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"Godzilla" in unfamiliar territory -- movie theaters

by John Zipperer

I've always thought Japan's "Godzilla" series was made for television, the medium in which it usually played in this country. When Centropolis came out with the U.S. version of the giant lizard flick a couple of years ago, it seemed like typical American overkill. And it was, but largely because it tried to translate a cheesy kids film into a summer "event" movie. So when Tojo decided to bring "Godzilla 2000" this month to American theaters, I feared our Japanese friends had learned the American art of milking a TV-grade product by throwing it into the multiplex.

But I was pleasantly surprised to find "Godzilla 2000" was better than those laughable earlier versions featured from time to time on "Mystery Science Theater 3000." The special effects are surprisingly good, with some computer-generated effects nicely enhancing the usual "Godzilla" effects (i.e., men in rubber suits walking through a wobbly cityscape). Also, director Takao Okawara is smart enough not to let the camera linger too long on a bad effect.

The story is, well, the umpteenth retelling of "Godzilla": Giant monster goes to Tokyo, knocks over buildings, fights other monster, boom, blast, kaboom, crash, etc. In between, there's the head of the crisis team who is determined to kill Godzilla even if it means the deaths of innocent human bystanders. One of those bystanders is an independent researcher who thinks people should be studying Godzilla instead of trying to kill it. Boom, blast, crash, etc.

Though some adults in the theater where I saw "Godzilla 2000" were watching it as camp, it's really a film best seen by children. The violence is clearly cartoon violence, and the plot is certainly not too clever for children. The one caveat is that the dubbed English language dialogue has some surprisingly crude language for a kids' film. Whether that is the fault of the American translators or the original scripters, I can't say.

When told by Fangoria magazine about his film's release in American theaters, Okawara said, "I am curious to see what sort of business it will do....I make my films with the hope that they will appeal to Western audiences. I guess 'Godzilla 2000' will be the test." You can see for yourself who does the Big G better. Go see "Godzilla 2000" on the big screen, and then watch the American "Godzilla" on the small screen this Saturday at 5:30 p.m. on Showtime. And share your verdict. Zippy's Sci-Fi Loft continues ... Chris rocks by Harrison Wyman "The Chris Rock Show" (midnight, Fridays, HBO) has become the late-night comedy program with the sharpest edge and the funniest take on current events. Friday's fourth-season opener continued to set the pace. The opening sketch turned the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain into the running of the nightstick swinging New York City cops through Harlem (complete with animal-rights activists). In his monologue, Rock tried to make up for six months of being off HBO -- and nearly succeeded, taking on everyone in the news from Pat Buchanan to Puff Daddy in the space of four minutes. Rock also submitted, a little late, his audition tape for the commentary slot on "Monday Night Football," ably assisted by HBO sportscaster/straight man Jim Lampley. The result was an Afro-centric take on how Dennis Miller's critics thought HBO's other late-night host would approach announcing football. The gem of the show was Rock's remote from outside a jail in Broward County, Fla., where singer Bobby Brown was about to be released after serving time for probation violations. Nobody was off-limits: not Brown, the protesters outside the jail, the black community (for its uncritical support of Brown's questionable behavior) nor the local news media. In fact, the satire was so dead-on that some took it for the real thing. Rock showed a report from a local Miami TV station about Brown's release that aired a few weeks ago, complete with Rock's "vigil" outside Brown's jail. The station appeared to take Rock's presence seriously. "I think DNA evidence will be introduced, and this will clear Bobby Brown," Rock told a reporter for WPLG-TV during a live interview. Veteran comedian Bernie Mac, one of the stars of the new movie "The Original Kings of Comedy," was Rock's in-studio guest, contributing a hilarious take on his 25-year marriage. A performance by singer Jill Scott rounded out the show. Two things were clear after Friday's show: Rock has found an effective television format for his style of comedy and Bobby Brown's "Don't Be Cruel" does not work as a folk song performed on acoustic guitar outside of jail. Pick to click Quick, before they disappear into obscurity, bankruptcy or the justice system, see the celebrities who are the apple of teenage America's eye on the "Teen Choice Awards" (8 p.m., Fox). Based on polls conducted by Seventeen magazine, the program features performances by No Doubt, 98 Degreees, Sisquo, and BBMak and appearances by Rachael Leigh Book, Keri Russell, Carmen Electra, and other flavors-of-the-month. Also tonight, Howard Stern's "Son of the Beach" (9 p.m., FX) is a raunchy, politically incorrect episode that would make Richard Roeper's head spin. Cast against type, guest star Alan Thicke plays a psychotic soldier of fortune. On this date... in 1993, Fox answers the burning question: What happened to Tootie? Well, Kim Fields is back, and she Queen Latifah, Kim Coles, and Erika Alexander are all "Living Single." -- Tom Heald Previously at TV Barn:

• Let's have a 4-way presidential debate (8/21/00)
• Nader takes on MasterCard (8/18/00)
• Roeper's curious Kilborn column (8/17/00)
• "Survivor" Kelly's famous last words (8/17/00)
• Will Fox challenge ownership cap? (8/16/00)
• "Bull" (8/15/00)
• "Voyager" producer: We'll do better (8/15/00)
• Replay and TiVo: Revolution? Or same old same old? (8/14/00)
• "Survivor": Just try to stop watching (8/11/00)
• "Running Mates" (8/11/00)
• Family-friendly programming (8/10/00)
• "American High" creator R.J. Cutler (8/9/00)
• Lieberman pick great for the V-chip (8/8/00)

• Browse the TV Barn archives
• Kansas City TV/radio columns

More news you can use

• Zentertainment
• TV Tattle: What critics are saying
• Variety
• AP Entertainment (through Nando.Net)
• Mediaweek/The Hollywood Reporter
• The Media Channel (mediachannel.org)
• Jim Romenesko's MediaNews
• SkyReport (satellite-TV news)
• New York Daily News
• New York Post
• Robert Feder, Chicago Sun-Times
• Los Angeles Times TV
• News Blues ("... for TV news insiders")
• Television-related news from Moreover.com
• Late-night TV links at About.com

Search TV Barn

this site www.searchbutton.com the web www.goto.com

Join the TV Barn mailing list!
Copyright © 2000 Aaron Barnhart
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All TV times Eastern
Updated 23-Aug-00 5:25 PM CT Ratings : Broadcast | Cable | Explained
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So who will it be? "Survivor" is a superb TV show for any season. It's also been God's gift to the columnists of this great land, TV Barn being no exception. And since everyone else is handicapping "Survivor's" final four, I might as well rate them too. (Just remember, I was the guy who was sure it was Gervase.) Rude: Kelly Wiglesworth, the river guide with a real-life police record, has suddenly become the dark horse to win it all. The alliance has successfully ousted most of its younger, swifter, stronger rivals, but now they're facing their worst nightmare in Kelly. Not only has she won the last two immunity challenges, she's not afraid to be nasty or confrontational with the alliance. That's likely to hold her in good stead with her peers, most of whom got bounced by the Richard-Rudy-Susan troika. Unless the next immunity challenge involves sitting around, look for Kelly to keep her streak going right to the end. Crude: Susan Hawk, the truck driver nicknamed "Fargo" for her nasally Wisconsin accent and blunt vocabulary, had an instinctive feel for "Survivor" from the get-go. She snubbed her teammates who wanted to form a "chick clique" against Rudy. She joined up with Richard and Rudy (and for a while, Kelly) to form an unbreakable voting bloc. And despite the bad grammar, Susan seems to have talked her way into viewers' hearts: When the CBS Web site asked, "With which castaway would you like to be stranded with the most?", Susan whupped all those young bikini-wearing hotties with 31 percent of the vote. If an unexpected turn of fate sinks Rudy, look for her to take early retirement from trucking. Nude: Richard Hatch -- also known to his Internet admirers and detractors as "Richard III" and "Tricky Ricky" -- masterminded the alliance that has ousted the last six "Survivor" castoffs. His sometimes bizarre behavior ticked off other teammates, but they're all gone now thanks to him. Unfortunately, many of his victims will sit on the final jury, meaning Richard has almost no chance of winning. Duuuuuuuude! During the early days of "Survivor," the 73-year-old retired military man promised that in two weeks he'd have the game all figured out. He was right. Though his crustiness and his habit for the unprintable comment made him an early target, no one has voted against him since Week 7. In fact, people kinda like the old gay-basher. His weekly appearances on CBS have made him the second best-known Navy SEAL in America after Jesse Ventura. Which is why Rudy Boesch, the man with "Aloha Hawaii" tattooed above his navel, is my choice to wind up $1 million richer when he says "Aloha" to Palau Tiga. Looking back: Why "Survivor" swept America All summer long we've watched, discussed and guessed what will happen next on "Survivor," the brilliantly conceived game show that proves the only thing worse than eating a rat is being double-crossed by one. More ... ALSO: Reader Mark Jeffries gives credit where credit is due: "Not to take anything away from Mark Burnett, but some mention should be made of Charlie Parsons, the Brit who created the 'Survivor' format and could only interest Swedish television in the show at first. Parsons and his partner Bob Geldof (yes, that Bob Geldof) ran the Planet 24 production company, best known for the morning show 'The Big Breakfast,' inspiration for FX's 'Breakfast Time' and lots of bits on U.S. local news morning shows. It says something that when they sold Planet 24 a couple of years ago, the two of them kept the rights to the 'Survivor' format for themselves. I think they knew something." Still more coverage of tonight's "Survivor" finale:

• An overnight review will be posted to TV Barn on Thursday
• Recap: The 12 weeks of "Survivor"
• A jaded "Survivor" glossary (including an entry for "Probst")
• Virginia Beach, Va., is pulling for Rudy
• TV Barn's "Survivor" page

Meanwhile on "Big Brother": The housemates plan a mutiny -- and other things CBS won't show us TV Barn joins the all-stars "The All-Star Newspaper," a new, high-visibility Web site from Brill's Content, has honored Aaron Barnhart by including him in its "starting lineup" Stories from TV Barn will be displayed regularly on The All-Star Newspaper. Thanks, Brill's! On this date... in 1990, Ferris Bueller falls in love with transfer student Sloan Petersen in the first episode of this prequel sitcom on NBC. While NBC has the official character names from the John Hughes flick "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," Fox's similar "Parker Lewis Can't Lose" proves more successful. "Ferris" is off the schedule by January, its place taken by "Blossom." Most of the cast land on their feet: Ferris (Charlie Schlatter) winds up on "Diagnosis: Murder," sister Jeannie (Jennifer Aniston) becomes a Friend, and director Bill Bixby gets work on "Blossom." -- Tom Heald Previously at TV Barn:

• "Godzilla 2000": Out of the box (8/22/00)
• Chris rocks (8/22/00)
• Let's have a 4-way presidential debate (8/21/00)
• Nader takes on MasterCard (8/18/00)
• Roeper's curious Kilborn column (8/17/00)
• "Survivor" Kelly's famous last words (8/17/00)
• Will Fox challenge ownership cap? (8/16/00)
• "Bull" (8/15/00)
• "Voyager" producer: We'll do better (8/15/00)
• Replay and TiVo: Revolution? Or same old same old? (8/14/00)

• Browse the TV Barn archives
• Kansas City TV/radio columns

More news you can use

• Late night line-ups
• Zentertainment
• TV Tattle: What critics are saying
• Variety
• AP Entertainment (through Nando.Net)
• Mediaweek/The Hollywood Reporter
• The Media Channel (mediachannel.org)
• Jim Romenesko's MediaNews
• SkyReport (satellite-TV news)
• New York Daily News
• New York Post
• Robert Feder, Chicago Sun-Times
• Los Angeles Times TV
• News Blues ("... for TV news insiders")
• Television-related news from Moreover.com
• Late-night TV links at About.com

Search TV Barn

this site www.searchbutton.com the web www.goto.com

Join the TV Barn mailing list!
Copyright © 2000 Aaron Barnhart
Redistribution prohibited.

• Ukelele-strumming Sonja stumbles, then takes the fall for her team losing an immunity challenge.
• B.B. finds a watering hole, gives his team fire, and generally works like heck.
• Richard takes off his shirt and sits in a tree.

• Pagong loses the immunity challenge because Gervase won't eat his 3-inch beetle larvae.
• A frustrated B.B. tells his lazy teammates to vote him off, so they do. He immediately regrets it.
• Richard announces he's gay and takes off his trunks.

• Colleen and Greg start sneaking off at night to cuddle. (Colleen later denies that they ever had, in David Letterman's words, "wild island sex.")
• Pagong loses the immunity challenge because Gervase can't swim. But they vote Stacey off instead.
• "Survivor" finishes No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings. Its weekly audience now exceeds 20 million.

• Weak, sickly Ramona recovers her strength. Pagong gives her the gong anyway.
• The Tagi tribe eats well, thanks to Richard's fishing skills.

• Sean's bowels finally move. He shares the good news with all.
• Biblical Dirk also shares the good news, but can't save himself.
• An Internet rumor circulates that hardy, amiable soccer mom Gretchen will win "Survivor."

• Gervase jokingly compares women to cows. But the enraged Pagong females instead vote off Joel, who's accused of enjoying the joke too much.
• B.B. does a Reebok ad.

• Rattana is formed -- but a Tagi alliance formed by Richard promptly ousts Gretchen. "She was a threat to win," explains Richard.
• A new Internet rumor circulates: Charming, Teflon-like Gervase will win "Survivor."

• The Probst tantalizes everyone with a short video made by their family members -- all except Jenna, who weeps uncontrollably.
• The alliance strikes again, ridding the island of flaky Greg.

• A Web site uncovers an arrest warrant for Kelly Wiglesworth, who's wanted on a credit-card fraud charge.
• Strategy or stupidity? Sean tells everyone he's voting in alphabetical order from now on, starting with Jenna. Sure enough, Jenna is ousted.

• The Internet didn't see it coming, but he did: Gervase, wears a bullseye on his chest to tribal council, where he is cast off by the alliance.

• Kelly stands on the end of a balance beam for nearly three hours and wins immunity.
• In words that are instantly mocked by all, departing sweetheart Colleen tells the group, "Play fair and be nice."

• Kelly presses the most volcanic mud off her body into a bucket and wins a night out with the Probst.
• Rudy declares that he hopes never to see Richard again after "Survivor" ends. But they still cast their votes together, which means so long to the nutty neurologist Sean.

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Updated 24-Aug-00 8:54 AM CT Ratings : Broadcast | Cable | Explained
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Super "Survivor" Looks like CBS undercharged its advertisers again. The summer finale of "Survivor" appears to drawn a much larger audience than anyone imagined. After giving the initial "Survivor" sponsors the deal of the century, CBS sold out its remaining ad time for Wednesday's "Survivor" finale at $600,000 a pop. That's comparable to commercial time for regular-season episodes of "Friends" or "ER." But early returns from Nielsen suggest that the number of people watching "Survivor" sailed past those benchmarks. A projected 40 share? Hah! "Survivor" was already scoring a 26.8 rating/42 share by its first half hour, according to Nielsen overnight ratings in 48 metered markets, which cover about two-thirds of the country. That number grew to a 30 rating/44 share from 8:30 to 9:00, 32.4/46 from 9:00 to 9:30 and a stunning 34.1 rating/48 share in the final half hour. The overnight rating measures households, with one rating point equaling roughly 1 million homes. Assuming conservatively that one and a half persons watched per household, that means more than 50 million Americans were tuned to the last hour of "Survivor," well exceeding the 40 million estimate that had been bandied around prior to the broadcast. The "Survivor" reunion hour got a bigger number than any previous episode of "Survivor," averaging 26.2/38 and 22.8/35 in its two half hours. As for David Letterman, the sight of a butt-naked Hatch reading the Top Ten List may have haunted him last night, but waking up to a 7.8 rating/20 share -- numbers he hasn't seen since "Late Show" followed the 1994 Winter Olympics -- must be putting a spring even into Dave's step. UPDATE: CBS reported Thursday afternoon that an average of 51 million viewers watched the final hour of "Survivor," making it the second highest-rated TV event of the year, bigger than this year's Oscars and second only to the Super Bowl in January. 'I wouldn't change a thing' Of course you wouldn't, Richard Hatch -- you just won the million smackeroos on "Survivor"! It was fitting in every way that Hatch should win. More than any other contestant, he had the combination of strategy, personality and, yes, values that allowed him to squeak to victory. He formed a flying wedge with two other members of his team, the Tagi tribe, and their alliance ran over all those idealistic Pagongers who seemed more intent on having a good time than winning first prize. Hatch lied and fibbed his way through the 39-day contest, yet in the end wound up winning the respect of many of those he'd helped kick out of the game. It was impossible to tell if he ever expressed one sincere thought on television -- even during that cozy "reunion" special that aired immediately after "Survivor." But does it really matter now? He won! Amazingly, he won. As anyone who reads TV Barn regularly knows, I never gave Hatch's strategy the credit it now obviously deserves. It was risky; twice he came within a vote of elimination. And was going nude or singing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" that essential to winning? For the sake of future "Survivors," let's hope not. But Hatch's end game paid off. It even outlasted that of runner-up Kelly Wiglesworth, who stayed low throughout the early episodes, then used four successive wins in immunity challenges to ensure herself a spot in the finals. What'll you bet CBS gets a nice-sized audience next month when it airs "Survivor" repeats against NBC's Olympics coverage? Put another way, what would you rather watch: pre-pubescent pixies on the balance beam? Or how the fat, obnoxious guy managed to win "Survivor"? But let's let Daniel Murphy, the TV Barn reader who was pulling for Hatch all along, have the final word: "A lot of people will read Richard's victory as the successful execution of a well thought out plan to capture the million. But I think the real story is just the opposite: Richard's plans constantly went haywire. Nearly everything he planned, except his do-or-die pact with Rudy, unraveled. Richard earned his victory by constantly adapting and improvising, constantly generating Plan B. Or Plan C. Or Plan R. "He shifted his efforts to just the right places at just the right times. When Susan shifted her loyalty to Kelly, Richard stuck even closer to Rudy and began to bring Sean into the fold, winning an unspoken battle with Susan for control of the alliance. He knew when to assert control and when to back off a little and give the others in the alliance some breathing room. He won immunity when he needed it, and threw it when winning immunity would only make him appear too formidable. "All of this culminated in a truly brilliant gambit: he threw the most important immunity challenge of all -- hands-on-the-idol -- to avoid being cast in the position of having to vote Kelly or Rudy off the island, which might bring their wrath in the jury. He risked it all on the assumption Kelly would view him as the lesser threat. He counted heads and gambled that he couldn't afford another enemy on the jury. And he was right."

• Read my full review of the "Survivor" finale in Thursday's Kansas City Star
• Video of last night's Top Ten list
• Richard hatched his plan early
• Coming up next: More from the survivors!
• NPR catches flak for "Survivor" screwup

Pick to click Now what are we supposed to do? Thanks to "Survivor," we'd gotten kind of used to the idea that network TV wouldn't leave us marooned all summer in a sea of reruns. Well, "Survivor" is gone (for now), and thanks to the Olympics the start of the fall season is still six weeks away. How will we survive? Is it too late to ask for a lifeline? And no, we're not desperate enough for new things to do that we'd consider shacking up with the seven remaining nobodies on "Big Brother" (8 p.m., CBS). Let's see now: So far the provocateur, the stripper and the crazy lady have all been banished. CBS won't show us the housemates' drunken revelries or air any of Eddie's racist jokes (amply documented by visitors to the "Big Brother" Web site). And they wonder why no one's watching? TV Barn joins the all-stars "The All-Star Newspaper," a new, high-visibility Web site from Brill's Content, has honored Aaron Barnhart by including him in its "starting lineup" Stories from TV Barn will be displayed regularly on The All-Star Newspaper. Thanks, Brill's!

Brill's list is "purely, deliciously opinionated" On this date... in 1987, the miniseries "A Year In The Life" (from St. Elsewhere" creators Joshua Brand and John Falsey) wowed audiences and critics. But viewers aren't interested enough to spend another year watching the ups and downs of the Gardener family. Richard Kiley, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Diana Muldaur are all out of work after eight more months. -- Tom Heald Previously at TV Barn:

• The final "Survivor" (8/23/00)
• "Godzilla 2000": Out of the box (8/22/00)
• Chris rocks (8/22/00)
• Let's have a 4-way presidential debate (8/21/00)
• Nader takes on MasterCard (8/18/00)
• Roeper's curious Kilborn column (8/17/00)
• "Survivor" Kelly's famous last words (8/17/00)
• Will Fox challenge ownership cap? (8/16/00)
• "Bull" (8/15/00)
• "Voyager" producer: We'll do better (8/15/00)
• Replay and TiVo: Revolution? Or same old same old? (8/14/00)

• Browse the TV Barn archives
• Kansas City TV/radio columns

More news you can use

• Late night line-ups
• Zentertainment
• TV Tattle: What critics are saying
• Variety
• AP Entertainment (through Nando.Net)
• Mediaweek/The Hollywood Reporter
• The Media Channel (mediachannel.org)
• Jim Romenesko's MediaNews
• SkyReport (satellite-TV news)
• New York Daily News
• New York Post
• Robert Feder, Chicago Sun-Times
• Los Angeles Times TV
• News Blues ("... for TV news insiders")
• Television-related news from Moreover.com
• Late-night TV links at About.com

Search TV Barn

this site www.searchbutton.com the web www.goto.com

Join the TV Barn mailing list!
Copyright © 2000 Aaron Barnhart
Redistribution prohibited.

