4,028 at last check — knows affable, hardworking young Shain Gandy as the town’s “unofficial mayor” who skipped out on being prom king so he wouldn’t miss work. Beginning Jan. 3, MTV audiences will know him as the central star of the network’s newest kids-on-the-loose docuseries, Buckwild. But, says Colin Nash, MTV’s West Coast vice president of series development, this isn’t simply a downhome Jersey Shore. “It offers a completely new and unique world that our audience hasn’t really seen before,” he explains of the show brought to him by Zoo Productions and […]

Josh Shipp brings his teen-taming ways to Lifetime’s “Teen Trouble”

December 27, 2012 Lori Acken

Josh Shipp should have grown up a thug. Abandoned at birth and shuttled from one abusive foster home to the next, he was suicidal and addicted by the time he hit adolescence. Instead, thanks to the intercession of his final set of foster parents who took him at age 14 and allowed him be jailed for forging checks, Shipp defied his demons and became a leading interventionist for families and teens in crisis. In Lifetime’s sobering new reality show, Teen Trouble, the now 31-year-old father of two travels to the homes of kids on the brink to help them and […]

7 Questions With … Hines Ward of “Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off”

December 26, 2012 Lori Acken

He’s the legendary Pittsburgh Steeler who broke records (and one opponent’s jaw) on the field, then broke hearts in the Dancing With the Stars ballroom before retiring from the NFL last May to become an NBC football analyst. Now Hines Ward is testing his game in a whole new arena — the kitchen — as a contestant on Season 2 of Food Network’s Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off, battling Johnny Weir, Kathy Najimy, Carnie Wilson, Gilbert Gottfried and others for celeb-chef supremacy. “I thought it would be good that people can see a side of me that they don’t normally get […]

Randy Fenoli returns for a new season of “Say Yes to the Dress”

December 19, 2012 Lori Acken

When Say Yes to the Dress star [search phrase=”on” term=”Randy Fenoli”]Randy Fenoli[/search] was a 9-year-old boy bored by the cows and hay bales on his family’s Illinois farm, he defied his mother’s warning not to touch her new sewing machine and made her a dress. The next day she handed him a pattern for a skirt and he escaped the fields for good. When he was in his third semester at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, Fenoli won a contest usually reserved for older students — plus the attention of famed bridal designers Paul and Vivian Dessy Diamond, who […]

“America’s Supernanny” Deborah Tillman’s holiday survival guide for parents

December 17, 2012 Lori Acken

Christmas is but a week away, and if your kids are going a little off the deep end while waiting for the Jolly Old Elf himself — or if you’re dreading the long car or plane ride to Grandma’s — child expert Deborah Tillman, star of Lifetime’s America’s Supernanny: Family Lockdown, offers these words of advice. How to survive car trips/flights with young children Remember that preparation is the key: • Stories on audiotapes are a terrific way to pass the time and educate at the same time. • Car games like “I Spy” are fun for children. • Allow […]

Shelley Long reunites with George Wendt for Lifetime’s “Merry In-Laws”

December 14, 2012 Lori Acken

Shelley Long is a self-professed proud pushover for appearing in holiday films. So when she was asked to play Mrs. Santa Claus herself — opposite a certain former costar — in Lifetime’s new original film Merry In-Laws, she considered it a little Christmas miracle. “I love doing Christmas movies and I’ve easily done half a dozen — probably more,” Long chuckles. “The minute they say it’s a Christmas movie, it approaches my heart. So I read it and I thought it was very cute and fun — and then somebody mentioned that maybe George was going to do it. And […]

Brianna Haire wins Season One of Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition!

December 13, 2012 Lori Acken

Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition has named it’s first champ — and she is 13-year-old Brianna Haire of Temecula, California. In Tuesday night’s emotional final, the consistent, kind Brianna bested technical wiz Madison O’Connor and 7-year-old series lightning rod Asia Ray to win a $100,000 cash prize and full scholarship to the Young Dancer Program at New York’s Joffrey Ballet School. Before naming her the show’s Season 1 winner, AUDC judge and Dance Moms star Abby Lee Miller praised Brianna’s warrior attitude and ability to take and apply correction. But it was the girl’s emotional openness on and off the stage […]