Working from a script is hard enough. Working from an outline or, even riskier, depending frequently on your wits is an ongoing challenge. Exercising those wits every day is a task for a daredevil. Succeeding every day is a monumental feat. Local broadcasting’s most valuable player for 2024 accomplishes that feat. Armed certainly with ideas with topics for discussion, and occasionally a game or a contest, he ventures into the unknown, not necessarily knowing where a particular conversation will lead or if it will fulfill his expectations. If expectations are not met, the MVP has to tap dance, find a segue to get things back on track or move into more entertaining territory. The 2024 MVP does this with consistency and mental dexterity. He is prepared and glib enough to handle any impromptu situation that might arise. By doing so, he seems to effortlessly preside over one of most original and refreshing programs in Philadelphia program history, one that shows the brightness of an entire news team in an age when local TV is often formulaic and yawningly ordinary. The show is Channel 29’s “Aftershow.” Local television’s most valuable player for 2024 is its host, Thomas Drayton. In ways, this accolade is belated. I noticed “Aftershow” last year and marveled at Drayton’s shrewd management of its freewheeling format and ability to keep things lively and interesting. This year, I had occasion to watch “Aftershow” more often and on consecutive days. The impression from last year was reinforced over and over again. Drayton is congenial and has the journalist’s, and teacher’s, knack for asking the open-ended question. “Aftershow” continues an idea that began with segments in the program that precedes it, “Good Day Philadelphia.” It takes the news of the day, or an issue, serious or gossipy, from the news of the day and expands on it and related ideas by Drayton going around the Fox 29 newsroom, assembling colleagues and asking them what they think. The format can involve a session with one or two staffers, say Karen Hepp and Sue Serio, or convene a panel of people you don’t see on the air: producers, writers, bookers, researchers, schedulers, etc. Sometimes even the news director, Jim Driscoll. Drayton is both moderator and provocateur, posing questions or food for thought and angling for interesting answers. His polling of the staff, his responses to their comments, and the quickness to shift gear or pounce on a particularly interesting answer shows Drayton’s versatility and ability to work in the moment and make worthy television from it. While other shows airing at 10 a.m. weekdays make me anxious about how they’ll affect my IQ — or patience — “Aftershow” and Drayton make me laugh out loud, nod my head in agreement, shake it disbelief — cue Mike Jerrick — and think the best of news being in the hands of Drayton and all the people I’m seeing on camera. “Good Day Philadelphia” has long had a taste for open discussion. Before I discovered “Aftershow” — local stations never tell you what they’re doing these days; you have to hunt and find the new — I would make sure to move from whatever I was watching, even “Perry Mason,” to tune into “Good Day” for the 9 a.m. hour when the anchors, Jerrrick and Alex Holley, would be on set with Hepp, Serio or Drayton and begin to talk, as themselves from their own experience, about a topic suggested by the news or some insanity that shows how human humans are. These are television commentators, so one can expect them to be articulate and ready to speak on the cuff. The revelation was the naturalness and sincerity of the discussants. You didn’t see the televisiony, show biz exuberance that mars many a talk show and all game shows that have celebrity panels. Anthony Anderson is enough for me to nominate the inventor of the remote button for a Nobel. No. Intelligence reigned. Watching the “Good Day” folks, I’d book a table to eavesdrop on Hepp, Serio and Drayton any day of the week. I don’t have to. They’re on television. Devoid of antics or grandstanding, just saying what’s on their creditable minds. Drayton epitomizes this trait on “Aftershow.” Intelligence, common sense and good old everyday conversation is the highlight of the show. Drayton keeps it all moving with a brisk pace and eye for entertainment. A program like “Aftershow” involves a lot of pressure. It is different from anything else on television, and it depends on a group of individuals who are not Arlene Francis, Bennett Cerf, Dorothy Kilgallen and Steve Allen, to have something useful and amusing to say. That’s a tall order. Drayton makes it look like a smooth sail on an unpredictable lake. That is a talent that is absent from most of today’s television, especially daytime television. For his breezy, eclectic, engaging way of plying that talent, Thomas Drayton earns his place as local television’s 2024 most valuable player. Carter funeral coverage News outlets, national and local, covered the funeral service held for the 39th president, Jimmy Carter, who died Dec. 30 at age 100. On Saturday, crews were in Plains, Ga., the president’s hometown, to report on his casket being placed in a hearse for transport to Atlanta, where a funeral service was held at the Carter Presidential Center. The Guard of Honor surrounds the flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter as he lies in repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta on Saturday, Jan. 4. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) A state funeral, with a eulogy by President Joe Biden, and the readings of eulogies given by the 38th president, Gerald Ford, and Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale — both of whom predeceased Carter — takes place at 10 a.m. Thursday at the National Cathedral in Washington. Most national coverage will begin at 9 a.m. Many news organizations will cover the rite. Fox News Channel, which responded to an inquiry, has announced Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino as its reporters on the scene. Television coverage will also be across the board on Tuesday when Carter lies in state at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. A congressional service takes place in the rotunda at 1 p.m. Upcoming NFL playoffs Some of the teams in the NFL playoffs, and their seedings, were not settled on Sunday afternoon but the playoffs, which will include the 14-3 Philadelphia Eagles, begin on Saturday. Wild Card-round games will be played over three days: two on Saturday, three on Sunday and one on Monday night. The Eagles have secured the second seed in the NFC. On Wild Card weekend, the Eagles will play the seventh seed, the qualifier with the worst record during the regular season. If they win, they’ll get another game at home. The four division winners get in the playoffs, then the NFL has a point system to determine the fifth through seventh seeds. The No. 1 seeds in each conference get byes. Philadelphia Eagles’ quarterback Tanner McKee completes a pass Sunday against the New York Giants at the Linc. The Eagles will be playing at home in the first round of the NFL playoffs next weekend and if they win, they’ll get another home game. (AP Photo/Daniel Kucin Jr.) After the Wild Card round, winners of the games will play in a Divisional Round on Jan. 18 and 19. The No. 1 seeds automatically host two of those games. The other games are played at the sites of the next-highest remaining seeds. The victors in those games will play in the conference championships on Jan. 26 at the higher seed’s home field. Those winners meet in Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 9. Late year deaths Three significant losses marked the end of 2024. Linda Lavin, a Tony-winning actress at home with comedy and drama, died of lung cancer at age 87. Greg Gumbel, whose career at CBS Sports included groundbreaking moments, died of cancer at age 78. He was the older brother of NBC sportscaster and commentator Bryant Gumbel. Olivia Hussey, who won hearts of filmgoers as Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 movie “Romeo and Juliet,” from breast cancer at age 73. Lavin illuminated every stage she entered. Linda Lavin arrives at the 33rd annual Producers Guild Awards on March 19, 2022, at the Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello) I had the luck to see her almost a dozen times, and even in roles that centered on comedy, Lavin always found some depth. Her performance in Neil Simon’s “Broadway Bound,” for which she received a 1987 Tony for Best Actress in a Play, was a towering achievement. I can still picture her character polishing a dining room table and explaining to her younger son, a stand-in for Simon, the importance of that table to the family and why she takes such good care of it. Most people know Lavin for her lead performance in the CBS sitcom, “Alice,” in which she played a woman who goes west with her young son to start a new life. “Alice” has one of those nuclear casts that were prevalent in the late ’70s-early ’80s, and Lavin shined amid co-stars such as Polly Holliday, Beth Howland, Vic Tayback and Phillip McKeon, all of whom, except for Holliday, pre-deceased her. “Alice” continues to be seen daily in rerun. Though Lavin sung frequently on “Alice,” she did not have many opportunities to display her musical talent. An actress through and through, Lavin had a knack for making the lyric of a song count, bringing out story and sentiment as well an any attendant comedy. A cabaret she did at a New Hope club is one off the highlights of my theatergoing life. Greg Gumbel, left, with Connecticut head basketball coach Jim Calhoun and Butler head coach Brad Stevens, right, prior to taping a television interview for the men’s NCAA Final Four college basketball championship game on April 3, 2011, in Houston. (AP Photo/Eric Gay) Gumbel made history without fanfare. He was the first African-American to announce a Super Bowl game among other barriers he broke. Hussey appeared in several movies since “Romeo and Juliet,” but her fame was cemented when Zeffirelli cast teenage actors Hussey and Leonard Whiting in his version of Shakespeare’s classic romantic tragedy. “Romeo and Juliette” movie director Franco Zeffirelli, left, with actors Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting after the Parisian premiere of the film on Sept. 25, 1968. (AP Photo/Eustache Cardenas) Whiting and Hussey caused a stir in 1968 when they did the consummation scene, handled delicately by high school teachers at that time, in the nude. WHYY alum gets new post WHYY (90.9 FM) alumna Christine Dempsey was named senior director of radio, which puts her in charge of programming at Lehigh Valley’s five-year-old NPR station, WLVR (91.3.FM). Dempsey has received multiple awards from Pennsylvania broadcast associations. Her podcast, “Buried Truths,” earned the Peabody, Edward R. Murrow and RFK Journalism awards. She also developed a hip-hop podcast called “Bottom of the Map.”