Subscribe:
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All TV times Eastern
Updated 26-Aug-00 12:38 AM CT Ratings : Broadcast | Cable | Explained
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"Why does the world's oldest democracy have to rely on a commission in order to have presidential debates? If some of the electronic and print media giants sponsored debates, or indicated that they would cover debates held by private groups in key states, it would be very difficult for George W. Bush and Al Gore to turn down an invitation. If a coalition of Hispanic and African-American groups wanted to sponsor a debate in California ... could the two major candidates say they had better things to do?" -- Ralph Nader in the Wall Street Journal

Reader mail Intrepid daily readers of TV Barn -- and I trust that means all of you -- may have noticed that I haven't posted much e-mail from readers lately. Part of the reason is that editing reader mail is labor-intensive, and I've been intensifying most of my labors elsewhere. But it's also that I've been getting a lot of mail lately from angry people. Maybe it's the summer heat, but these readers are really angry. Quite mad, you might say. After my open letter to Roger Ailes of Fox News, urging him to push for a 4-way presidential debate, this reader was convinced I had it out for his beloved cable channel. "So much for sniping at Leno's heals (sic) -- now you're writing apologia for TV liberalism," he wrote. "Fine, but I never subscribed to read smirking put-downs of the 'hard-right' FOX News. (Of course, when was the last time you labelled CBS, NBC, or ABC 'hard-left'?)" My piece on Richard Roeper's curious column, where I pointed out that Bill Maher has been telling politically incorrect jokes about Jews and Gentiles for years, sparked this flame from another reader: "This is irrelevant bull----. If someone does wrong no rational person can defend them by bringing up an obscure fact about a relative of theirs." Regarding "Survivor," another reader just wanted me to know, "I don't care who survives, I think its a show for morons who don't have a life and I have no interest whatsoever in this crap." Amazing he mustered the strength to type that much ... But the coup de grace arrived yesterday. It began, "I never watch television" -- always a bad sign -- "and hence never saw a single episode of 'Survivor. I only happened, by chance, to notice your article in yesterday's 'Kansas City Star.' What caught my eye was the sentence about Mr. Rudy Boesch, the former Navy Seal, which read, 'In fact, people kinda like the ol' gay-basher.' "So The Star finds gay bashing humorous, does it?Ê Had Mr. Boesch been a racist, would The Star have so blithely published a sentence reading, 'In fact, people kinda like the ol' black-basher'? Gays seem to be the one remaining minority that society still considers it OK to hate.ÊThat's probablyÊespecially true in a back-water town like Kansas City ..." Hoo boy. People, let this serve as an example of what happens when you don't watch television regularly! On a positive note, for every steaming-hot letter I've gotten lately, I received many more that were air-conditioned. I'll start posting selected e-mails to a separate letters page. Pick to click Guerrilla documentary-maker Michael Moore has been branching out. He's produced two videos for the group Rage Against the Machine. The first one is up for an MTV Video Music Award next month; the second, "Testify," debuts today on "Total Request Live" (3:00-4:30, MTV). Rage Against the Machine, you'll recall, is the pot-stirring group that performed a protest concert outside the Democratic convention in L.A. Police declared the gathering an "unlawful assembly" and hammered the assembly with pepper spray and rubber bullets. (The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the LAPD, claiming that members of the news media were singled out for abuse by the cops.) In a letter to his fans, Moore said the new Rage video "tells the story of a group of aliens from another planet who decide to conquer Earth by sending a mutant gene here that splits into two heads -- with both of them running for president of the United States! They say the same exact things like they both support the death penalty and NAFTA and more Pentagon spending -- and the pundits actually believe that they are two separate and distinct beings." Yes, Moore is supporting Ralph Nader this year. Also this weekend:

A must-see "Dateline NBC" (9 p.m. Friday). Another of those one-hour documentaries I've raved about in the past, this one follows the trajectories of four troubled young men as they are paroled from prison. Two out of three parolees are returned to jail, and we're told that nearly half the time it's for simple parole violations. After tonight's program, you'll have a better idea why. The four men struggle to re-enter the world. In one case, the wheels begin coming off the moment our parolee walks out the prison gate. But in documenting their travails, "Dateline" shows us how the much-maligned parole system really does work. Though the stories you'll see tonight are heartbreaking, you might come away convinced that the rewards of the parole system -- for one of the four men profiled, at least -- still outweigh the risks.

What has been the hottest cable network this year? You'll never guess, unless you've got kids: It's Cartoon Network, which just had its biggest month ever and is en route to displacing USA as cable's top-rated network. This weekend, "Cartoon Cartoon Weekend," a 53-hour, all-original programming marathon on Cartoon Network, will let viewers decide which of three series pilots will become a half-hour series next year. The marathon begins 7 p.m. Friday.

After "The Simpsons," there's no animated comedy _ and precious few live-action ones, either -- quite as much fun to watch as MTV's "Daria." Now, television's smartest and tartest-tongued teenage girl is featured in her own full-length movie, "Daria: Is It Fall Yet?" premiering 7 p.m. Sunday on MTV. It's summertime for the students and faculty of Lawndale High, and that means summer jobs, vacations, camp -- and in Daria's case, sleeping in until noon. That is, until her hard-driving mom enlists Daria as a counselor at the OK to Cry Corral day camp ("for overly sensitive kids and those who'd like to be"). There she meets a camper who's as jaded as she is, only younger. Creepy. Meanwhile, best friend Jane gets a scholarship to a pretentious art colony, where she finds a kindred spirit (voiced by Bif Naked) and spars with her narcissistic teacher (the Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl). Back home, Daria's sister Quinn hires a tutor (MTV's Carson Daly) after she gets her standardized test scores. By the way, if you're wondering who voices the regular characters on "Daria," you're not alone: The voice actors aren't listed in the credits. (This is how cable TV keeps the costs down.) However, a well-kept "Daria" Internet fan site informs us that most of the voices are done by two women, Tracy Grandstaff and Wendy Hoopes. Also, Internet Movie Database has a list of voice credits. On this date... in 1994, because it wants the show to have the best possible ratings, ABC launches "My So-Called Life" opposite the first hour of NBC's Thursday "Must-See-TV" lineup. Viewers are more interested in a different view of "Generation X" life, which makes its debut in the same time slot a month later: "Friends." August 26: in 1996, having been reintroduced to the world with a 2-hour movie the previous November, "The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest" makes its debut on TNT, TBS and the Cartoon Network, where all told the show will air 21 times a week. Though everything else has been updated, Jonny himself has only aged about 3 years since the original 1964 series. August 27: in 1990, NBC unveils its hot new boy band -- Chris, Eddie, Damon, Patrick and Bobby -- as "The Guys Next Door." The Monkees-styled variety show is designed to rip-off the New Kids On The Block, who have their own Saturday morning cartoon this season on ABC. -- Tom Heald Previously at TV Barn:

• Huge audience watches Richard win (8/24/00)
• The final "Survivor" (8/23/00)
• "Godzilla 2000": Out of the box (8/22/00)
• Chris rocks (8/22/00)
• Let's have a 4-way presidential debate (8/21/00)
• Nader takes on MasterCard (8/18/00)
• Roeper's curious Kilborn column (8/17/00)
• "Survivor" Kelly's famous last words (8/17/00)
• Will Fox challenge ownership cap? (8/16/00)
• "Bull" (8/15/00)
• "Voyager" producer: We'll do better (8/15/00)
• Replay and TiVo: Revolution? Or same old same old? (8/14/00)

• Browse the TV Barn archives
• Kansas City TV/radio columns

More news you can use

• Late night line-ups
• Zentertainment
• TV Tattle: What critics are saying
• Variety
• AP Entertainment (through Nando.Net)
• Mediaweek/The Hollywood Reporter
• The Media Channel (mediachannel.org)
• Jim Romenesko's MediaNews
• SkyReport (satellite-TV news)
• New York Daily News
• New York Post
• Robert Feder, Chicago Sun-Times
• Los Angeles Times TV
• News Blues ("... for TV news insiders")
• Television-related news from Moreover.com
• Late-night TV links at About.com

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The big winner in "Campaign 2000": Maria Pope While in New York earlier this month to profile Maria Pope and Barbara Gaines, the two recently-promoted show-runners at the "Late Show with David Letterman" -- look for that story Wednesday at TV Barn -- I asked Pope about the "Campaign 2000" segments that have become, along with her pleasant smile, a nightly fixture on the show. Pope wasn't even an executive producer when the "Campaign 2000" segments started in January. At the time, executive producer Rob Burnett stood behind the podium. But shortly after Letterman returned from heart surgery, Burnett took off for Vancouver to shoot the pilot for "Ed." That left Pope in charge. "I certainly didn't ask to be put on the air," she said from her sparsely decorated new office at the Ed Sullivan Theater. "I just got swept up in the momentum. (Dave) is very nice to me and he always knows exactly the moment when to wrap it up." One of the obvious appeals of "Campaign 2000" is its unscripted feel. "If people like it, part of that may be because you don't what it will be. And many nights before the show starts, it's often the case that none of us knows what it will be. You'll be busy all day, then at 5:20 you'll realize, `Holy crap!'" But Letterman likes it that way, said Pope. "He would never want to know what I wanted to talk about. If I said to him before the show that this thing happened to me with a cab driver, he'd say, `Oh, really?' and then he'd say, `Never mind! Never mind! Save it for the show.' And then it became reacting in the moment." Originally, the segment was little more than Burnett giving nightly updates on his attempts to get leading political candidates, such as Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush, onto the "Late Show." But after Bush's disastrous appearance via satellite in March -- so embarrassing to the candidate that even Letterman avoided re-airing it -- politicians became persona non grata at "Late Show." Yet "Campaign 2000" continued. "I started making plans to have Bush in the studio. Dave said, `Nah, I'm kinda sick of the campaign. Let's talk about other things,'" said Pope. As any viewer can see, Letterman just likes talking with his new show-runner. They have a natural rapport that was built over the years; Pope has been associated with ``Late Night'' since 1982, when she interned there while a student at Southern Methodist University. ``I always thought Maria's outlook and spirit was so much closer to Dave's than many of the head writers on the show,'' said Steve O'Donnell, the ``Chris Rock Show'' producer who was head writer on ``Late Night'' for eight years. ``She was always fascinated by TV talk shows. She was probably one of the few elementary school kids in Houston who took a lot of trouble to watch Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas. She told me once that her mom would call to her when she was out playing to tell her the Sonny and Cher show was on.'' Talking to Pope, it's clear her admiration for the boss goes beyond good-soldier loyalty. She is plainly in awe of Letterman's talent, and "Campaign 2000" has given her new insight into his ability to spin comedy on the fly. In recent weeks the two have begun hashing out the details of a "Late Show Great Debate" they hope to have on the show this fall. Al Gore has already agreed to appear; it's the Bush camp that's holding things up. (Can you blame them?) "Here we are, fleshing out this `Late Show Great Debate' on the air, and I'm thinking, shouldn't we be having a meeting or something?" Pope said, laughing. "To watch Dave do this, for all intents and purposes, live in the moment of a TV show ... I just stand on the podium thinking, `How do you do that?'" On the day NBC picked up "Ed," Burnett relinquished his day-to-day chores at the "Late Show" and Letterman made Gaines and Pope the new executive producers. Pope said she got a bouquet of flowers from Letterman foil and fill-in host Kathie Lee Gifford. The card read, "You go, girl!" And she has. *** It's only fair to note that the late-night show without a "Campaign 2000" segment is the one that cleaned up during the August political conventions. NBC reports that the "Tonight Show with Jay Leno" scored a third more viewers during the Democratic convention and 11 percent more viewers during the GOP get-together compared with four years ago. Boosted by an appearance by the Gore clan, Leno's show averaged 5.2 million viewers during the Dems' week in Los Angeles. And that was despite a 45-minute delay on Monday night, when President Clinton's speech ran over, and the absence of a Dick Morris toe-sucking scandal. KXTR: A bad case of mono In a move that infuriated classical-music lovers -- but came as no surprise to radio industry watchers -- Kansas City's largest broadcaster abruptly pulled the plug Aug. 17 on KXTR-FM and relegated the station's classical format to a weaker and decidedly less euphonic AM signal. What is the deal with classical and big radio broadcasters? Many say it's the inevitable by-product of industry consolidation, which puts pressure on big holding groups to make all of its stations hugely profitable. In such an environment, experts say, classical doesn't stand a chance. The demographics of its audience don't conform to the target demos sought by the media buyers who purchase the bulk of advertising time on radio these days.

• Read my analysis from Monday's Kansas City Star
• RELATED STORY: "It sounds like you're listening to it in the bathroom"
• Detroit noncommercial FM may go up for bids

From "who shot J.R." to who's got P.R. After initially reading the tea leaves of "Survivor's" overnight ratings last week, I predicted its viewership would approach the 76 million figure of the final "Seinfeld." Then I chickened out and removed the text -- but it turns out I shouldn't have. A whopping 72 million Americans watched all or some of the coronation of king Richard Hatch as the ultimate survivor. Now comes some even more intriguing data that tells us how CBS helped grease the wheels for "Survivor"-mania. According to The Myers Report, more stories were published about last week's season finale (540) than for the series-ending episodes of either "Seinfeld" (398) or "Cheers" (204). In fact, not even the much-referenced "Who Shot J.R." episode earned as many press mentions (448) as "Survivor." CBS publicity reportedly spent a full year and thousands of person-hours promoting "Survivor." Miraculously, the game's outcome was never publicized, so CBS got maximum return on its investment, with an estimated 59 million viewers tuned in at 9:58 p.m. when Hatch was declared the winner. Now the question remains: What kind of delayed payoff will CBS get for its promotional windfall? If you were watching "Survivor" faithfully, you should have memorized the new CBS lineup by about Week 11, thanks to all those fall-season promos. With luck, the network won't suffer a repeat of its embarrassment from 1993, when promos for its new action series "South of Sunset" reached saturation level during the baseball playoffs and the first two months of David Letterman's rip-roaring start at CBS. "South of Sunset," which starred Glenn Frey of the Eagles, scored so poorly in its debut that the network never aired a second episode. Pick to click Why is "Investigative Reports" (10 p.m., A&E) adding another hour to the thousands of hours television has spent on the JonBenet Ramsey murder case? "Our audience expects us to," the show's anchor, Bill Kurtis, told me recently. "After a case is reasonably resolved, that's when we can come in and put a beginning, middle and end to it." What Kurtis & Co. did not do was not to pick over the crime scene yet another time, or resume the debate over John and Patsy Ramsey's role in the killing. Instead, this hour looks at the investigation itself: specifically the crucial errors that compromised the crime scene in the hours after JonBenet's killing and the disorganized effort by law enforcement that followed. We also follow Kurtis through the Ramsey house as he shows (not very persuasively, to me) how an intruder might have committed the crime. Kurtis concludes that we may never know the girl's real killer because officials simply don't have the evidence to convict. Kurtis had no problem getting an interview with the Ramseys and other notables in the JonBenet case. "Everybody wants to talk because they're afraid this will blow over," he said, "and they'll miss their opportunity to tell their story." On this date... in 1990, Japan levels an assault on American children's brains and their parents' wallets -- the poorly dubbed, chop-socky "educational" TV show "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers" on Fox. -- Tom Heald Previously at TV Barn:

• Reader mail: Debates, "American High," Richard (8/25/00)
• Huge audience watches Richard win (8/24/00)
• The final "Survivor" (8/23/00)
• "Godzilla 2000": Out of the box (8/22/00)
• Chris rocks (8/22/00)
• Let's have a 4-way presidential debate (8/21/00)
• Nader takes on MasterCard (8/18/00)
• Roeper's curious Kilborn column (8/17/00)
• "Survivor" Kelly's famous last words (8/17/00)
• Will Fox challenge ownership cap? (8/16/00)
• "Bull" (8/15/00)
• "Voyager" producer: We'll do better (8/15/00)
• Replay and TiVo: Revolution? Or same old same old? (8/14/00)

• Browse the TV Barn archives
• Kansas City TV/radio columns

More news you can use

• Late night line-ups
• Zentertainment
• TV Tattle: What critics are saying
• Variety
• AP Entertainment (through Nando.Net)
• Mediaweek/The Hollywood Reporter
• The Media Channel (mediachannel.org)
• Jim Romenesko's MediaNews
• SkyReport (satellite-TV news)
• New York Daily News
• New York Post
• Robert Feder, Chicago Sun-Times
• Los Angeles Times TV
• News Blues ("... for TV news insiders")
• Television-related news from Moreover.com
• Late-night TV links at About.com

Search TV Barn

this site www.searchbutton.com the web www.goto.com

Join the TV Barn mailing list! TV Barn is a contributor to "The All-Star Newspaper" of Brill's Content. Copyright © 2000 Aaron Barnhart
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"X-Files" takes a little off the top

by John Zipperer

What does "The X-Files" producer Chris Carter have up his sleeves for its eighth season? Even before the ex-surfer dude gave some clues in recent interviews, we knew it would be unlike any preceding season.

At the end of last season, we had seen a wrapup of the long-running issue of the disappearance of Mulder's sister, Samantha. And we saw major changes for our two leads, FBI agents Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Fox Mulder (David Duchovny). Scully found herself pregnant, with no clue about the identity of the father. And Mulder finally got himself abducted by the aliens he's pursued for years and years. Then, of course, there's the backstory: Duchovny will appear in only 11 episodes (his decision), and will only be a lead player in about half of those.

Scully, meanwhile, gets a new partner. Cinescape reports in its fall SF-TV preview that the new teamup will be a reunion of sorts, at least in name. The new character, to be played by "Terminator 2" vet Robert Patrick, will be named John Doggett after sportscaster Jerry Doggett. Doggett, see, was co-announcer of Los Angeles Dodgers games with Vin Scully. It's a small world. Anyway, Doggett will be a by-the-book skeptic, with a bit of a switcheroo for Scully, who will be less of the skeptic than she originally was.

But it doesn't sound like Patrick will just play a male Scully to Scully's female Mulder. Doggett is "very much an insider at the FBI," Carter told writer Ian Spelling in a two-part interview in Starlog. "He's part of the fraternity. Mulder has always been an outsider--the consummate outsider. We wanted somebody who was blue-collar, a former cop, a man's man."

And he has some words for those of us--we know who we are--who complain when a cherished series premise is tinkered with. He acknowledges that the show's original setup worked. "That doesn't mean that you can't threaten the paradigm, can't threaten the model....In fact, dramatically speaking, you had better do that every once in a while, or else you're going to have a very stale show."

Spelling also puts to rest the idea that Carter is obsessed with the Fox's premature eradication of his "Harsh Realm," which the network cancelled last fall. He apparently takes a little pleasure in the fact that the network exec who killed the show has himself been removed. But his focus seems to be on making his next series, "The Long Gunmen," a success. That series, due to launch in January 2001, will focus on the three occasional characters on "The X-Files" who published a conspiracy zine under the title of The Lone Gunmen. The three are admittedly minor characters on which to base a spinoff series, but that may work to its advantage by allowing Carter to go in different directions -- to threaten his paradigm -- instead of feeling obligated to adhere to the "X-Files" premise. Hey, it worked for the producers of "Cheers" when they spun off a series centering around a third-banana doctor character named Frasier.

The new season of "The X-Files" won't premiere until November. Zippy's Sci-Fi Loft continues ... Dollar days at Pets.com Reader Paul Jay Rodriguez writes, "Can we see an update on the suit against Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog? Has it been canceled due to Pets.com's financial troubles?" It might be better to say that the suit is not a high priority for the troubled Internet pet-supply retailer. According to a story on the wires today, Pets.com (IPET) is in danger of being de-listed from the Nasdaq index because its stock price is now hovering below the critical $1-per-share level. As you'll recall, Pets.com filed its lawsuit against Robert Smigel, the comedy writer whose Triumph puppet is beloved by fans of Conan O'Brien's late-night show, last April. At the time, IPET's stock had already been cut by two-thirds from its IPO peak of nearly $9 a share. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but since the lawsuit was filed, Pets.com's share price has been slashed another two-thirds to under a buck. If the retailer can't get its stock price any higher, its legal matters will be irrelevant. Lawsuits don't die; like old soldiers and old socks, they simply fade away. Pick to click It wasn't my favorite show, but lest I be accused of only playing favorites, here's a shout-out to all you "Freaks and Geeks" fans. The NBC show about coming of age in the year 1980 had literally thousands of devotees last season. For some reason, that wasn't enough to save the show. But now you can relive that half-season, again and again and again, in repeats on Fox Family Channel beginning 8 p.m. tonight. Also tonight: You may have read about the melee that broke out during the taping of UPN's "The Source Hip-Hop Music Awards" (8 p.m.) last week. Security guards were pelted with compact discs, audience members rushed the stage and the producers were forced to stop the show after only half the awards had been handed out. But the ceremony will air tonight in some form, though perhaps UPN will hold off showing any of those new public service announcements in which professional wrestlers urge viewers to ``Smackdown Your Vote!'' On this date... in 1965, "Meet the Press" ends a run of 18 years of public service in prime-time. After tonight it will head to Sunday mornings on NBC. -- Tom Heald Previously at TV Barn:

• "Campaign 2000" host Maria Pope (8/28/00)
• CBS's P.R. blitz pays off for "Survivor" (8/28/00)
• Classical KXTR's bad case of mono (8/28/00)
• Reader mail: Debates, "American High," Richard (8/25/00)
• Huge audience watches Richard win (8/24/00)
• The final "Survivor" (8/23/00)
• "Godzilla 2000": Out of the box (8/22/00)
• Chris rocks (8/22/00)
• Let's have a 4-way presidential debate (8/21/00)
• Nader takes on MasterCard (8/18/00)
• Roeper's curious Kilborn column (8/17/00)
• "Survivor" Kelly's famous last words (8/17/00)
• Will Fox challenge ownership cap? (8/16/00)
• "Bull" (8/15/00)
• "Voyager" producer: We'll do better (8/15/00)
• Replay and TiVo: Revolution? Or same old same old? (8/14/00)

• Browse the TV Barn archives
• Kansas City TV/radio columns

More news you can use

• Late night line-ups
• Zentertainment
• TV Tattle: What critics are saying
• Variety
• AP Entertainment (through Nando.Net)
• Mediaweek/The Hollywood Reporter
• The Media Channel (mediachannel.org)
• Jim Romenesko's MediaNews
• SkyReport (satellite-TV news)
• New York Daily News
• New York Post
• Robert Feder, Chicago Sun-Times
• Los Angeles Times TV
• News Blues ("... for TV news insiders")
• Television-related news from Moreover.com
• Late-night TV links at About.com

Search TV Barn

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Join the TV Barn mailing list! TV Barn is a contributor to "The All-Star Newspaper" of Brill's Content. Copyright © 2000 Aaron Barnhart
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He's the ladies' man In the man's world that was once late-night TV, women always played essential roles. But now they are starting to assume key positions that were held exclusively by men. For Maria Pope and Barbara Gaines, the two women recently promoted to executive producers on the "Late Show with David Letterman," it's more than another step up the ladder. It's a validation of the choice they made years ago to throw in their lots with the man who went from cult favorite to talk-show legend. Their dedication and skill, observers say, were critical to Letterman's success. And perhaps Letterman has Pope to thank for his recent surge in the ratings: Among women ages 18-49, "Late Show" is up 20 percent compared with a year ago. Read the story from Wednesday's Kansas City Star Pick to click In making "The Fall of Newt Gingrich" (PBS, check local listings), documentary producer Michael Pack trailed the titular and spiritual head of the House Republicans during a crucial two-month period in the fall of 1998. This film begins with optimism, as then-Speaker Gingrich hopes to turn public disgust toward the President's indiscretions into midterm victory. It ends with Gingrich out of a job and his fellow partisans wondering what went wrong. Despite gaining extraordinary access to its subject, Pack's film doesn't really answer that question. Perhaps we'll never know why the person most responsible for the GOP's success in the Clinton era was turned out so swiftly by his own troops. "The Fall of Newt Gingrich" is a lively document anyway, as it gives us some insight into Gingrich's drive and aggressiveness -- the two qualities that propelled his remarkable political career. His schedule would've felled lesser men; each day is crammed with closed-door meetings, public meet-and-greets, media spin and campaign appearances. But Gingrich is better spoken on the subject of dinosaur bones than on his own strengths and weaknesses. So Pack pads the film with reflections from Gingrich's staff and close friends. One of them, Sen. Trent Lott, says, "He wasn't our Moses, he was our Joshua. He not only led us to the promised land, he took us in." *** Also tonight, David Letterman marks seven years on CBS with New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani and supermodel Laetitia Casta as his guests on the "Late Show" (11:35 p.m.). CBS publicity reports that tonight's show will be the 1,466th since Letterman came over from NBC. On this date... in 1990, Chris Stevens meets a literate "brother" named Bernard who turns out to be his real half-brother, while Dr. Fleischman meets "Bigfoot," aka the antisocial Adam Arkin, on a very special "Northern Exposure." -- Tom Heald Previously at TV Barn:

• The SURVIVOR page
• "X-Files" lookahead (8/29/00)
• Pets.com: So broke they can't pay attention (8/29/00)
• "Campaign 2000" host Maria Pope (8/28/00)
• CBS's P.R. blitz pays off for "Survivor" (8/28/00)
• Classical KXTR's bad case of mono (8/28/00)
• Reader mail: Debates, "American High," Richard (8/25/00)
• Huge audience watches Richard win (8/24/00)
• The final "Survivor" (8/23/00)
• "Godzilla 2000": Out of the box (8/22/00)
• Chris rocks (8/22/00)
• Let's have a 4-way presidential debate (8/21/00)

• Browse the TV Barn archives
• Kansas City TV/radio columns

More news you can use

• Late night line-ups
• Zentertainment
• TV Tattle: What critics are saying
• Variety
• AP Entertainment (through Nando.Net)
• Mediaweek/The Hollywood Reporter
• The Media Channel (mediachannel.org)
• Jim Romenesko's MediaNews
• SkyReport (satellite-TV news)
• New York Daily News
• New York Post
• Robert Feder, Chicago Sun-Times
• Los Angeles Times TV
• News Blues ("... for TV news insiders")
• Television-related news from Moreover.com
• Late-night TV links at About.com

Search TV Barn

this site www.searchbutton.com the web www.goto.com

Join the TV Barn mailing list! TV Barn is a contributor to "The All-Star Newspaper" of Brill's Content. Copyright © 2000 Aaron Barnhart
Redistribution prohibited.

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Pick to click Like any celebrity working in the pressure cooker of live TV, Geraldo Rivera often longs to get away to places where no one recognizes his face. But just to make sure the folks back home don't forget him, he takes a TV crew along. Rivera, the onetime attack journalist turned CNBC talking-heads ringleader, has been touring the world by sailboat over the past few years and producing documentaries of his travels. The latest, "Geraldo Voyager: On the High Seas," airs tonight (10 p.m., Travel Channel). It's preceded at 9 p.m. by an encore showing of "Sail to the Century II," from an earlier leg of the Rivera expedition. RELATED: Geraldo wants to run for NYC mayor Also tonight, "Hopkins 24/7" continues on ABC (9 p.m.) The medical documentary was compiled from footage taken over three and a half months at the Johns Hopkins medical center in Baltimore. Tonight two parents must decide whether to approve a risky operation that would remove half of their 4-year-old's brain. After tonight, "Hopkins 24/7" will air Wednesdays through Sept. 27. On this date... in 1998, PAX TV launches -- and with it "The Love Boat" relaunches, in reruns, on the family-friendly channel. Wall Street welcomes the seventh network by sending the Dow Industrials plummeting a near-record 512 points. -- Tom Heald Previously at TV Barn:

• The women behind David Letterman (8/30/00)
• The SURVIVOR page
• "X-Files" lookahead (8/29/00)
• Pets.com: So broke they can't pay attention (8/29/00)
• "Campaign 2000" host Maria Pope (8/28/00)
• CBS's P.R. blitz pays off for "Survivor" (8/28/00)
• Classical KXTR's bad case of mono (8/28/00)
• Reader mail: Debates, "American High," Richard (8/25/00)
• Huge audience watches Richard win (8/24/00)
• The final "Survivor" (8/23/00)
• "Godzilla 2000": Out of the box (8/22/00)
• Chris rocks (8/22/00)
• Let's have a 4-way presidential debate (8/21/00)

• Browse the TV Barn archives
• Kansas City TV/radio columns

More news you can use

• Late night line-ups
• Zentertainment
• TV Tattle: What critics are saying
• Variety
• AP Entertainment (through Nando.Net)
• Mediaweek/The Hollywood Reporter
• The Media Channel (mediachannel.org)
• Jim Romenesko's MediaNews
• SkyReport (satellite-TV news)
• New York Daily News
• New York Post
• Robert Feder, Chicago Sun-Times
• Los Angeles Times TV
• News Blues ("... for TV news insiders")
• Television-related news from Moreover.com
• Late-night TV links at About.com

Search TV Barn

this site www.searchbutton.com the web www.goto.com

Join the TV Barn mailing list! TV Barn is a contributor to "The All-Star Newspaper" of Brill's Content. Copyright © 2000 Aaron Barnhart
Redistribution prohibited.

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Updated 2-Sep-00 2:06 PM CT Ratings : Broadcast | Cable | Explained
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Happy Labor Day Weekend! Back on Tuesday. Reader mail As you will soon learn, TV Barn readers are not a passive lot. They take action. They get results. Take longtime reader Melissa Pollak. A few months ago she wrote me with a question about a peculiar practice by the syndicators of the early '90s sitcom "Hearts Afire." One of the things Melissa liked about that show was its use of sampling lines from popular tunes to illustrate something going on in the scene. But when the show began airing in repeats on USA Network, she discovered to her horror that the original background music was missing. "For example, the last scene of one episode should have been scored to Bonnie Raitt's 'Something to Talk About.' Instead, some other nondescript music was substituted. The result just wasn't the same! I can only guess that USA is unwilling to pay some type of royalty fee. Are you aware of other examples where this has happened?" I didn't. And so I let the matter drop, somewhat guiltily (my usual response when I don't know the answer to a TV question). But five months later, Melissa wrote me back. She had just attended a performance of "The Dinner Party" at the Kennedy Center, starring former "Hearts Afire" star John Ritter. Guess who finagled a one-on-one chat with the veteran sitcom star? "He could not have been nicer," reports Melissa. "The funny thing was, when I mentioned the missing music to him, he said he had been watching the show the other day and had thought to himself, What happened to Bonnie Raitt? John was also horrified (his word) to hear the 60's soundtrack was missing from the episode 'Class Reunion.' Anyway, he confirmed that using the original music cost money and USA was too cheap to pay it. "As pleased as I am that 'Hearts Afire' was finally sold, I'd be far more pleased if another network bought the rights and rebroadcast it the way it was meant to be seen." After the above letter was posted, Chuck Miller wrote in to say that "Hearts Afire" was not an isolated case: "One of my favorite shows of the late 1980's was 'Tour of Duty,' a Vietnam War drama starring Terence Knox as the sergeant of a platoon in 1967. All the original music, a veritable soundtrack of the 1960's, was wiped off the show and replaced with generic atmospheric sounds and nondescript melodies. Even the show's theme, the Rolling Stones' 'Paint It Black,' was replaced with a generic mixture of military drums and flutes. Ecch. "In one episode from the first season, Specialist Marcus Taylor is deciding whether to go back to America when his stint is over, or re-enlist and continue his military career. He returns to his barracks where a Vietnamese cleaning lady is mopping the floor, and the radio is playing 'Hello Stranger' by Barbara Lewis in the background. A despondent and inebriated Taylor talks to the cleaning lady about his choices, then starts dancing with the mop and singing along with the radio. The syndicated episodes now show Taylor doing that exact same thing -- even singing along with the radio -- but the radio's now playing a generic song that sounds more like the music played during Chinese New Year celebrations." Paul Harris also wrote in: "'WKRP in Cincinnati' reruns stripped out some of the originals, too, including the first rock song Johnny Fever played, 'Layla,' and the night Venus was asked by The Big Guy to play Maurice Chevalier's 'Thank Heaven For Little Girls.' In both instance -- and there were many others -- the originals were replaced by generic music that cost nothing in rights fees." And John Carney adds, "One of my favorite episodes of that show had always been the one where nerdy newsman Les Nessman gets a date with Jennifer -- and gets dressed, including an ascot and a curly wig, to the tune of Foreigner's 'Hot Blooded.' The song was the perfect ironic accompaniment to the scene. When I saw a rerun recently with a forgettable, generic replacement song, I nearly fell out of the chair." Stephen Powers writes, "When USA reran 'Bosom Buddies' in the early 90s, they replaced the opening theme song, a cover of Billy Joel's 'My Life,' with a non-instrumental version of the show's closing theme. I guess they couldn't even afford the cover version. Also, when 'Grace Under Fire' ran on ABC, the opening theme song for the first three seasons was a cover of 'Lady Madonna' sung by Aretha Franklin. In syndication, 'Lady Madonna' has been dropped and the theme song for all episodes is now the one which was played for the last two seasons on ABC. "And the original theme music for 'Baywatch' was a song called 'Save Me,' sung by Peter Cetera. In a recent interview, one of the show's producers made a comment that they had to pay something like $25,000 every time they played it, so when the show moved from NBC to first-run syndication, they changed to a cheaper theme. Now when you see the NBC episodes in reruns, the Cetera theme has been replaced with the second theme as well." More enterprising thoughts from TV Barn readers ... Pick to click Like many people in my generation, the "Jerry Lewis Telethon" benefiting the Muscular Dystrophy Association will be forever linked with the 1970s. My friends and I would stay up watching it into the wee hours on Labor Day weekend, probably more for the experience than for any of the entertainment offered on screen. Looking over the lineup for this year's telethon, I'm still reminded of that '70s show. In a fragmented, multichannel world, the telethon still acts as though television is a three-channel universe and a TV variety show must be true to its name, with something for just about everyone. Hence a guest list that includes teen idol Christina Aguilera and aging malaprop king Norm Crosby; Savion Glover doing taps and Charo doing flamenco; Martha Stewart and Tony Danza; Jack Lemmon and a comedian whose actual name is Bob Zany. Lewis is joined by his longtime co-host Ed McMahon as well as Jann Carl of "Entertainment Tonight" and "Later" host Cynthia Garrett. The telethon will also be streamed over the Internet at http://www.mdausa.org. List of stations carrying telethon Also this weekend, "Ebert & Roeper and the Movies" (check local listings) makes its debut in syndication. Roger Ebert and his new aislemate present their wish lists of movies from the first eight months of 2000 they'd like considered for Oscars. They also freely admit most of their picks don't have a chance. They even agree to disagree on a couple of choices -- notably Ebert with Roeper's gushing over the new "Hamlet" that stars Ethan Hawke, Sam Shepard and Bill Murray. On this date... in 1992, ABC hires Joshua Brand and John Falsey to rip off "Northern Exposure," their hit at CBS. They oblige with "Going To Extremes," a medical school drama set on the exotic Caribbean isle of Jantique (aka Jamaica). Unfortunately the only real extremes are in the title, and it goes away in January. September 2: in 1963, while Mike Wallace takes over "The Morning Show," now called the "CBS Morning News," former morning anchor Walter Cronkite see the "CBS Evening News" doubled in length, becoming network TV's first half-hour nightly newscast. Helping Cronkite kill the extra time tonight is President Kennedy. September 3: in 1990, "To Tell The Truth" returns to daytime network TV after 20 years for another run with the graceful Kitty Carlisle-Hart still hairsprayed to her chair. Gordon Elliott hosts this new NBC version for a whopping two months before regular panelist Lynn Swann is inserted into the host's chair. September 4: in 1994, it's a night of big Fox premieres for "Wild Oats," "Fortune Hunter," and "Hardball" -- a Gen-X sex-com with Paul Rudd, a James Bond spoof, and a baseball comedy with Rose Marie. They are respectively canceled in four, five and eight weeks. -- Tom Heald Previously at TV Barn:

• The women behind David Letterman (8/30/00)
• The SURVIVOR page
• "X-Files" lookahead (8/29/00)
• Pets.com: So broke they can't pay attention (8/29/00)
• "Campaign 2000" host Maria Pope (8/28/00)
• CBS's P.R. blitz pays off for "Survivor" (8/28/00)
• Classical KXTR's bad case of mono (8/28/00)
• Reader mail: Debates, "American High," Richard (8/25/00)
• Huge audience watches Richard win (8/24/00)
• The final "Survivor" (8/23/00)
• "Godzilla 2000": Out of the box (8/22/00)
• Chris rocks (8/22/00)
• Let's have a 4-way presidential debate (8/21/00)

• Browse the TV Barn archives
• Kansas City TV/radio columns

More news you can use

• Late night line-ups
• Zentertainment
• TV Tattle: What critics are saying
• Variety
• AP Entertainment (through Nando.Net)
• Mediaweek/The Hollywood Reporter
• The Media Channel (mediachannel.org)
• Jim Romenesko's MediaNews
• SkyReport (satellite-TV news)
• New York Daily News
• New York Post
• Robert Feder, Chicago Sun-Times
• Los Angeles Times TV
• News Blues ("... for TV news insiders")
• Television-related news from Moreover.com
• Late-night TV links at About.com

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Strike looms as networks stockpile How much for your principles? That's what the networks have begun asking the people in charge of TV's hottest shows. TV Barn has learned that in recent days, network executives have discreetly approached the executive producers of at least two highly-rated sitcoms and asked them if they wouldn't mind producing a half-dozen or so extra episodes for the 2000-01 season. The reason? The Writers Guild of America, the union representing TV's script writers, is gearing up for a strike next May. The writers' stoppage, which would be the first since 1988, is expected to shut down production of TV shows for months, jeopardizing the launch of the 2001 fall schedule. So the deal being offered, according to sources at two of TV's highest-rated comedies, is this: The producers crank out 30 or more scripts instead of the usual season order of 22 to 25 scripts. They get a big fat bonus and the networks get fresh programming, ready to plug in next fall in case the writers are still on strike. The conversations were informal and preliminary. But the fact they are happening at all has led to action at the Writers Guild. Its president, John Wells, the executive producer of "ER" and "The West Wing," sent out a letter last week advising members of the situation and urging them to turn the networks down. (The Writers Guild spokesperson who confirmed the letter Tuesday, said she did not know if Wells' letter went out to all members or only show-runners.) A producer at one top-rated situation comedy agreed with Wells. "Why give the networks a bigger stick to hit writers over the head with?" the producer told TV Barn this weekend. "The more scripts and episodes they have in the bank, the longer they can withstand a strike, which then defeats the purpose of a strike, doesn't it?" Officially the union, which represents 11,000 writers, continues to hope for a settlement with the studios that employ them. Talks have not begun in earnest, but many of the issues under discussion will be sticky. They include higher fees from Fox, UPN, WB and cable networks; and issues of payment for having writers' works distributed overseas, on DVDs and over the Internet. Privately, the rank-and-file seem resigned to a strike, especially as the current commercial actors' strike drags into its fifth month with no end in sight. The general mood is reflected in a recent publication from the Writers Guild that advises members to "bank every penny you can" and avoid luxury purchases so they will have enough money to "ride the storm out." As for the networks, it's clear that the current craze in "reality" shows isn't simply a reaction to "Survivor" and "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." In the event of a strike, reality shows would allow the networks to go ahead with a fall season next year. Reality shows don't require Hollywood script writers. Nor do they need actors -- their agreement with the networks runs out in July, 2001. And because reality shows are far cheaper to make than ones with scripts and actors, the networks could kiss off several million disappointed viewers and still make money. But could they afford the shock to their reputations? For years TV critics have been instructed by network executives that what separates broadcasters from mere cable is their investment in high-quality, high-cost comedies and drama programs. Reality shows are fine in the summer, but build a fall schedule around them and the broadcast advantage disappears. Then again, considering how many cable networks the big broadcasters now own, the distinction may not be that important anymore. At any rate: Viewers, you have been warned.

• Hollywood braces for huge shutdown
• AFTRA's homepage (update on the commercial actors' strike)
• WGA Negotiations Alert for August (discusses key issues)
• "Now is the time for a writer revolution"

A "Space: 1999" homecoming

by John Zipperer

Rarely is popular perception so accurate as when it comes to questions science fiction fans ask their heroes at SF conventions. Yes, people really begin questions with, "In episode 'Such and Such,' in the scene where you and Leonard Nimoy were stranded on the ship ... " It's proof that fans have incredibly strong memories -- or at least well-worn videotapes of old episodes. I don't think people will ask such questions of the 'Seinfeld' cast 20 years hence. But for well-loved but short-lived SF series such as "Space: 1999" from the mid-1970s, it's a different story. And a recent rare appearance by one of the series' stars at a sci-fi convention was too good to pass up.

Catherine Schell, who portrayed a shapeshifting alien named Maya during the second and last season of "Space: 1999," ducked into Manhattan's MainMission 2000 this past weekend. She comported herself with the grace that only a European actress seems to muster when confronted with hundreds of adoring Americans. She signed autographs, helped auction "Space: 1999" materials for the convention's two designated charities (Gay Men's Health Crisis and the National Parkinson Foundation), and answered many audience questions about the series and her other acting work.

Perhaps the hardest thing for SF actors to do is establish the idea in their fans' minds that the actors do have professional careers apart from the SF series or film that first attracted the fans. Schell, whose non-"Space" work includes "Return of the Pink Panther," "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," and "Doctor Who," says she also once had a shot at being in the work of Federico Fellini. Her agents told her Fellini was waiting to interview her at a hotel. "I knew he liked strange people, and I'm far too straight. So I had to do something to myself." She borrowed odd shoes and redid her hair and makeup. "I looked very odd; I actually looked a bit like a tart. I went to the hotel for the meeting. Now, at this hotel, there were ladies of the evening in the lobby, and they probably thought I was one of them." Told to wait for Fellini, she sat and smoked -- setting a plant alight in the process, but otherwise nothing happened; Fellini was at his office, not the hotel, so the two of them never met. "I didn't get the part," she says. "And I tried so hard!"

Another part she didn't get would have been a ticket to a lifetime of SF conventions: Captain Janeway on "Star Trek: Voyager." She confirmed that her agent had sent in her resume, but nothing came of that. "Obviously, I didn't get the part," she laughs.

Acting in a science-fiction series like "Space: 1999" had its own challenges, with special effects, monsters, human-to-alien transformations, and whatnot. Schell says she got along with second-season producer Fred Freiberger, who has a negative reputation among many fans for his presence during the final seasons of "Space" and the original "Star Trek" series. "It is a very civilized place, in England," she says. "No one brings guns to work." Whether Freiberger's reputation is deserved or not is up to others to decide (though even "Trek" scribe David Gerrold, who has had some well-publicized complaints about the producer, now says he at least understands some of the pressures Freiberger was under, being brought in to save troubled TV series). But Schell did mention that she found it fruitless to bring her concerns to the producer about certain directions of the series, in particular the trend in presenting aliens as hairy apelike monsters.

But she had to beg off when asked for specifics on individual episodes, remembering one only after prolonged prompting from the audience established that it included location shooting, a rare occurrence for that stage-bound series. (And her memory of that was largely limited to the fact that the entire cast was ill during the filming, thanks to a drought and a heat wave in England at the time.) But as for her favorite episode, she protested, "I don't know them anymore!"

Here's a "Space: 1999" fan site. And here's another. Zippy's Sci-Fi Loft continues ... Pick to click Robert Hughes returns to his native land in "Australia: Beyond the Fatal Shore," a tour de force featuring the Time magazine art critic at his pungent and perceptive best. The six-hour PBS miniseries airs 9 p.m. tonight through Thursday (check local listings). While filming this series for the BBC last year, Hughes was in a near-fatal car accident. It left him leaning on a cane for support, but also made him feel greater urgency for telling the stories of his boyhood and of what has happened to the country he left behind 35 years ago. Tonight's first hour sets an eclectic tone for the series, with its shagadelic soundtrack and a visual montage clearly meant to provoke. We see Old Sydney, which Hughes describes as "the only theme park in the world devoted to punishment and repression," and watch a parson flogging the unrepentant with a lash (fake blood and all). In the next moment, Hughes and the head of Australian's fast-growing adult film industry are in a field, watching two discreetly pixellated "actors" humping away for the cameras. I can't say I fully trust the opinions of someone who thinks the Moral Majority still speaks for people of faith. But nearly every word out of Hughes' mouth is interesting. And with its broad, multidisciplinary approach and breakneck pacing, "Beyond the Fatal Shore" has an ambition rarely seen even among PBS shows. On this date... in 1967, young Goldie Hawn tries out for the role of the wife in "Good Morning World," the story of two disc jockeys played by Joby Baker and Ron Schell. But producer Sheldon Leonard tells her she'd be much better if she were cast as the spaced-out neighbor next door. Hawn asks to see the part -- and Leonard confesses the lines haven't been written yet. In fact, the part didn't exist until he saw Hawn read for the other, dowdier role. -- Tom Heald Previously at TV Barn:

• Reader mail: Missing TV soundtracks (9/1/00)
• The women behind David Letterman (8/30/00)
• The SURVIVOR page
• "X-Files" lookahead (8/29/00)
• Pets.com: So broke they can't pay attention (8/29/00)
• "Campaign 2000" host Maria Pope (8/28/00)
• CBS's P.R. blitz pays off for "Survivor" (8/28/00)
• Classical KXTR's bad case of mono (8/28/00)
• Reader mail: Debates, "American High," Richard (8/25/00)
• Huge audience watches Richard win (8/24/00)
• The final "Survivor" (8/23/00)
• "Godzilla 2000": Out of the box (8/22/00)
• Chris rocks (8/22/00)
• Let's have a 4-way presidential debate (8/21/00)

• Browse the TV Barn archives
• Kansas City TV/radio columns

More news you can use

• Late night line-ups
• Zentertainment
• TV Tattle: What critics are saying
• Variety
• AP Entertainment (through Nando.Net)
• Mediaweek/The Hollywood Reporter
• The Media Channel (mediachannel.org)
• Jim Romenesko's MediaNews
• SkyReport (satellite-TV news)
• New York Daily News
• New York Post
• Robert Feder, Chicago Sun-Times
• Los Angeles Times TV
• News Blues ("... for TV news insiders")
• Television-related news from Moreover.com
• Late-night TV links at About.com

Search TV Barn

this site www.searchbutton.com the web www.goto.com

Join the TV Barn mailing list! TV Barn is a contributor to "The All-Star Newspaper" of Brill's Content. Copyright © 2000 Aaron Barnhart
Redistribution prohibited.

All TV times Eastern
Updated 6-Sep-00 9:31 AM CT Ratings : Broadcast | Cable | Explained
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They debate. You decide. Well, well, well. Turns out Fox News Channel is more broad-minded than critics have given it credit for being. It is the only rival outlet so far that has agreed to carry the proposed prime-time, presidential debate edition of NBC's "Meet the Press." A Fox spokesman told Variety on Tuesday, "Whenever the presidential candidates debate for the first time, it's an important news story. It's our business to cover important news stories." ABC and CBS, meanwhile, are turning up their noses at the prospect of showcasing Tim Russert's cherubic puss on their airwaves. "It goes without saying that we will cover the news that these debates may generate, but we will not carry the other networks' debates themselves," said an ABC spokesman. Wasn't this the same network that once convinced the other networks to simulcast an Oprah Winfrey special on child abuse? Are they saying that an Oprah special is more in the public's interest than a forum to help viewers decide the next leader of the free world? CBS attempted to take the high road, accusing NBC and CNN of letting themselves be used by the Gore and Bush camps. You see, that never happens to CBS reporters. The "Meet the Press" debate is far from a sure thing; Vice President Gore rejected the suggestion outright, along with a proposed second debate on "Larry King Live," which seems a contradiction for Gore, who once famously demolished Ross Perot in a debate on that program. But Fox is the only news organization that is looking beyond its own greedy self-interest. It understands the democratic stakes involved. Now it's time for the other networks to get over themselves, admit to everybody that they were just sore because they didn't to hold an exclusive debate on their turf -- and then carry the durned thing. EARLIER: Fox should have a "digital debate" Pick to click "Nightline" (11:35 p.m., ABC) is doing a three-part series on hip-hop. And next week, Madeleine Albright is a guest on "Montel." Seriously, though, this is a worthy attempt to interpret a dominant part of youth culture to "Nightline's" older, mostly white audience. It begins tonight and is reported by the always-disarming Robert Krulwich. He starts by spending a day in the life of hip hop's undisputed grand impresario, Russell Simmons. Krulwich spends nearly as much time introducing us to the world of fashion, music and celebrity that Simmons created as he does actually profiling Simmons. Thursday's installment tries to dispel commonly-held beliefs about violent hip-hop lyrics, while Friday's conclusion examines the profound economic effect hip hop has had on black America the past 25 years. What's fascinating is how this portrait of opportunity and hope stands in stark contrast to the bleak, profane dystopias these same artists describe in their songs. On this date... in 1986, "Scooby-Doo" appears for the final time as an adult in the ABC Saturday morning lineup. In one format or another the Great Dane has been on either the CBS or ABC schedules virtually every week since 1969. -- Tom Heald Previously at TV Barn:

• Networks stockpile as writers' strike looms (9/5/00)
• Reader mail: Missing TV soundtracks (9/1/00)
• The women behind David Letterman (8/30/00)
• The SURVIVOR page
• "X-Files" lookahead (8/29/00)
• Pets.com: So broke they can't pay attention (8/29/00)
• "Campaign 2000" host Maria Pope (8/28/00)
• CBS's P.R. blitz pays off for "Survivor" (8/28/00)
• Classical KXTR's bad case of mono (8/28/00)
• Reader mail: Debates, "American High," Richard (8/25/00)

• Browse the TV Barn archives
• Kansas City TV/radio columns

More news you can use

• Late night line-ups
• Zentertainment
• TV Tattle: What critics are saying
• Variety
• AP Entertainment (through Nando.Net)
• Mediaweek/The Hollywood Reporter
• The Media Channel (mediachannel.org)
• Jim Romenesko's MediaNews
• SkyReport (satellite-TV news)
• New York Daily News
• New York Post
• Robert Feder, Chicago Sun-Times
• Los Angeles Times TV
• News Blues ("... for TV news insiders")
• Television-related news from Moreover.com
• Late-night TV links at About.com

Search TV Barn

this site www.searchbutton.com the web www.goto.com

Join the TV Barn mailing list! TV Barn is a contributor to "The All-Star Newspaper" of Brill's Content. Copyright © 2000 Aaron Barnhart
Redistribution prohibited.

All TV times Eastern
Updated 7-Sep-00 9:24 AM CT Ratings : Broadcast | Cable | Explained
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ANDY IHNATKO AND HIS DVD'S "Topsy-Turvy" Topsy-Turvy (1999)
USA Home Entertainment DVD
Full IMDb listing by Andy Ihnatko (Note: I'm thrilled Andy Ihnatko has returned to TV Barn with his movie reviews, now reformulated as cutting-edge DVD reviews. -- AB) "Topsy-Turvy" is a charming film. A perfectly and wonderfully charming story about Gilbert & Sullivan and the tortuous development of "The Mikado," their greatest work. I just wish it had a whole lot more to offer than consistent charm. As quaint as it always is to watch British people leaping about in funny old clothes -- and as pleased as this deeply inbred G&S fan is to see many of the legends and stories behind "Mikado" played out in full color and Dolby stereo -- the story is often tedious and befuddling. Read Andy's review and full details on the DVD Pick to click The "MTV Video Music Awards" (8 p.m., MTV), airing live from Radio City Music Hall, may be worth seeing simply for documentary purposes. Who knows how many more times we'll get to see sociopathic rapper Eminem outside of the familiar wood-paneled venue of the courtroom? How much longer will he have a choice of wardrobe? For that matter, how many more appearances will Destiny's Child make before some of the bickering divas are replaced again? Also tonight, the eclectic Indian filmmaker Mira Nair is interviewed on "Conversations in World Cinema" (9 p.m., Sundance). Nair has wandered from gritty inner-city documentaries to "Mississippi Masala" to her much-talked-about "Kama Sutra." And Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura and musical put-on specialists Spinal Tap are Dave's guests on "Late Show with David Letterman" (11:35 p.m., CBS). On this date... in 1971, the BBC bans "Sesame Street" from its airwaves because of the show's alleged authoritarian aims. "Right answers are demanded and praised, and a research report refers to the program maker's aim to change children's behavior," observed a Beeb executive. "This sounds like indoctrination and a dangerous use of television." -- Tom Heald Previously at TV Barn:

• ABC, CBS balk on rivals' debates (9/6/00)
• Networks stockpile as writers' strike looms (9/5/00)
• Reader mail: Missing TV soundtracks (9/1/00)
• The women behind David Letterman (8/30/00)
• The SURVIVOR page
• "X-Files" lookahead (8/29/00)
• Pets.com: So broke they can't pay attention (8/29/00)
• "Campaign 2000" host Maria Pope (8/28/00)
• CBS's P.R. blitz pays off for "Survivor" (8/28/00)
• Classical KXTR's bad case of mono (8/28/00)
• Reader mail: Debates, "American High," Richard (8/25/00)

• Browse the TV Barn archives
• Kansas City TV/radio columns

More news you can use

• Late night line-ups
• Zentertainment
• TV Tattle: What critics are saying
• Variety
• AP Entertainment (through Nando.Net)
• Mediaweek/The Hollywood Reporter
• The Media Channel (mediachannel.org)
• Jim Romenesko's MediaNews
• SkyReport (satellite-TV news)
• New York Daily News
• New York Post
• Robert Feder, Chicago Sun-Times
• Los Angeles Times TV
• News Blues ("... for TV news insiders")
• Television-related news from Moreover.com
• Late-night TV links at About.com

Search TV Barn

this site www.searchbutton.com the web www.goto.com

Join the TV Barn mailing list! TV Barn is a contributor to "The All-Star Newspaper" of Brill's Content. Copyright © 2000 Aaron Barnhart
Redistribution prohibited.

All TV times Eastern
Updated 7-Sep-00 11:54 PM CT Ratings : Broadcast | Cable | Explained
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Two ways to look at Emmys An optimist would say this year's list of Emmy Award nominees is one of the best in nearly a decade. A pessimist would reply: Yeah, but "Frasier" will win all the comedy awards like it does every year. An optimist would say: How about that race for best drama? "West Wing" and "The Sopranos"? It's anybody's guess. A pessimist would point out that "The Sopranos" will walk all over "The West Wing" because first-time nominees never do well at the Emmys. On the eve of the 52nd annual Emmy Award presentations (8 p.m. Sunday on ABC), America's TV critics are once again pitting their heads against their hearts, asking themselves which programs and performances from the past season are statuette-worthy -- and which ones, worthy or not, will win anyway. This TV critic is no exception. But today, in a newspaper exclusive, you will hear from both sides, my tender idealist and my grumpy pragmatist, as they debate Emmy's most contentious categories. Let's begin.

Best Actor, Comedy: Optimist is thrilled that Ray Romano finally has gotten his due for a brilliantly understated role in "Everybody Loves Raymond" and hopes the academy won't waste their votes on a sympathy Emmy for Michael J. Fox, who departed "Spin City" in May. Pessimist says Romano is just one cog in a well-oiled comedy machine. Fox will edge out perennial winner John Lithgow of "3rd Rock."

Best Actress, Comedy: Optimist is relieved Helen Hunt finally has retired so someone else has a chance in this category. Jane Kaczmarek should be a shoo-in for her daffy portrayal of an overworked mom on "Malcolm in the Middle." Pessimist reminds the optimist that "Malcolm in the Middle" didn't exist until January. ABC has been promoting Jenna Elfman as TV's "It girl" for three years; that relentlessness finally will pay off with an Emmy for the "Dharma & Greg" star.

Best Actress, Drama: Optimist thinks it's time to spread the love around. After Edie Falco's surprise win last year for "The Sopranos," wouldn't it be great if her co-star, Lorraine Bracco, took home the prize this year? Pessimist knows that Julianna Margulies will win for "ER" because of her tearful scripted departure from the show this spring. (See Michael J. Fox, above.)

Best Actor, Drama: Optimist says this is the year James Gandolfini is rewarded for his pitch-perfect embodiment of mobster life in suburban New Jersey as Tony Soprano in "The Sopranos." Pessimist thinks the optimist is getting smarter.

Best Supporting Actor, Comedy: Optimist is amazed how much talent there is this year. He'd love to see any of the four relatively new faces take home the Emmy: Peter Boyle or Brad Garrett from "Everybody Loves Raymond," Sean Hayes from "Will & Grace," even Peter MacNicol from "Ally McBeal." Just so long as David Hyde Pierce isn't picked for the umpteenth time for "Frasier." Pessimist is looking forward to another pithy, clever, heartfelt acceptance speech from David Hyde Pierce.

Best Supporting Actress, Comedy: Optimist thinks it's sweet that the "Friends" have made a pact never to nominate themselves for lead actor or actress -- only supporting roles. Still, it will be a close call between Lisa Kudrow and the wild and wonderful Megan Mullally of "Will & Grace." Pessimist is certain Kim Cattrall will get the trophy for "Sex and the City" for her honesty and courage in finding the mental toughness each week to strip off her clothes. Best Supporting Actress, Drama: Optimist is head over heels for the leggy Allison Janney on "The West Wing." How could anyone vote against such a strong, funny, warm-hearted woman? Because, the pessimist replies, Tyne Daly of "Judging Amy" is also up for the Emmy, and Tyne Daly never loses. Best Supporting Actor, Drama: Optimist loved Uncle Junior on "The Sopranos." It's got to be Dominic Chianese. Pessimist agrees -- and it doesn't hurt that "The West Wing" and "The Practice" each have two ticket-splitting nominees in this category. Best Variety Show: Optimist says that "Late Show With David Letterman" is having its best creative stretch in years and will win in a cakewalk. Creative, schmeative, says the pessimist. Letterman deserves the Emmy, but he's going to win because the nominated episode is the emotional first show he made after his heart surgery. Best Comedy: With last year's winner "Ally McBeal" not even nominated, this is a wide-open field. And that, says the optimist, is great news for future classic "Everybody Loves Raymond." No, replies the pessimist, all that means is that the impediment has been removed between "Frasier" and its sixth Emmy for best comedy. Best Drama: This one stymied the optimist. "The West Wing" is one of TV's most overrated shows, and I wouldn't shed a tear if it lost to "The Sopranos." On the other hand, calling "The Sopranos" the best that TV has to offer seems, well, not right. What does that say about us ordinary, law-abiding Americans that we would spend 13 weeks rooting for people we'd never want in our neighborhoods? Cheering them on as they whack their enemies and double-cross one another? Hey dummy, says the pessimist. What do you think "Survivor" was all about? Pick to click Through the perspective of a dying Kansas City physician, a new PBS program from Bill Moyers will help viewers look death right in the eye. "On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying" is a remarkable six-hour series that offers one startling insight after another about the way Americans die and the choices we have in preparing for our inevitable demise. The series airs on four consecutive nights beginning at 9 p.m. Sunday on PBS (check local listings). Guiding us through much of Sunday's program is Bill Bartholome, a world-renowned bioethicist and pediatric oncologist who practiced at the University of Kansas Medical Center. In 1994 Bartholome was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Knowing the long odds involved with any treatment, he instead chose a palliative approach that eased the symptoms while the cancer continued to ravage his body. Bartholome spent the next five years, as he puts it, "living in the light of death," until he passed away in August 1999. During this time he married his fiance, traveled, spent time with his 11 siblings, bonded with old friends and posted hundreds of messages on the Internet offering advice and support to other terminal cancer patients and their caregivers. Bartholome also left a video legacy by generously allowing Moyers and crew film the final months of his life. He has unconventional thoughts about dying, but his suffering makes them more persuasive. For instance, Bartholome makes some surprisingly harsh pronouncements about hospitals and his own medical profession. He recounts the time when he was in the hospital, in obvious agony, yet could not find anyone to help ease his pain. "And if you don't take pain in a full professor at your own medical school that seriously, you can imagine how not seriously you take it in everyone else," he tells Moyers. That is a recurring theme of "On Our Own Terms": the inability of medical caregivers to help dying patients and their families with their special needs. As Moyers reports, the vast majority of Americans die in the hospital, alone and in needless discomfort -- the very opposite of what we desire. On Monday, however, we meet a small band of doctors in New York City who have made it their vocation to help patients make decisions about the end of life. PBS also will air "With Eyes Open" each night following "On Our Own Terms." "With Eyes Open" features informal conversations with bioethicists, spiritual leaders, educators and ordinary people who are facing the end of life. The program also is supported by a Web site at www.pbs.org.

• "Lessons of the Angel of Death" by Bill Bartholeme
• Bartholome remembered
• Bartholome's writings to other cancer patients and their caregivers

On this date... in 1971, the BBC bans "Sesame Street" from its airwaves because of the show's alleged authoritarian aims. "Right answers are demanded and praised, and a research report refers to the program maker's aim to change children's behavior," observed a Beeb executive. "This sounds like indoctrination and a dangerous use of television." -- Tom Heald Previously at TV Barn:

• ABC, CBS balk on rivals' debates (9/6/00)
• Networks stockpile as writers' strike looms (9/5/00)
• Reader mail: Missing TV soundtracks (9/1/00)
• The women behind David Letterman (8/30/00)
• The SURVIVOR page
• "X-Files" lookahead (8/29/00)
• Pets.com: So broke they can't pay attention (8/29/00)
• "Campaign 2000" host Maria Pope (8/28/00)
• CBS's P.R. blitz pays off for "Survivor" (8/28/00)
• Classical KXTR's bad case of mono (8/28/00)
• Reader mail: Debates, "American High," Richard (8/25/00)

• Browse the TV Barn archives
• Kansas City TV/radio columns

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• SkyReport (satellite-TV news)
• New York Daily News
• New York Post
• Robert Feder, Chicago Sun-Times
• Los Angeles Times TV
• News Blues ("... for TV news insiders")
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• "Charles Grodin" cancelled [ Read it ]
• Quincy Jones, Tim Reid honored [ Read it ]
• NASCAR divvies up rights among three networks [ Read it ]
• "Drew Carey" live in every time zone [ Read it ]
• Controversial CBS interview posted to Web [ Read it ]
• Huge open for "Pokemon" flick [ Read it ]
• "American Pie" scribe gets NBC deal [ Read it ]
• "Millionaire" not helping other ABC shows [ Read it ]
• FCC sez duopoly disputes to be settled by lot [ Read it ]
• Border dispute over PBS cartoons [ Read it ]

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Don't look for them again till spring.

Mission impossible

• Kansas City TV station reaches half-century mark

On the wires:

• Lifetime to tackle racism Sunday
• Has Dave's ratings slide bottomed out?
• "The West Wing": They call it yuppie love
• ABC vindicated again in Food Lion case
• WCW may shave hour off "Nitro"
• Full season order for "Norm"
• So much for that Irish guy on "Angel"
• Jennings to preview newscasts by e-mail ...
• ... while MSNBC offers the interactive Brokaw
• Brazil's king of shock TV reined in
• "NYPD Blue's" return pushed back to January
• Howard Stern and Alison separating
• Despite health problems, show goes on for these stars
• Lotsa 1st-year dramas reupped
• "NYPD Blue" may be moved
• Time for another Nebraska tribute to Carson
• It happens: S-word uttered on "Chicago Hope"
• DirecTV targeting Latino viewers
• Boys in Balto brewing for federal DTV fight
• NBC molds Pax in its image
• Behind Hindery's departure from AT&T
• About that Alan Alda "ER" turn
• 300-mile stretch of road named for Kuralt
• "Action" selling well overseas
• Lou Dobbs returns ... to NBC
• Biggest new media consumers also imbibe the old
• Leo Hindery bails from AT&T Broadband
• Quayle, Letterman bury hatchet
• CBS, NBC finish week in ratings tie
• Media consolidation homogenizes the nation, says Jesse
• YES! "Mike O'Malley" first to go
• Johnnie Cochran exits Court TV
• Gay-sex furor surrounds "Action"
• Paul Reubens to host TV quiz show
• Web TV adds interactive features
• Spielberg to create NBC show not involving words "Sea" or "Quest"
• Forrest Sawyer joins MSNBC
• TV's other whitewash: Those Caucasian newsrooms
• Duopoly deal in Sacramento
• Fox-owned stations do deal with DirecTV
• DirecTV rolling out Spanish-language package
• NBC bringing back ... "Twenty-One"?? Are they nuts?
• Nancy Marchand battling cancer
• "Today" to repeat on MSNBC
• "Pokemon" counterfeiters: Gotta bust 'em all
• Networks stem tide of viewers to cable ... for now
• FAIR takes ABC to task for Stossel special
• Dramas fared well in early ratings

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C-SPAN's "gift" a bargain

• "Harsh Realm," "Ryan Caulfield" bite dust
• Troubled waters for "Safe Harbor"
• Other shows in trouble, too
• Pat Weaver not included in NBC's first "Walk of Fame"
• Bud Paxson calls for digital must-carry
• Lifetime to tackle racism Sunday

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This has been a bumper crop year for miniseries and specials, thanks to that big odomoter rollover that's coming up on Dec. 31. Yet "American Presidents" has stood out in its own homespun way, and may well be the best of the bunch. Certainly it's the year's cheapest original production, at a cost of $720,000 -- about $7,000 an hour. It would still be a bargain at 50 times the price. While those end-of-the-century specials rehashed the same brand-name stories with the same talking heads and the same archival clips we've seen all our lives, C-SPAN decided to try something completely different. It invited leading presidential scholars and experts to talk about the 41 men without whom this Republic would not have survived, let alone produced, say, Les Moonves. Done live from the homes, libraries and final resting places of its subjects, "American Presidents" has the look and feel of a high school field trip. The genius of the program is in its length -- a generous two and a half hours, plus related vignettes that air during the week -- and the abundant use of unscreened viewer phone calls. On C-SPAN's usual morning fare, "Washington Journal," I find the callers unlistenable, but they've been the highlight of "American Presidents." As the series worked its way through the early presidents, I was especially taken by the number of calls on slavery that poured in. Many of them were wise and well-spoken and helped keep the topic on the front burner, even when the guest historian (typically a booster of that week's president) was angling to talk about something -- anything -- else. Last week's treatment of Harry Truman, which aired from his presidential library in Independence, Mo., opened in fine style, with a shot of the spectacular Thomas Hart Benton mural that graces the library's entryway. Inside, Susan Swain, who was not only the host for the Truman show but C-SPAN's chief operating officer, tossed questions to historian Alonzo Hamby and various staffers at the library, on everything from Truman's campaigns and policies to his love letters and his role as a father (the latter thanks to Margaret Truman Daniel, who phoned in). "American Presidents" has its shortcomings, but its fundamentals are sound: time plus television plus telephone. It's the same distinctive and decidedly non-commercial approach C-SPAN has taken to programming for two decades. Lately C-SPAN has begun calling itself "Cable's Gift to America," a claim that's hard to argue with. Besides funding the $35 million annual tab for the TV networks, C-SPAN's Washington, D.C., radio station and related ventures, the cable industry also sets aside invaluable spectrum for C-SPAN on nearly all systems, C-SPAN2 on about three-fourths of them and even C-SPAN Extra in about a million homes. No one understands just how precious is the gift of bandwidth than Brian Lamb, C-SPAN's founder, chief executive officer, and leading light. In the past 20 years there have been times when all Mr. Lamb seemed to be doing was lobbying operators not to drop his channels from their systems and Congress not to pass "must-carry" rules that he felt left cable operators little choice but to drop. "I tend to be a glass-half-full type, so I think: Who'd ever have thought 75 million homes would be getting C-SPAN 1?" Mr. Lamb told me recently. "This has been a huge success. If you look around the world and ask how many other countries do this, the number is infinitesimal." And yet, in the next breath, Mr. Lamb will admit that maybe the glass is really half empty. "There's not a feeling of exhilaration," said Mr. Lamb. "The country has said, 'Yeah, we're glad you did it,' and some people are excited by it, but the population at large is saying another thing. They're saying, 'Seeing the government is not nearly as important as you may think is, Lamb. Having the ability to see policy develop is simply not as exciting as seeing a lot of other things. We can manufacture better drama that people want to watch than what you're doing.' ... "People have decided personality is the most important thing to come out of television. We don't have any personalities here. People have decided to turn their backs on Washington. They're cynical about what goes on here so they don't even trust television. "And the people who do participate, the callers, are often on the extremes. They're angry because their side hasn't won. Extremes never win. So there's a nasty streak to callers. We didn't have it in the beginning but pretty quickly the anger came to the surface. So where I want to get below the surface, callers just want to be angry. That kind of puts a damper on it." Maybe so, but in "American Presidents" I think Mr. Lamb has found the antidote to mad caller's disease: Every year C-SPAN should come up with a general-purpose historical series that can stir some debate and put all that pent-up viewer energy to good use interpreting our common heritage. May I suggest 100 hours on the history of big government, from Andy Jackson onward. Then 100 hours on the women's rights movement. That ought to get the phone lines lit up. Close this window

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This page last updated 25-Oct-99 11:12 PM

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"Monstermania" on AMC

Halloween-week movie highlights

• Ricky Martin on Letterman Weds.
• Fan boycott brewing over "Blue"?
• Jim Gray defends Rose interview
• NBC wins the week thanks to baseball
• Gerry Ferraro to Fox News
• You did hear about Matthew McConaughey, right?
• Throw "Work With Me" on the trash heap
• BET getting into radio with cable's help
• "Hollywood Squares" jumps on $1 mil bandwagon
• ABC orders more "Snoops"
• First-ever blind player cleans up on "Jeopardy!"
• Personal video recorders: Worth the trouble?
• Three more PBS stations begin DTV 'casts
• Fox developing semi-reality series at high school

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One reader thinks the world would've been a better place without the last 15 years of this (photo: NBC).

Reader mail

• Scramble to finish "Early Show" set
• "Suddenly Susan" pulled for sweeps
• Huge numbers for "Pretty Woman" on TBS
• Two networks finishing Muhammad Ali movies
• Kansas City weatherman battles bone cancer (Barnhart)
• NBC still standing tall on Thursday nights
• Chicago anchor slapped for eye clinic ad

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Reader mail

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He never went away, but now he's back. (CBS) You de man! Somebody -- let's call him a highly-placed source at a rival late-night talk show -- told me about a year ago, "I think the press is rooting for Dave to come back so they can write about it." True or not, that time has come. Who knows if it was because of Ken Tucker's revisionist rave in Salon or the Emmy for best talk show or the recent uptick in ratings, but "Late Show with David Letterman" is enjoying its first moment in the sun since the summer of 1995, when Jay Leno's "Tonight Show" eclipsed Letterman in the ratings and stayed there. Will Letterman now start to attract the kind of publicity Leno could only dream of during his four-year domination of late night? It could happen; a recent poll of the nation's TV critics found there was still a more than 2-to-1 preference for Dave over Jay. But the more likely outcome is that Letterman will regain a few hundred thousand viewers and some of his pride, get a few more solid notices ... and then things will return to normal. Don't get me wrong. I still get a kick out of "Late Show," and lately every time I've tuned in I've dialed up a winner. But -- and I don't think I'm alone on this point -- late night doesn't feed the Muse like it once did. The laughs still feel too tightly programmed. The pacing is indistinguishable from many daytime shows. And no matter how fond critics may be of the Letterman brand of comedy, what's new to say about it? (Not that that's ever stopped TV critics from saying it anyway ...) Summer radio ratings ... for Kansas City are right here. The daily digest ... for the weekend, October 29-31: Clearly I have a personal weakness for Norm Macdonald: everything he says makes me laugh. Even the message he leaves on 1-877-WIN-NORM, a hotline you call to win a date with him, gave me a chuckle. Yes, a date with Norm is a free phone call or Web visit away ... Speaking of free phone calls, the producers of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" has solved one of the pesky problems that bedeviled its otherwise smashing summer run on ABC. They've gotten rid of the 1-900 number that, as you read here in August, gave an unfair advantage to callers in Florida and other states where 900 numbers are banned in games of chance (those callers were given a toll-free number to use instead). From now on, "Millionaire" will be a free-for-all. It returns Nov. 7 ... And in the ever-growing goofs, bloopers and blunders department, Paul Harris of the Big 550 in St. Louis, who obviously stayed up later than I did, corrects an item in Wednesday's Digest: "Jim Gray was ALL OVER the post-game coverage last night. In fact, he was in the Yankees' locker room for the trophy presentations and post-game interviews." ... And a WebTV reader writes, "I really enjoy logging onto your website everyday...but I have one question. Why aren't the ratings for Friday and Saturday posted?" Oops, my bad. I've asked Zippy to do the weekday overnights but have forgotten to hold up my end. Weekend overnights return tomorrow. Previously on TV Barn: 28 October ... 27 October ... 26 October ... 25 October On this date ... in 1988, since the movie did so well at the box office, who wouldn't want to watch "Dirty Dancing" as a half hour weekly TV series? Answer: just about everyone. Patrick Cassidy and Melora Hardin just aren't heating up the screens in the roles of Baby and Johnny. But what acting from Baby's father ... McLean Stevenson. October 30: in 1991, Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer spend the entire episode of tonight's "Seinfeld" looking for their car in a parking garage. Wacky mayhem ensues. October 31: in 1995, in an even more appalling than usual Halloween episode of "Roseanne," Rosie receives a Ouija board message from "the dead" -- the late Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, that is. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Big media just getting bigger and bigger [ Read it ]
• Mariah Carey begs off "Early Show" for "Today" gig [ Read it ]
• Barry Diller wants another cable net [ Read it ]
• Gingrich gets hitched ... to Fox News [ Read it ]
• TNT produces "Atlas Shrugged" flick [ Read it ]
• MTV to do inexpensive sketch comedy [ Read it ]
• Local news watchdogs issue new report [ Read it ]
• ... read the group's results here [ Read it ]

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(Courtesy HBO) The greatest Love him or hate him -- and chances are very good you did either -- Howard Cosell seared himself onto the American pop consciousness in the 1970s and '80s. Now a new documentary, ``Howard Cosell: Telling It Like It Is,'' airing tonight on HBO, critically assesses Cosell's career. It's fair-minded and well put together, and reminds us of what made Cosell, in my book, the greatest sportscaster of all time. Read my rave in Monday's Kansas City Star ... And listen to RealAudio clips of Howard on ABC's website TV Guide's Phil Mushnick hadn't seen the documentary, but that didn't stop him from using the occasion to pen an ad hominem attack against Cosell (who died in 1995). The article, which appears in this week's issue, tells us more about Mushnick than it does Cosell. Mushnick tells about how he Howard were best of buds during his early years at the New York Post, and how Mushnick would write fawning notices about Cosell in his column, words that Mushnick admits now even he didn't believe. Then one day, Mushnick wrote something mildly critical of Cosell and zap, just like that, Howard put Phil on his "Mortal Enemies list." Okay, Phil, so what's your point? It's not like most Americans didn't know Cosell was a blowhard and had an Empire State-sized ego. Today, I guess, only the athletes do, which I guess in Mushnick's mind is better than having Howard Cosell running around, making sportswriters' lives miserable. (Something tells me sportswriters are happiest when they're miserable, but we'll leave that for another day.) Summer radio ratings ... for Kansas City are right here. The daily digest ... for Monday, November 1: It just isn't Fox's year. This L.A. Times story reveals Fox's plans to crash a jet plane on live TV as part of a sweeps special. It went to press just hours before the crash of EgyptAir 990 ... Did you read that nyah-nyah news story last week about the continuing dominance of NBC's must-see lineup on Thursday nights? Then fix your eyes on this: Last Thursday's nationals showed a stunning dive for reruns of NBC's finest against first-run CBS programming. What does this signify? Nothing? Perhaps. But reruns or no, to tie for the lead on a Thursday night in the middle of the TV season -- not in summer, but in the thick of the autumn -- is a real comedown for NBC. Question: Is the Peacock just going to let its tail get whacked every time "Jesse" and "Stark Raving Mad" go into repeats? ... Previously on TV Barn: 29 October ... 28 October ... 27 October ... 26 October ... 25 October On this date ... in 1982, the Playboy Channel launches on cable. No rabbit ears necessary. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• No stopping them Powerpuff Girls [ Read it ]
• Barnhart's picks for the week (all times Central) [ Read it ]
• "Dark Shadows" lives on, 28 years after cancellation [ Read it ]
• CBS news producer threatened with jail over transcript [ Read it ]
• Sumner & Mel go begging on Capitol Hill [ Read it ]
• Is Robert Halmi maxxing out on miniseries? [ Read it ]
• Trouble in the court of King World? [ Read it ]
• Syndicated TV ratings [ Read it ]
• Fox discards subtlety for "Greed" [ Read it ]
• DTV by 2006? Ha! says new report [ Read it ]

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Live webcast: Rage Against the Machine on "Late Show with David Letterman" begins 6 p.m. Tuesday at the "Late Show" website.
Turn and pucker! (Fox) Let them kiss, already By John Zipperer On November 28, the world will end. TV Guide reports that the two heroes of "The X-Files" will finally kiss in the episode to air that evening, bringing to life the premonitions of numerous fans of the show who have long feared that producer Chris Carter and Fox couldn't keep the two of them apart. It was too good to be true, they feared, and they'll feel vindicated in their pessimism. For the rest of us, let's just get it over with and stop pretending an artificial barrier was ever real. (continued) Summer radio ratings ... for Kansas City are right here. The daily digest ... for Tuesday, November 2: Ron Casalotti decided to tune in the "Today" show on Monday morning and see what kind of show was put on by Mariah Carey, who defected from the rival "Early Show" at CBS at the last minute over a NYC permit snafu. "So what do 'Today' and Mariah give us in return?" writes Ron. "Lip-synching of the new single from her CD! Not only were there the telltale signs of slightly out-of-kilter vocalizations, but the "let's not shoot too many close-ups of the talent or her less practiced backup singers" direction was a giveaway. Then to top it off, NBC runs a (bartered) commercial promo immediately following the appearance featuring a 'soundbed' of the very same song! With precisely the same audio level, clarity and timing! Too much! Additional songs were done live, with an obvious change in acoustics and Mariah singing about an octave lower than her 'live' debut." If that's what Carey promised CBS, then Gumbel wound up dodging a bullet. (He interviewed President Clinton instead.) Previously on TV Barn: 1 November ... 29 October ... 28 October ... 27 October ... 26 October ... 25 October On this date ... in 1980, after 11 years Jean Stapleton feels there's little else she can do with her character, and thus one year after "All In The Family" has evolved into "Archie Bunker's Place," Edith Bunker dies of an unexpected stroke in her sleep. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Gumbel interviews Clinton on first day [ Read it ]
• Lousy ratings for NBC [ Read it ]
• ESPN discreet with fatal crash tape [ Read it ]
• Some shows you won't see during sweeps [ Read it ]
• Surprise! More comedies from NBC [ Read it ]
• Who wants to watch a million game shows? [ Read it ]
• ABC learns lesson from "NYPD Blue" snafu [ Read it ]
• NYC station pays "Oprah"-like bucks for "Judge Judy" [ Read it ]
• D.C. reporter boycotted for showing assault victim [ Read it ]
• Letterman shops "Stuckeyville" project to ... NBC?!? [ Read it ]

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Resendiz arriving in Houston in July (AP) How low can you go? A month after suspected "railway killer" Angel Maturino Resendiz surrendered to authorities, he sent a rambling, 11-page letter to Houston TV station. It made the news. Less well known to the public is that on the following day, a reporter at another Houston TV station sent Resendiz a rambling 14-page letter practically begging him to call her and give her an exclusive. Mike James, the intrepid keeper of the NewsBlues website, obtained a copy of the letter and now offers it for your perusal. See how many pages you get through before you retch. Read the letter (opens in new window) Summer radio ratings ... for Kansas City are right here. The daily digest ... for Wednesday, November 3: Etown reports that personal video recorders may fall dramatically in price because of a new microchip that combines the function of two chips used in both the ReplayTV and TiVo recorders. A company called iCompression plans to introduce two versions of the chip (the more expensive has better video compression and Dolby Digital surround sound), which etown says will cut the price of a recorder to under $300 ... That other man show, a/k/a FX's "The X Show," quietly marks its 100th episode 11 p.m. next Tuesday with guest Donna D'Errico joining that "Studs" guy and his even lesser-known buds ... Game Show Network is updating yet another Chuck Barris show, "3's a Crowd," with Alan Thicke as host. This time the show will experiment with all kinds of threesomes; in the show's original run, a guy's wife and his secretary matched wits to see which one knew him more intimately ... Speaking of quality television, PBS turns 30 this week ... UPN sent TV critics a whole sheaf of charts and graphs demonstrating that ratings are up, up, up this season, which is a good thing for UPN since they were down, down, down last season ... The Walt Disney Co. has informed the press that its new 24-hour cable channel, SoapNet, will launch in January with reruns of "All My Children," "General Hospital," "One Life to Live," "Port Charles" and an original program, apparently of the news-talk genre, called "Soap Center" ... Multichannel News reports that the nation's top cable company, AT&T Broadband, signed deals with two different African-American-backed channels in as many days. One of the ventures, NUE-TV, is backed by a group that includes Quincy Jones and plans to launch mid-2000. Significantly the deal is not just for digital-tier carriage; AT&T has also committed to finding good old analog space for NUE-TV, which could be bad news for Black Entertainment Television ... Meanwhile the launch of the new BET.com has been postponed. Previously on TV Barn: 2 November ... 1 November ... 29 October ... 28 October ... 27 October ... 26 October On this date ... in 1956, Bert Lahr and 10-year-old Liza Minnelli introduce the first televised presentation of "The Wizard of Oz" on CBS. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Wally Langham busted on weird hate-crime charge [ Read it ]
• "Millionaire" changes rules to up diversity [ Read it ]
• FBI tried to smear John Chancellor [ Read it ]
• So long, "Cold Feet" [ Read it ]
• Ken Burns casts eye on women [ Read it ]
• Is cable making network TV dirtier? [ Read it ]
• "Early Show's" eh start [ Read it ]
• Springer inks talk-show deal in U.K. [ Read it ]
• Diversity battle rages on ... in France [ Read it ]
• "Judging Amy" ranks No. 13 overall [ Read it ]
• Hasselhoff leaves "Baywatch" [ Read it ]
• The "Friends" want a raise (2d item) [ Read it ]
• Big dishes continue to lose customers [ Read it ]
• "It's like, you know..." stumbling [ Read it ]
• Ex-WWF'er Santana seeks office [ Read it ]

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This little DTV beauty is yours from Best Buy for just $5,299. (To view actual DTV, you need the $1,500 decoder, too.) DTV at 1 Wow! Has it already been a year since the digital television age began in earnest? It seems like just yesterday. Back then, nobody had a digital TV receiver, stations were making all sorts of lame excuses for not being ready for digital -- and now look how things have changed! Seriously, the last 12 months have given rise to more questions about digital TV than answers. The editors of Broadcasting & Cable's sister publication Digital Television asked several prominent authorities to weigh in on the first year of DTV. The most succinct comes from technologist Mark Schubin, whose weekly memos are must reading. Schubin says, "If HDTV is the killer application it has been said to be, then this year we should see sales increase." Read the articles Summer radio ratings ... for Kansas City are right here. The daily digest ... for Thursday, November 4: If you're one of my e-mail list subscribers and are wondering where this week's mailing is, you're not the only one. I mailed it off Monday; after 48 hours and no response, I sent off another copy ... Ironically, in that very issue I praise American University for handling my mailing list without trouble these past five years ... "The Early Show" executive producer Steve Friedman told "Access Hollywood" that the Bryant Gumbel morning show has a hard-to-read logo. Look for a new one next Monday ... Speaking of Gumbels, a reader mailed me the URL for this Letterman spoof page featuring beloved "Simpsons" character Barney Gumble ... But beyond a doubt the nuttiest web page I've gotten in weeks was sent to me by Lizz Winstead, who found this gem on a server in Istanbul ... Lizz and Brian Unger and A. Whitney Brown just wrapped on the pilot of their newsmagazine spoof. Can't wait to see it ... Apropos of nothing televised, they've done the only logical thing and reissued "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison" album to mark its 30th anniversary. (Although I think it was the Folsom concert that aired on BBC-TV.) I listen to the double album of "Folsom Prison" and "San Quentin" every few weeks; now I guess I'll have to get the remastered "Folsom" with the never-before-heard bonus tracks, too. Here's my talented colleague Tim Finn with an assessment of Cash's prison performances. Previously on TV Barn: 3 November ... 2 November ... 1 November ... 29 October ... 28 October ... 27 October ... 26 October On this date ... in 1952, Monroe Calculating's Mike Monroebot and Remington Rand's Univac face off as NBC and CBS both make use of the available computers in their presidential election coverage. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Mike Wallace changing tune on movie portrayal [ Read it ]
• NAACP going ahead with boycott [ Read it ]
• Broadcasters set up fund to help minority owners [ Read it ]
• Now Food TV wants a storefront studio [ Read it ]
• World Series helps NBC ratings [ Read it ]
• Opening bid for KRON-TV: $700 million [ Read it ]

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Make all the calls you want, so long as you make less than three! (Donna Svennevik/ABC) A hit this time? Bank on it After "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" became a summer breakout hit, skeptics wondered if it could hold its own during the regular season. Now, as the second series of "Millionaire" prepares to launch in the intensely competitive November sweep, there should be no doubting the final answer. Thanks to a relatively weak November lineup (leprechauns? rock-n-roll in the 50's? another version of Annie?!?), Regis Philbin and his Electric Light Orchestra game-show set will probably stick out as prominently as they did this summer. And if a contestant gets on a particularly lucky run, as Michael Shutterly did three months ago, watch out. Read on Summer radio ratings ... for Kansas City are right here. The daily digest ... for the weekend of November 5-7: Not to undermine the seriousness of that claim by Danny Glover that New York City cab drivers avoid him, but did you notice the eerie similarity between Glover's claim and the experiment conducted five years ago on Michael Moore's summer series "TV Nation"? Moore had "Homicide's" Yaphet Kotto, who is black, stand out on the curb and try to hail a cab, while one Louie Bruno, a felon with a long rap sheet who happened to be white, stood at another curb doing the same. Naturally, the pedestrian who got the most cabs to pull over was Bruno, who later ran for President with "TV Nation's" blessing. (You can buy your own copy of the segment on the Web for $13.99<; you also get the classic bit where Mike tries to move his show to Mexico to take advantage of cheap labor) ... Not to be one-upped by NBC's "Gravity Games," ESPN has latched onto what it thinks is the next big idea in contrived sporting events: the "Great Outdoor Games," which will feature bass fishermen, lumberjacks, bow hunters and jumping dogs creating "compelling programming for participants in these activities and non-participants alike." Sounds to me like a Saturday afternoon on ABC circa 1975 ... And from the "you read it here first" file: Animal Planet is coming out in late December with "You Lie Like A Dog," which our mole at the tapings describes as "'To Tell the Truth' with pets. Celebrity panelists must determine the real owner of various dogs, goats and chimps. Actually a funny show with big name comics like Kevin Meaney, Dom Irrera and John Camponera. The highlight was when a chimp damn near ripped off Marcia Clark's head at the end of a show. Dumb humor, but I recommend it." Previously on TV Barn: 4 November ... 3 November ... 2 November ... 1 November ... 29 October ... 28 October ... 27 October On this date ... in 1987, the good news is that Dennis Franz gets his own show. The bad news: it's a half sitcom, half drama, half hour for his Hill Street Blues character who's moved out west to become ... "Beverly Hills Buntz." The public turns out to be only half interested. NBC bills the adventures of private dicks Buntz and Sid "the Snitch" Thurston as "Knights in Shining Polyester." ... November 6: in 1967, a Madalyn Murray O'Hair-raising experience marks the debut of "Phil Donahue" on WLWD-TV in Dayton, Ohio. Phil, please come back. We miss you! ... November 7: in 1969, scandal rocks the "Brady Bunch" household as Cindy's favorite doll "Kitty Karry-All Is Missing!" Bobby is under suspicion after having told Cindy he hoped her doll gets lost. Fortunately the case is solved without having to resort to a special prosecutor. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• NAACP backs down from boycott threat [ Read it ]
• Hollywood suits powwow on media violence [ Read it ]
• Flip Wilson memorabilia on sale [ Read it ]
• Shelby Coffey fills the Lou Dobbs chair [ Read it ]
• Sex sells another episode of "Ally" [ Read it ]
• Chris Carter furious with Fox [ Read it ]
• Hindery: TV is the appliance of the future [ Read it ]

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The executive producer of "Millionaire," Michael Davies, has also addressed two nagging problems from the show's first run. The 900 number has been eliminated and replaced with a coast-to-coast, plus Alaska and Hawaii, toll-free call (877-258-5808). States which didn't allow 900 calls for games of chance were the only ones with toll-free access in the past, and players from those states showed up in wildly disproportionate numbers on the show. (Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times estimates 18 percent of the "Millionaire" contestants this summer were from Florida, a toll-free state.) The 900 calls created a nice second revenue stream from ABC this summer, but with "Millionaire" a ratings hit, the network was able to extract far more ad revenue from sponsors this time around, mitigating the loss of the 900 revenue, according to Davies. (As for the added expense of toll-free calls, Davies said sponsor AT&T took care of that.) Each caller will be required to register by birthdate and Social Security numbers, an attempt by the show to restrict everyone to two calls per day. The other problem was demographic. "We had an inordinate number of white men (on the program) and it's something that we white males should not be incredibly proud of, that we should be so competitive in games of trivia," said Davies. Perhaps an advertiser or two raised the point as well that a prime-time television show should be appealing to female viewers. So now, instead of simply the fastest fingers making it to the second round (which like the first round is conducted on the phone), now the second round contestants will be chosen from a pool of all callers who got the three first-round questions right in a certain amount of time. Meanwhile, "Millionaire" need hardly worry about its new rival this sweep, Fox's thrown-together "Greed," which boasts a potential jackpot twice the size of the Philbin show. "In every way," says TV Barn's Tom Heald, who actually watched the first installment on Thursday, "'Greed' is a substandard ripoff of 'Millionaire': worse set and lighting, lame music, idiotic questions and zero likeliehood of a substantial payoff. There was a $200,000 question about Lucky Charms." Close this window to return to TV Barn home

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... but you won't Last year at this time, veteran radio producer Joe Garner released a terrific coffee-table book-slash-CD compilation of some of the most memorable newscasts in history, entitled We Interrupt This Broadcast. For this year's gift-giving season Garner has come out with a sporting companion called And the Crowd Goes Wild. Unfortunately, as is so often true in the entertainment business, the sequel isn't any match for the original. Garner selected 48 of what are billed as "The Most Celebrated Sporting Events Ever Broadcast," then hired NBC sportscaster Bob Costas to narrate them. Whatever you think of Bobby C's on-air moralizing, he really does know how to lend an official air to most any event. Unfortunately, too often on this compilation he's asked to take the place of the sportscaster who was actually there covering the event. Whereas We Interrupt This Broadcast included numerous broadcasts of obvious archival value -- Herb Morrison's call of the Hindenburg crash, FDR's announcement of the Pearl Harbor bombing -- And the Crowd Goes Wild has few. No one doubts Wilma Rudolph's performance at the 1960 Olympics was anything short of historic, but who remembers the way it was called? That's because, as becomes apparent listening to the CD, the call usually paled before the event. We do hear some familiar voices throughout And the Crowd Goes Wild, including that of Marv Albert (whose call of the deciding game of the 1970 NBA Finals inspired the book's title). Dick Enberg, Costas and Al Michaels ("Do you believe in miracles?") are here, too. But in an unforgiveable lapse, the compilation leaves out Howard Cosell entirely. Much as I enjoy soccer, I would've gladly traded the two World Cup tracks that are tacked on to the end of the second CD to hear Cosell calling the Ali-Liston fight and to hear him yell one more time, "Down goes Frazier!" Related story: Earlier this year, I paid a visit to the CBS News Archives, the richest trove of broadcast news history anywhere, and wrote this feature for the Kansas City Star. The daily digest ... for Monday, November 8: Ken Burns is out with another PBS documentary, and this time the subject couldn't be more deserving, because so often overlooked. "Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony," a two-parter that began Sunday night and continues Monday night on PBS (check local listings for times), will acquaint you with the two women who, more than any other, tenaciously pressed for the suffrage of their sex in the 19th century. It's a worthy effort but not without its shortcomings. One of the most egregious, at least to those of us who live in the Midwest, is how Burns consistently overlooks those women west of the Hudson River who also contributed to the women's cause in those early days. My wife, Diane Eickhoff, looks at one such pioneer woman in this article from Saturday's Kansas City Star ... When ABC decided to turn off the 900 number for "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" wannabes, the network was giving up a lucrative second revenue stream. Boo hoo, you say. But wait, what have we here but a whole new line of "Millionaire"-related merchandise at the ABC.com website. For $16.95 you can get a decal-riddled T shirt that, as Tom Heald notes, "is guaranteed to make any guy look like an even bigger idiot in a bar" ... By the way, Reege, stop predicting after every contestant's departure that there are "plenty of you out there" who were "screaming" the correct answers at the screen. I would've been bounced from last night's broadcast for at least two of my answers (Cheyenne and Stockholm, if you're wondering) ... And while we're still checking on this, I believe that was five-year Late Show News/TV Barn reader-letterwriter John Christensen of Madison, Wisc., who was in the hot seat when Sunday's "Millionaire" ended. Christensen has already blown one lifeline on which is the tallest tree (redwood), but he didn't need any help deciding which show had the "Fly Girls" ("In Living Color"). That's my boy! ... And while on the subject, reader-letterwriter Michael Jones has something he'd like to say: "I think Jesse (the Mind) Ventura's recent comment regarding organized religion being a haven for 'weak minds' has some validity. My guess is that organized wrestling produces stronger minds than churches. With that in mind, I suggest UPN directly challenge ABC's 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' with a WWF Smart-Off competition. The first show might go something like this:
Vince McMahon: First question for $100. 'Which of the following is the capital of Texas? a) Waco, b) Bushville, c) Dallas, d) Austin.'
Stone Cold Steve Austin: Could I have a hint, please?
Vince: Yes. It is part of your name.
Someone in the audience: IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER!!
Stone Cold: Could I have a lifeline, please? I would like to call Hulk.
Vince: OK. We have Hulk on the phone.
Stone Cold: Hulk, what is the capital of Texas.
Hulk Hogan: Sounds like a trick question. I know the capital of California is Hollywood, but I don't know much about Texas.
Vince: We'll back in a minute after this commercial break--if I don't hang myself from the rafters first." Previously on TV Barn: 5 November ... 4 November ... 3 November ... 2 November ... 1 November ... 29 October ... 28 October On this date ... in 1962, after Lucille Ball shells out more than $2 million to buy out ex-husband Desi Arnaz's stake in Desilu Studios, she takes the helm as studio president, becoming TV's highest-ranking woman executive. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• We spend 3-plus hours a day in the bedroom ... watching TV [ Read it ]
• Another boneheaded milk ad [ Read it ]
• "I Have a Dream" lawsuit against CBS reinstated [ Read it ]
• Fox turns its lonely eyes to "X-Files" [ Read it ]
• Report: KRON spurned NBC's $700 million [ Read it ]
• Daytime ratings sag [ Read it ]
• Jasper judge jails CBS producer [ Read it ]
• How sweeps it is [ Read it ]

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Off to an
'X'-ellent start By John Zipperer After an early-November debut for its standard-bearer series, "The X-Files," the Fox network might be a little eager to get on with the season. Fall season has not brought good ratings to the network so far, but "X-Files" premiered its seventh season Sunday night to respectable ratings (beating CBS and, one would hope, WB in its time period). More importantly, the "Sixth Extinction" episode was a strong outing for the writers and actors, giving us all reason to look forward to its final season. And with a planned appearance from "Millennium's" Frank Black (Lance Henriksen), a realization of long-simmering romance, and a final tying-up of the show's mythology storyline, Rupert Murdoch's network can anticipate continuing good numbers from the program. (continued) The daily digest ... for Tuesday, November 9: "Action," R.I.P.: A source told TV Barn Monday that "Action," the hilarious but, sadly, not-ready-for-prime-time comedy with the bleeped profanity, is closing shop. Final episodes will be finished by Thanksgiving, put on the shelf and, save a bailout from HBO, never heard from again ... For those of you keeping count, that's one cancellation, one pickup ("Popular"), and one hiatus ("Mission Hill") among the three shows I profiled in my fall preview package ... The promo that aired Sunday night on ABC featuring Super Dave Osborne for the Wednesday live broadcast of "The Drew Carey Show" was the funniest I've seen in years. It was a classic "Super Dave" red-herring gag, and I still get the giggles thinking about it ... John Christensen, one of my longtime readers, was indeed the fellow who walked away from "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" Monday night $16,000 richer. I've asked him to pen a first-person account of his whirlwind journey, so look for that in the coming days, but in the meantime John shared with me this tidbit he knew I'd appreciate: The show's producers had to throw out a "fastest finger" question because nobody, including him, got it right: "Put these four late-night talk show hosts in the order in which their shows were cancelled: Pat Sajak, Chevy Chase, Joan Rivers, Arsenio Hall." Says John, "I flipped Joan and Pat. I yelled out to Regis, `If they'd put the Joey Bishop show in there I would've gotten it right,' but he didn't hear me." Probably just as well ... For having to use a lifeline on his tall-trees question, John also earned an on-air razzing from David Letterman Monday night ... Speaking of which, yours truly was heard holding forth on Letterman's tweaking of his corporate bosses on this weekend's edition of NPR's "On the Media." The broadcast is on a RealPlayer archive at this link; it's on Clip 3 at around the 14-minute mark ... And congratulations to Mike Bullard, Canada's greatest living late-night host, for picking up a Gemini, his country's top creative honor, for best talk/information show. Mike's got a new comedy CD out, too; you can buy the cassette or compact disc online from Chapters-dot-CA. Previously on TV Barn: 8 November ... 5 November ... 4 November ... 3 November ... 2 November ... 1 November ... 29 October On this date ... in 1982, Laverne and Shirley battle for a single opening as a bunny at the Playboy club along with one other contestant, Carrie Fisher. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Million-dollar ratings for "Millionaire" [ Read it ]
• Conan's road show [ Read it ]
• "60 Minutes II" making last minute edits to Gates interview [ Read it ]
• New Year's Eve: Letterman, Quincy Jones, Peter Jennings and, uh, something on NBC [ Read it ]
• Commerce Dept. head opposes satellite bill [ Read it ]
• "Greed" good for goose, gander [ Read it ]
• She's 13, has show on Nick [ Read it ]
• CBS headquarters to survive "Aftershock" [ Read it ]
• Pro wrestling's MVPs: the storyline writers [ Read it ]
• Discovery Health picked up by DirecTV; Disc. People dropped [ Read it ]
• "ET," in 19th season, on a ratings tear [ Read it ]

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Public radio still out of range for some One of the consolations of a taking long road trip by car is being able to listen to the passing parade of radio stations. In my native state of Montana, where people will drive 300 miles at the drop of a hat, I remember the thrill of hearing on certain overcast nights such far-flung signals as WLS in Chicago, KOA in Denver and even the occasional "C" from up north. But one thing I thought I could always count on wherever I went was a continuous broadcast of public radio.
(continued) The daily digest ... for Wednesday, November 10: Last week, in a conference call with reporters, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" executive producer Michael Davies bemoaned the fact that seemingly nine out of ten contestants on the show's summer run was a white male. A couple of rule changes, he thought, might fix that. Well, they haven't, but "Millionaire" is still turning out to be TV's most diverse show -- thanks to the significant others the contestants bring with them to the tapings. Monday night, it was a mild-mannered white attorney and his black girlfriend; and last night the show got its first gay couple ... On the heels of winning the TV Barn prize for best promo of sweep, ABC also wins tackiest promo of sweep, for that revolting tout for Wednesday's "20/20." Ostensibly it is to plug a story about the death of former "Suddenly Susan" actor David Strickland -- but plainly it's just a cheap excuse to get Brooke Shields in front of the American public during the sweep. (NBC yanked the low-rated "Suddenly" for November.) Telltale sign: The voice-over announcer never mentions Strickland by name, but does say Brooke Shields. You may recall reading here last spring that Shields was the only one who wanted to do a tribute show to Strickland after his suicide. Presumably it made everyone else at the show feel tawdry ... like this "20/20" promo does now. Previously on TV Barn: 9 November ... 8 November ... 5 November ... 4 November ... 3 November ... 2 November ... 1 November On this date ... in 1969, "Sesame Street" makes its debut on 170 Public Broadcasting Stations and 20 commercial outlets, forcing children to use their imaginations and seducing them into acceptance of the alternative lifestyle practiced by life partners Bert & Ernie. That's right, they just life to be felt. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Satellite TV act passes House [ Read it ]
• Zenith to rise from bankruptcy nadir [ Read it ]
• Jeepers! "Annie" is November's first smash hit [ Read it ]
• Whose "Drew Carey Show" is it, anyway? [ Read it ]
• Soap dumps hothead after ATM scuffle [ Read it ]
• Diminished "Wizard of Oz" moves to cable [ Read it ]
• Who was the original Bozo? [ Read it ]

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>>> Aaron Barnhart's TVBARN.COM Don't get me wrong; I love surfing the commercial airwaves, and not just to pick up the big boys. In western Kansas, I listened to a leather-lunged announcer on a tiny rural station read off three or four dozen local sponsorships while Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll Part Two" looped endlessly in the background. ("Say `yessir' to Stresser Tire! ... The Rembrandt of the auto-painting business ... Thank you Mark, thank you Jerry, thank you everyone at Oakley IGA!") But when you're spending hours at a time staring at landscape, or taking an extended stay in a small town, public radio is a friend indeed. It's high-quality, warm, personable, and usually your only source on the dial for non-country music. And yet, during a recent drive my wife and I took to the West Coast, I was amazed at how many towns we encountered where all the local radio signals were commercial. To the left of 92.1 FM we'd find nothing, or the occasional Christian station. That was true not only in remote areas but decent-sized towns like Goodland, Kan., Winnemucca, Nev., and Evanston, Wyo. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has been trying to achieve universal access since the founding of public radio since 30 years ago. But chronic underfunding and public indifference have made that goal elusive. Many top 100 radio markets didn't have public radio until the 1980s. Even today, says a CPB report, "Listener Access 2000," more than 25 million Americans are still unserved by public radio. (Public television, by contrast, has been nearly ubiquitous for years.) There's also a disparity between urban listeners and less well-served rural listeners. One exception, as we discovered on our road trip, is Wyoming Public Radio. Thanks to a series of transmitters and translators, the signal of the Laramie, Wyo., NPR affiliate followed us along Interstate 80 almost the entire length of the state. Alas, it fizzled out before we reached Evanston near the Wyoming-Utah border. But the station's general manager, Jon Schwartz, assured me in a phone interview that Evanston will soon join the network. When Mr. Schwartz arrived in Laramie seven years ago from Boston's WBUR-FM, he and his staff faced a Promethean task. Fewer than half a million people live in Wyoming, most of them in towns smaller than 10,000. These markets are separated by hundreds of miles and the rugged topography of the Mountain West. And yet today Wyoming is well on the way to universal access. Eight relays are up and another eight are coming, thanks to funds from CPB and Wyoming's Republican-dominated legislature. Getting conservatives to pay for NPR was not as hard as you might think. Mr. Schwartz said that after his staff raised the money for the first two relays, "the legislators started getting grassroots requests from the constituents who would drive and hear it -- but not where they lived." All of this may have you asking, "So what?" You live in an urban area and, so far as you can tell, your life has not been enriched by "Car Talk" or "All Things Considered." Garrison Keillor hasn't made you so much as smile in years. And when you travel, you fly. Mr. Schwartz takes the opposite view: What has commercial radio done for you lately? Industry consolidation has enriched certain media corporations but it's left disaffected listeners in its wake. Now imagine public radio, not just on a single channel, but on several channels, and not serving the jazz-and-classical crowd over and over but, as Mr. Schwartz puts it, "the 90 percent of the country that doesn't listen to public radio." That would mean former commercial radio listeners, ideally a younger and more diverse audience than the NPR set. It could start to happen late next year. That's when two satellite radio carriers, CD Radio and XM, plan to begin offering their 200-channel direct-to-listener services to consumers. NPR and Public Radio International have cast their lot with CD Radio, but their program plans are sketchy. To me the key issue is not technology but vision, as the Wyoming example shows. While Americans are not very passionate for public radio, the citizens of the Equality State saw what it could do for them and started demanding it. Mr. Schwartz, who definitely has that vision thing, believes urban listeners can become public-radio converts as well if they begin to see the "fundamental values" of public radio: fairness, diversity of opinion, localism, creativity, and above all the idea that content is more than just a delivery vehicle for advertisers. "If you believe that these are inherent values of public broadcasting, then surely some other people would benefit from it," said Mr. Schwartz. "These things are Mom and apple pie. They're not some weird federal policy we call public radio."

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Old New York on display all next week. (Photo: Culver Pictures, Inc.) Picks to click There are moments during "New York: A Documentary Film," the 12-hour PBS project from Ric Burns, Lisa Ades and James Sanders, when it seems the line separating solemnity and absurdity is about to disappear. Maybe it's the tone of David Ogden Stiers' voice as he narrates this 375-year survey of New York City history. Stiers, who sounds like he's trying to sound important, effects a clipped, pretentious sing-song not unlike how Major Charles Emerson Winchester might have read a script on "M*A*S*H." ... Read all my weekend picks "Greed" plays hide-the-money. If you caught the final half hour of "Greed," Fox's answer to "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," Thursday night, you may have been surprised at how many questions were asked during that 30-minute period: one. ... Read Tom Heald's report The daily digest ... for the weekend of November 12-14: ABC News report John Stossel is still continuing to hear it from left-wing watchdog FAIR over his by-jingo "news" report, "Is America Number One?" that aired last month. FAIR took Stossel to take with this missive, Stossel fired back in a letter, prompting this reply. Advantage FAIR ... It's not quite "Def Comedy Jam," but it's almost certainly the raciest C-SPAN gets all year: Once again, cable's gift to America will air the annual "Funniest Celebrity in Washington" competition, taped last week at the DC Improv. The broadcast, which airs 8 p.m. Saturday, opens with Time's Matt Cooper, who last year (as Newsweek's Matt Cooper) absolutely killed with a dead-on parody of Bill Clinton. Also on the docket is National Journal's Howard Mortman and former Clinton adviser Paul Begala, now Ollie North's foil on MSNBC ... Our pal Tammy Haddad, formerly executive producer of Tom Snyder's late-night show, hosts a talk show with "people without whom there would be no television" -- other producers. "The First Producers' Club" airs on cable's America's Voice (no, I don't get it either) Friday night at 1:00 a.m., reairing Saturday and Sunday at 10:00 p.m ... CNN Headline News will air its own Y2K series, "Will the Bug Bite?", all next week in a series of two-minute reports Previously on TV Barn: 10 November ... 9 November ... 8 November ... 5 November ... 4 November ... 3 November ... 2 November On this date ... in 1980, Hazzard County's deputy sheriff "Enos" Strate bumbles his way into a new job and his own spinoff series. His assignment will end with the cancellation of the series after one season. Saturday, November 13: in 1976, on "The Carol Burnett Show," Harvey Korman's "Rat Butler" is awestruck when he sees "Starlet O'Hara" come down the stairs wearing a dress made from the Terra's plantation's curtains -- with the curtain rods left in. "That gown is gorgeous," gasps Rat. "Thank you," says Starlet. "I saw it in a window, and I just couldn't resist it." Sunday, November 14: in 1991, Rick Dees' bomb of a talk show goes softly "Into The Night." Dees actually abandoned the show in October, but the show (renamed "Studio 59") limped along for a few more weeks with a variety of guest hosts, including Richard Belzer, Suzanne Somers, Brad Garrett and, finally, Chris Lemmon. "Studio 59" regular Ian Shoales remain a part of ABC's overnight programming, taking his supersonic spiels to ABC's "World News Now" when that program begins in January 1992. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
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• NFL pulls booze-n-broads commercial [ Read it ]
• Former creepy Grodin guest gets talk show [ Read it ]
• "Nightline" bails from N.H. presidential debate [ Read it ]
• Chris-Craft stations may be for sale [ Read it ]

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>>> Aaron Barnhart's TVBARN.COM Then there are those adjectives. "Astonishing" comes up a lot during "New York," with "startling" not far behind. New Yorkers always seem to be doing something startling in an astonishing amount of time, or vice versa, with "dramatic" results "that would change New York forever," as if New Yorkers had a patent on irrevocable change. But ultimately "New York," airing on five consecutive nights at 9 p.m. on PBS beginning Sunday (check local listings), justifies its creators' sense of grandeur. And if the narrative is overblown at times, it never strays from the film's mission, which is to sketch, then outline, then paint in vibrant colors the modern New York we all recognize: a massive, wealth-making hive teeming with people from all nations, portal to the world and showcase of America's strengths and shortcomings. As the film makes clear from the outset, New York City was always set apart. Its location uniquely positioned it for colossal growth. When expansion stalled, some epochal figure always seemed to arrive on the scene to get it going again: Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor who brought order into the chaos that was New Amsterdam; DeWitt Clinton, builder of the Erie Canal and inarguably the greatest of New York's planners; Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Central Park. And as the turnstile for generations of immigrants, New York redefined America as it continually reinvigorated itself. Ironically, it is a disaster that provides "New York's" finest moment, a dirgelike telling of the events leading up to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911, which killed 146 garment workers. The segment will air Wednesday, along with an elegy to Emma Lazarus that includes a heart-wrenching rendition of her unforgettable poem now posted at the Statue of Liberty. Among the talking heads featured in "New York" are PBS mainstay David McCullough, architect Robert A.M. Stern, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and author John Steele Gordon. The sixth and concluding part of the series will air in 2000. Over on CBS, New York will not be venerated Sunday night so much as obliterated. I'm referring, of course, to "Aftershock: Earthquake in New York," which also begins at 9 p.m. Sunday and concludes at 9 p.m. Wednesday on CBS. An all-star cast watches helplessly as Manhattan buckles and heaves, raining skyscraper parts down on them. As luck would have it, one of the structures strong enough to withstand the quake is "Black Rock," the dark-hued tower that is the corporate headquarters of CBS. Robert Schimmel might be the most foul-mouthed comedian working today. Even when telling a few cleaned-up jokes to Conan O'Brien's audience at 12:30 a.m., you sense his jokes are just squeaking by the censor. Ironically, it's Schimmel's gift for the well-chosen non-four-letter word and his understated delivery that makes him so effective. He talks about having sex the way Jerry Seinfeld might discuss a shopping trip gone awry. "Robert Schimmel: Unprotected," which will have its debut at 10 p.m. Saturday on HBO, is a version of a live performance Schimmel gave in Kalamazoo, Mich. Don't tell the kids, but it's a scream. "King of the Hill," desperately seeking those viewers it had during its first year on the air, rolls out a star-studded episode 7:30 p.m. Sunday on Fox. Meryl Streep and Dixie Chicks supply voices to the football-themed episode, as does whatever-happened-to "Dandy" Don Meredith.

"Greed" stretches dollars and the facts

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John Christensen and friend. (ABC) Just $984,000 short of a million By John Christensen (Editor's note: Longtime TV Barn reader John Christensen of Madison, Wisc., thrilled us all by becoming a finalist last week on ABC's second run of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." He took home $16,000 and a few behind-the-scenes stories that anyone remotely curious about this fall's ratings sensation will want to read. Here's his account of that whirlwind journey from the land of milk and cheese to the city of money and fame:) In just seven days, I went from juggling graduate classes, a job and a new house to being on ABC following "Annie" and getting my picture in People. It started when I called the 877 number on Wednesday, Nov. 3, and answered three questions I can't remember now but was sure at the time I had answered correctly. I then chose a taping date in case I qualified, and waited for a call back. The next day, a woman phoned and told me to dial a different number between 4 and 5 that day, when I would answer five questions. The 12 fastest people in this second round would get callbacks telling them to come to New York on Friday. After playing in the second round, I went home and did some reading. They told me that the qualifiers would be called back sometime between 5 and 9 p.m. I got five telemarketing calls that night, each one beginning with a peppy-sounding voice saying, "Hello! Could I speak with John Christensen, please?" (continued) Picks to click. "Millionaire," "Shasta McNasty," "New York: A Documentary Film," and other wonders of the smaller screen that are coming your way this week. Note: These picks appear daily in the Kansas City Star; check local listings for the time and channel in your area. Read my picks The daily digest ... for Monday, November 15: I've added a new weekly radio gig, talking TV and taking your calls on Chip Franklin's midday chatfest on powerhouse WBAL Radio 11 in Baltimore. I'm on from 9:10 to 9:30 a.m. every Monday ... Charles Grodin, having failed in a nightly venture on CNBC, and then a weekend chatfest on MSNBC, will now develop a series of specials on crime and justice issues for Court TV. The first special will focus on four women serving draconian sentences for minor drug offenses at a prison in New York; Grodin has been calling for sentence reduction for the foursome for two years ... Another great ratings week for David Letterman, sez his employer: up 15 percent in households and 16 percent in viewers from the same week last year, up a tick among adults 18-49 and up two ticks in adults 25-54. Meanwhile, CBS says, "The Tonight Show" was down in households, viewers and key adult demographics. Leno still leads Letterman in household ratings by a comfortable 4.4 to 3.1 margin, with "Nightline" (3.7) in between ... From our off-the-air department, I see Microsoft has introduced a new keyboard ideally suited to the Windows 2000 user -- click here to view it ... Discovery Health Network, which has been mostly a rumor since its launch earlier this year, is kicking into second gear with original productions, starting with "Lance Armstrong: Competing with Cancer" Nov. 21 and "The Gift of a Smile," being billed as "the first ever live broadcast of a facial-reconstruction surgery," Dec. 7. America's Health Network (now taken over by Fox and renamed simply The Health Network) has done a few of these live-on-air surgeries in the past, the most notorious featuring a woman later exposed by the National Enquirer as a check forger. See my piece in the Kansas City Star last year. Previously on TV Barn: 12 November ... 10 November ... 9 November ... 8 November ... 5 November ... 4 November ... 3 November On this date ... in 1988, Oprah Winfrey shows off her new size 10 figure, the result of "Optifast" -- a 4-month medically supervised liquid diet. She then carts out a little red wagon carrying a huge slab of animal fat wrapped in plastic. "This is what 67 pounds of fat looks like. Is this gross or what? It's amazing to me that I can't lift it, but I used to carry it around with me every day." By 1990, Winfrey says she's regained more weight than she lost, is "all the back up to size 14/16... and will never diet again." -- Tom Heald On the wires:
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>>> Aaron Barnhart's TVBARN.COM At about 10 minutes to 9 the call finally came, from a woman identifying herself as Renee from "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." Trying to stay calm, I reconfirmed all the personal information I had confirmed to the first woman that afternoon. After about 10 minutes, Renee said, "Congratulations! You've qualified to be a contestant." Then the travel arrangements were made. My wife immediately got on the cell phone and started calling friends and family. We had about 12 hours before we left. She also called my hair "consultant," Joe, and got my noon appointment for the next day moved up to 8 a.m. We had to get our five "phone-a-friends" lined up, pick two outfits to wear, and clear our schedules for Friday. We could hardly sleep. Throughout the morning, people who found out about our journey were routinely thrilled. We stopped traffic at the pharmacy while getting a prescription refilled. The operator at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, where my father was staying, yelled excitedly in my ear as she took my message. The people at the airport all told me they loved that show and would be sure to watch. It was exhilarating. Once we landed at La Guardia Airport Friday afternoon, a man with my name on a sign awaited me at the baggage claim (another first for me). Our hotel was right by Lincoln Center. The room was small but serviceable. On arriving, we called the "Millionaire" staffers who were stationed at the hotel, and went upstairs to sign paperwork. They gave us $150 spending money for the day. The women were very warm and dependable-looking. Another contestant, Mary Carol (a female contestant!), was there, too. She seemed nice, but we didn't really talk -- we were all a little shell-shocked. After calling all of our friends again to pass on the latest updates, we decided to have some fun and went out that night to see the new Sondheim revue at the Barrymore Theatre with Carol Burnett (Kathie Lee fills in occasionally). At 11 a.m. on Saturday, we were herded into cars for the 6-block ride to the studio. The show's hotel suite was full of people, all of them looking a little tired. But the mood was friendly; I heard chatter about the questions all of us had to answer on the phone to get there. The show's staff warned us that once we arrived at the studio we would be in "contestant isolation," meaning that our every move would be controlled for the rest of the day. We would be searched and we could not bring any reading material or communication devices. On arriving at ABC studios we were led upstairs into a surprisingly dingy dressing room to hang up our show clothes (contestants are allowed to change, but our "companions" have to wear their show clothes all day). I found out later it used to be Joan Lunden's dressing room. After that we were led to the ABC commissary, seated on some couches and served beverages and muffins, as we began the first of our many waiting periods. About half an hour later a team of nearly identical-looking 20-something women -- size 2's, with intensely styled hair -- descended on us. One of them, Renee, the woman who'd told me I was coming to New York, walked right up to us and began handing me more things to sign. It looked like each of these "coordinators" had two contestants to deal with. She asked Sara and me a bunch of questions about ourselves, explaining that the best stuff I said would go on the little card that Regis picked up if I got in the chair. Remembering what David Letterman always says about the need to have three amusing stories to tell, we told her our three best. She laughed politely, and wrote them down. Then we watched a tape of the show from this summer where that fiddler Doug Van Gundy won $250,000. I liked him when I first saw it, and I still liked him this time. I couldn't be happier that he got all that money. Michael Davies, the executive producer, entered. He gave us a briefing and passed on some strategies. First, as should be obvious to any fan of "Millionaire," that "50/50" lifeline does not use random draw to eliminate two wrong answers. Davies explained that for each question, he and the writers decide which is the "second-most-likely" answer, and mark the other two for removal should the "50/50" be used. Davies also told us that the audience is hardly ever wrong on the poll-the-audience lifeline, but the times they have been wrong have all been on higher-level questions. The audience is best polled on matters of pop culture. Davies also told us that we could have literally as much time as we needed to answer questions, because he would edit our response times down afterward. He encouraged us to talk through our thinking, if we could, so that everyone would understand how we figured out the answers. He told us that if we did something embarrassing, he would edit it out (unless it was too good to omit). He asked us not to clap, if at all possible, because then Regis starts to clap, and the sound becomes a nightmare. Davies then took questions from the contestants for about half an hour. We then were led downstairs to the studio to meet Regis. Every contestant was assigned a seat for the taping. We also got to sit in the hot seat and answer two mock questions, lifelines included. I was asked what year Prince Charles was born (1947, 1948, 1949, 1950). I phoned a "friend," actually a producer in a booth somewhere, and she gave me the right answer ('48). All the questions were difficult, which I think was designed to make us more relaxed during the actual taping. Regis was very accommodating. He seemed to appreciate how nervous we were and how odd this all must be. Then we practiced what was by far the most stressful part of the game, the "fastest finger" questions. In the hot seat the screen looks exactly like it does on TV, with the "money tree" on the right, the question and the four choices along the bottom. But in "fastest finger," the liquid crystal display of the contestant's keypad is much harder to read. There is a lot of glare from the lights flashing all around you, and the answers are placed so far apart that you can't read them all at once without moving your eyes. The buttons are also surprisingly clunky, requiring a careful press. Each one must be released before the others can be used. There is also an Enter key that you must hit before your answers are recorded (I forgot to hit it once during the practice round, and one guy told me he forgot during the show). The timing is also a little different than on TV. For broadcast, Regis reads the question and the four choices, at which point they show the contestants punching away. As a viewer I'd assumed that, like "Jeopardy!", our answers had to be timed to the end of the reading of the question. In fact, the producers told us to pretty much ignore Regis. The question appears on the screen, and Regis reads it twice, each time a little differently. Then the three stinger tones sound and the answers appear on our screen and the prompter Regis uses at the same time. We have to be answering while Regis is reading. There is a total of about 20 seconds to answer. In the practice round, we answered five questions. I didn't win on any of them, but three guys who did would later wind up in the hot seat during the broadcast. (Actually, I think John Cuthbertson, the former "Jeopardy!" champion, got two.) If this practice round was also designed to put me at ease, it failed. Each of us posed for a Polaroid with Regis, then we headed back upstairs to have "dinner" at 3:30 p.m. At about 4:30 the contestants bid goodbye to their companions, and returned to Joan Lunden's former dressing room. They put makeup on us, and gave our hair little touch-ups (although thanks to my consultant Joe, mine was perfect). People magazine took some photos, and then we went downstairs to the studio again by 10 minutes to 6. A few words about the studio itself. Like all TV sets, it is surprisingly small. The bleachers only hold about 200 people, and the "hot seat" setup is only in place when it's actually in use. They take it out for each "fastest finger" question, and then take a break so the IATSE guys can re-seat it. The set is quite cool (not as cool as the Letterman set, though), but any parts that aren't shown on camera are, well, cheap-looking. The hot seat itself is surprisingly unstable -- during rehearsal, most of the contestants nearly tipped it over. After the audience was seated, Davies returned to explain to them the show's format and ground rules. Each of us was introduced to applause and was seated. I sat between Mark Megherian and the only woman on our taping, the very nice Mary Carol Hall from Ohio. The warm-up comic, whose act consisted mostly of getting the audience to tell jokes of their own, was awful, but that cheered me up somehow. Regis was introduced and came out to do some friendly banter with the crowd, not unlike what you see on "Live" each day. He really is almost the exact same guy on or off camera. Remarkable. Then the taping started. Regis walked out again, this time with a contestant named Neil, who was going to be on last summer but couldn't because he was running for office in New Jersey. Neil joined the other nine contestants and then it was time for the first official "fastest finger" of the November series of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." The question was about convenience foods like Spam and Rice-R-Roni, and I realized quickly that I had to guess. I was wrong, but Mark was right, and suddenly the chair next to me was empty. While the hot seat was being brought in by the union guys, the comedian tried to banter with me because he caught me rubbing near my nose. He cautioned me not to "pick" on TV, and I thanked him for making me less self-conscious. Mark and Regis went up the money tree while the rest of us watched, silently hoping he did well -- and would get done quickly so we'd all have another shot at sitting where he was. He missed a question about which state capital was at the highest elevation (Denver wrong, Santa Fe right). Then something unusual happened: They asked a "fastest finger" question that nobody got right. "Put these four late-night talk show hosts in the order in which their shows were cancelled, from the earliest to the most recent: A, Chevy Chase; B, Arsenio Hall; C, Pat Sajak; D, Joan Rivers." The answer, of course, was D-C-A-B, but I flipped Pat and Joan, only realizing my mistake after I hit the Enter button. I thought I'd just blown my best chance of making the hot seat, but as it turns out all nine of us struck out. Regis joked, "Can we fire them?" I was sitting fairly close to his mark, so I said in a loud voice that I would have done better if the question had included the Joey Bishop show (Regis was Joey's sidekick way back when). Regis didn't hear me. The question was thrown out and that portion of the game never aired. John Cuthbertson won the next round of "fastest finger." We were secretly pleased when John accrued $32,000 but lost on the question of the origin city of the Nobel Peace Prize (Oslo, not Stockholm). It was now time for a third, and probably the last, round of "fastest finger": "Put the following railroads in order going clockwise from 'Go' on a Monopoly board." As with the late-night-hosts question, I thought, "This one's mine." I played many a marathon Monopoly game with my brother, and could probably name every space in sequence if given a moment. But given my experience on the late-night question, I decided I was better off being deliberate, so I carefully entered Reading ... Pennsylvania ... B&O ... and Short Line. As it turns out, I was one of only two people who got it right, but the other guy set a time record -- 2.8 seconds! -- and I was out of luck again. He cruised along in the hot seat until he was asked the question about how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon. One of my philosophies of this game is that you know what you know, and know what you don't, and guessing is foolish. But he guessed anyway and said two, and was finished. (Later, acknowledging that his loss had been my gain, he said to me, "You're welcome.") Coming back from a commercial, Regis gave his little sermon about the poor saps who don't use their lifelines, then turned to the next "fastest finger" question: "Put these four wives of Frank Sinatra in order from first to last." My blood ran cold. I'm a really big Sinatra fan. I've read a couple of books, have most if not all of his recordings on CD, and am a well-known Frankophile to my friends. To myself I recounted the four wives: Nancy Barbato, Ava Gardner, Mia Farrow, and Barbara Marx. In that order. A moment later, the four names flashed on my keypad. I pushed the buttons in the right order and rush to hit Enter. Looking up at Sara, I noticed she had a look of sheer terror on her face. I turned to the monitor which displays the contestants' names. After each "fastest finger" question, the names of those who answer correctly begin blinking in green. My name is blinking. I've got the fastest finger. I can hear Sara yelp. I stagger around my keypad and up to shake Regis' hand. I want to be a millionaire. We take a break. I am whisked backstage and given the extra-friendly treatment by the staff. They touch up my makeup and tell me I look great. Regis sees me and gives me thumbs-up. Renee, "my" producer, reminds me of the funny stories that are written on the little card for Regis. Back on stage, there's a freeze frame of Regis and me on the monitor. As the break ends, we mimic that pose so it can be edited into the long shot of the two of us walking to the hot seat. But I don't keep pace with the previous shot and we have to do it twice. Regis tells me that's okay. We banter. I struggle not to look at the TV monitor that's showing my face. Regis has me tell the story about how my wife and I met that turns out not to be that interesting; later, it's edited from broadcast. Regis then asks me to explain how we'd just bought a house. Enough small talk! We're off to the races. Maybe it's that I'd had time to think about it during the taping, maybe it's because I'd seen the other three guys come and go so quickly, but as we start up the money tree I begin chattering during my responses times. It must be easing the tension, because I'm very relaxed onstage. I'm only thinking about the 250 people in the studio, not the millions at home. I've been entertaining in front of 250 people before. I ace the early questions, and then comes the one about which is the tallest tree. As I tell Regis, I'm no naturalist. I really don't know the answer. If I'd taken a moment, perhaps I would have guessed that the redwood was the tallest tree, but not wanting to lose so early, I decide to poll the audience. To my credit, only 94 percent of the audience knows the answer to my question, whereas 96 percent knew what silver dollar pancakes were (that question had led a previous contestant to poll the audience). Later, the silver-dollar-pancake guy and I rate a mocking mention by Letterman on his show. After I answer the $4000 question, the horn sounds. I sit with Regis while he shoots the "tag" that will air at the end of the broadcast. Regis tries three times to read the whole thing off a surprisingly small-typed TelePrompTer. After the second take, he asks me what I thought of that. I tell him I think he flubbed the reference to "A-B-C-dot-com," and that they would make him do it again. He laughs and I offer to do the tag for him if he's feeling tired. He laughs again and regards me with mock horror. At that moment I decide to tell him about something that had happened during the taping. I'd gotten a question about ice cream, and Regis had said it looked like I'd had my share of pie and ice cream in life. It got a cheap laugh, and I'd probably set him up for it, but now I tell him I don't want that kind of joke made at my expense. Regis instantly turns his face downward and apologizes to me, promising he will have the producers take out the joke. The next day he repeats the promise ("Millionaire" tapes one day in advance), and sure enough, the joke never airs. Regis is a pretty classy guy. After the taping, the contestants go off to change clothes and return to the hotel. On the way out, an executive from ABC standards and practices asks me not to talk to the press until I am finished and explains that I will be his guest for most of tomorrow. I am to return at 11 a.m. Monday, just like today, and sit through all the prep again. By the way, win or lose, all the contestants have a terrific time at the show. Every one of them would shake my hand after the show and wishes me well the next day. Several of us, including two of the previous hot-seat occupants, had a couple of drinks in the hotel bar. Since the show is basically non-competitive (except for "fastest finger"), you really do want everyone to do well. Once my turn ended I was leading the cheers for Joel McElvain and Jeff Siehle, who won $32,000 and $64,000 respectively. We all laughed a lot, as our fifteen minutes began. Read Part 2 (Note: the story that follows is linked to another item on the TV Barn main page.)

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Maybe you shouldn't have let the kids watch this one, either. (Fox) Looking the green monster
in the eye By John Zipperer Were you ever scared so much by a television program or movie that you had nightmares -- not just for one night but for years? University of Wisconsin professor Joanne Cantor says that a surprising number of children are scared by images that older people might not find particularly disturbing at all. One of the best-known sources of childhood nightmares is also one of the unlikeliest: the physical transformation by Bill Bixby's mild-mannered scientist into "The Incredible Hulk" two decades ago. Cantor finds that the problem for very young children (such as those between the ages of two to seven) is that they were confused by the transformation and didn't realize that the good-guy scientist was still a good guy even after he turned into Lou Ferrigno's muscle-bound Hulk; to them, the Hulk was a big, violence-prone character, and that meant danger. (continued) Picks to click. "Millionaire," "Shasta McNasty," "New York: A Documentary Film," and other wonders of the smaller screen that are coming your way this week. Note: These picks appear daily in the Kansas City Star; check local listings for the time and channel in your area. Read my picks He wants to be a millionaire! If you're looking for John Christensen's account of being a hot seat contestant on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," click on Monday's (Nov. 15) link below (under "Previously at TV Barn"). The daily digest ... for Tuesday, November 16: As you've no doubt noticed, 1999 has seen a boom in dot com TV commercials. It started with those great Super Bowl ads for monster.com and just kept picking up steam. But another trend was also launched at the Super Bowl: lame dot com TV ads. Remember those horrid spots for outpost.com with the marching band being chased by wild animals? Yuk yuk. Yet outpost.com proved to be closer to the norm. Very few dot coms have figured out how to effectively communicate their message -- or even their Web address -- to viewers. A blessed recent exception to the rule are those goofy bargain-basement-looking ads for CNet that feature actors standing around in T shirts that read "YOU" and, for instance, "GREAT TECH SUPPORT" (message: CNET connects YOU with GREAT TECH SUPPORT). Sure, it looks like an 1890's editorial cartoon, but like a lot of old media, it works ... Kudos to ABC for its new "Monday Night Football" promo campaign that prominently features the voice and images of Howard Cosell, without whom "MNF" as we know it wouldn't exist ... An all-new "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" episode airing this weekend is entitled, "Sarah Jessica Parker and the Interplanetary Crusaders Who Love Her." Jerry Springer makes an appearance on the long-running talk show spoof airing 11 p.m. Friday on Cartoon Network ... VH1 announced seven new series for 1999-2000, including "For the Record" (landmark events in rock-n-roll history), "Rock Collectors" ("Antiques Roadshow" for the Beatles generation), "Record Breakers" (a "Guinness" wannabe), "VH1 Confidential" (myths and urban legends of rock), "Needle Drop" ("thirty videos in thirty minutes"), "Rock's Greatest" and "Pop-Up Quiz," based on the program that used to be, god help us, VH1's most popular feature ... TV shows and films get the lion's share of arts coverage, concludes a new study, "Reporting the Arts," from Columbia University. Previously on TV Barn: 15 November ... 12 November ... 10 November ... 9 November ... 8 November ... 5 November ... 4 November On this date ... in 1986, Carol Burnett, Dabney Coleman, Teri Garr, and Tom Poston mock the sprawling scenery (and even more sprawling writing) of prime time soap operas in the first comic miniseries -- "Fresno," exploring the ups and downs of the glamorous raisin industry. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
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• ABC beats NBC on Thursday! First time since 1983 [ Read it ]
• NBC announces midseason changes [ Read it ]
• Drudge storms off his own TV show [ Read it ]
• Roker to curtail forecast duties in NYC [ Read it ]
• "ER" says goodbye to another cast member [ Read it ]
• "NYPD Blue" gets time slot back -- now what? [ Read it ]
• Honey, Gordon Elliott is at the door. Oh, I thought you knew who he was ... [ Read it ]
• CBS discriminates against female technicians, rules EEOC [ Read it ]
• GOP rep jilts "Face the Nation" [ Read it ]
• Judge zaps Disney's GO Network logo [ Read it ]
• Karmazin: No synergy with Viacom? No problem! [ Read it ]
• Judge zaps Disney's GO Network logo [ Read it ]
• LMA and duopoly fever among station groups [ Read this and this ]
• Big city, big subject for filmmakers behind "New York" [ Read it ]
• Finally, CBS gobbles up King World [ Read it ]
• Miffed DISH Network shuts off signals [ Read it ]
• "Robocop" the series making a comeback [ Read it ]

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Andrew Dunn would like to say something about the underwatched "Freaks and Geeks" on NBC: "Eight p.m. on Saturday used to be the first slot in NBC's Saturday Night 'Thrillogy,' of which only two shows remain: the torpid "Immortal"/"Quantum Leap" hybrid "The Pretender" and the mesmerizingly dreadful "Profiler." These are shows for grown-ups who love science fiction and horror -- the same geeks you saw in 1980 reading Fangoria on the playground at recess or custom-making Jawa costumes (complete with flashing LED eyes) on Halloween. By kicking the evening off with 'Freaks and Geeks,' NBC is saying to us (yes, I am one of them): 'We know who you are, we appreciate who you are, and we know you still don't have anything better to do on Saturday night.'" British reader Wendy Grossman passed along a gem of an e-mail response she got back from Paramount UK, which recently dropped David Letterman from its TV schedule, leaving the Brits Dave-free: "It was one of those classic British things. To wit, 'David Letterman undoubtedly has a strong fan base, but unfortunately this is not reflected in the ratings. 0 We have tried various time slots and it has performed poorly in all of them. After much deliberation, we have decided that this may be down to the fact that the programme is very US orientated and isn't appreciated by the wider audience.' "What are they showing, then? The standard weekday schedule now includes 'Clueless' (on at least its 2nd run), 'Cheers' (on at least its 12th run), 'Dharma and Greg,' 'Cybill,' 'Seinfeld,' 'Frasier' (they've been running it continuously for at least the last year and a half), 'Roseanne' (4th or 5th run), 'Grace Under Fire' (ditto), 'Larry Sanders Show' (ditto), 'It's Garry Shandling's Show' (at least 4th time through), 'Mork and Mindy' (at least 2nd run). Ya gotta admire them for putting on so much American stuff when their viewers don't like it, don't you?" Come to think of it, most if not all of those titles are owned by Paramount's parent company, Viacom, which recently merged with ... CBS. Don't hold your breath, Wendy, but Dave may be on his way back. Mark Monroy was distressed to hear my recent plaint that there's nothing new to say about David Letterman's "Late Show" other than that its ratings are up. "Well, nothing major within the last couple of years," writes Mark. "However, this current press, however belated, may inspire people who ditched Dave in 1995 and '96 to take another look at the show. Sure, the comedy bits are still a bit too meticulously crafted, but the star of the show is Dave. The reason we can stomach 'Know Your Cuts of Meat,' or an interview with a vapid starlet, is that every inane moment is tempered by the ever-evolving wit of David Letterman. I don't doubt that a large part of this evolution is his visible relaxation as he's become resigned to his place in the ratings battle. No longer the frenetic, big-show Dave, he's become an effortless raconteur, a more accommodating host, and possibly the most engaging talker on television today. If this recent attention causes an upswing in viewers, it will simply be icing on the cake. However, if the publisher of the former 'Letterman News' is skeptical, I'd certainly hate to hear from a Leno fan." "Congratulations on an excellent column about the HBO Cosell special," writes Jeff Vaca. "However, I'm not convinced that admiration of Howard Cosell naturally leads into a similar feeling toward Jim Gray. As far as I can tell, Gray doesn't have an ounce of depth, and is nothing more than an attack dog who seizes on the controversy du jour. Cosell, on the other hand, had a long history of taking strong and principled positions many years before he entered his 'superstar' phase." Doug Anderson goes further: "The point that seemed to so painfully elude Jim Gray and you ('... whose questions were no tougher than a good sportswriter would ask...') is the inappropriate context in which Jim Gray asked his questions. He is standing on the field at a historical moment in baseball that will never again take place. The players that were there and the significance of the event make Pete Rose's problems look trivial. He had a chance to interview Ted Williams about hitting and Hank Aaron about Jackie Robinson. When will you ever get to see Warren Spahn and Ken Griffey, Jr. on the same field again? I'm all for asking the tough questions to Pete Rose -- personally I don't think he should be reinstated to baseball -- but get a clue when to do it. He let 20-30 historical interviews stand behind him while he went on his goose chase with Rose that he should have known wouldn't get him anywhere. When was the last time Rose gave any inkling of remorse? Let him chase down Rose on 'Dateline.' Don't ruin the most memorable night in baseball for its fans." Harrison Wyman writes, "When you look at Cosell's reporting, he was the Edward R. Murrow of sports, rising to prominence in the tumultuous events of the late 1960s, when the real world began to crash in on the escapist world of sports. The real world was always there, but it took a Cosell to point it out. Cosell's legal training turned out to be the perfect preparation to cover where the changes in sports were really happening: in the courtroom and the negotiating table. "Even at the commanding heights of his popularity, Cosell still viewed himself as an outsider. It is no accident that the title of his 1985 book, 'I Never Played The Game' was similar to the title of Jackie Robinson's autobiography, 'I Never Had It Made.' The closest person to Howard Cosell in relation to covering sports on television is, ironically, Ted Koppel. When Koppel looks at the topic of sports on 'Nightline' he treats it as any other news topic. Not being part of the sports machinery liberates him to do his usual job without fear of reprisal. And that is the problem with the reporting of sports on TV: I like Al Michaels: his finest hour was in the wake of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake during the World Series for which he won a news Emmy. Bob Costas is a fine play-by-play announcer who has been critical of the baseball establishment at times. But you sense that there is not an issue or a person that most people covering sports on television would put themselves on the line for. Cosell was willing to put himself on the line for unpopular issues and it is that legacy that is the core of his reputation, not the celebrity that followed." Steve Byrd has noticed an disturbing trend on a certain daytime diva's show: "Late-night hosts generally give no interview time to musical acts, unlike everyone else they interview. Now, it seems that, as of late, the bug has spread into daytime, as Rosie O'Donnell has shrugged off three consecutive musical acts -- songs, but no interview.ÊThe segment where Rosie interviews the musical act after they perform has, in effect, been replaced with either a bit with the studio audience or some sketch, as with Jay Leno. What's the point in having musical acts on if the host isn't going to interview them?" Finally, Michael Jones responds to a previous letter-writer who was upset that Mariah Carey was plainly lip-synching her songs during a recent "Today" show appearance: "What's the big deal here?ÊI remember that awesome duo Milli Vanilli.ÊPeople didn't care when it was revealed they were lip-synchers. Let's put it this way:Ê I still have my wall-sized poster. What does surprise me, however, is that a few well-known singer/songwriters still stubbornly follow this outdated practice of singing their own songs during performances ( Neil Young and Paul Simon immediately come to mind).Ê But I believe they will eventually get with the times."

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Andrew Dunn would like to say something about the underwatched "Freaks and Geeks" on NBC: "Eight p.m. on Saturday used to be the first slot in NBC's Saturday Night 'Thrillogy,' of which only two shows remain: the torpid "Immortal"/"Quantum Leap" hybrid "The Pretender" and the mesmerizingly dreadful "Profiler." These are shows for grown-ups who love science fiction and horror -- the same geeks you saw in 1980 reading Fangoria on the playground at recess or custom-making Jawa costumes (complete with flashing LED eyes) on Halloween. By kicking the evening off with 'Freaks and Geeks,' NBC is saying to us (yes, I am one of them): 'We know who you are, we appreciate who you are, and we know you still don't have anything better to do on Saturday night.'" British reader Wendy Grossman passed along a gem of an e-mail response she got back from Paramount UK, which recently dropped David Letterman from its TV schedule, leaving the Brits Dave-free: "It was one of those classic British things. To wit, 'David Letterman undoubtedly has a strong fan base, but unfortunately this is not reflected in the ratings. 0 We have tried various time slots and it has performed poorly in all of them. After much deliberation, we have decided that this may be down to the fact that the programme is very US orientated and isn't appreciated by the wider audience.' "What are they showing, then? The standard weekday schedule now includes 'Clueless' (on at least its 2nd run), 'Cheers' (on at least its 12th run), 'Dharma and Greg,' 'Cybill,' 'Seinfeld,' 'Frasier' (they've been running it continuously for at least the last year and a half), 'Roseanne' (4th or 5th run), 'Grace Under Fire' (ditto), 'Larry Sanders Show' (ditto), 'It's Garry Shandling's Show' (at least 4th time through), 'Mork and Mindy' (at least 2nd run). Ya gotta admire them for putting on so much American stuff when their viewers don't like it, don't you?" Come to think of it, most if not all of those titles are owned by Paramount's parent company, Viacom, which recently merged with ... CBS. Don't hold your breath, Wendy, but Dave may be on his way back. Mark Monroy was distressed to hear my recent plaint that there's nothing new to say about David Letterman's "Late Show" other than that its ratings are up. "Well, nothing major within the last couple of years," writes Mark. "However, this current press, however belated, may inspire people who ditched Dave in 1995 and '96 to take another look at the show. Sure, the comedy bits are still a bit too meticulously crafted, but the star of the show is Dave. The reason we can stomach 'Know Your Cuts of Meat,' or an interview with a vapid starlet, is that every inane moment is tempered by the ever-evolving wit of David Letterman. I don't doubt that a large part of this evolution is his visible relaxation as he's become resigned to his place in the ratings battle. No longer the frenetic, big-show Dave, he's become an effortless raconteur, a more accommodating host, and possibly the most engaging talker on television today. If this recent attention causes an upswing in viewers, it will simply be icing on the cake. However, if the publisher of the former 'Letterman News' is skeptical, I'd certainly hate to hear from a Leno fan." "Congratulations on an excellent column about the HBO Cosell special," writes Jeff Vaca. "However, I'm not convinced that admiration of Howard Cosell naturally leads into a similar feeling toward Jim Gray. As far as I can tell, Gray doesn't have an ounce of depth, and is nothing more than an attack dog who seizes on the controversy du jour. Cosell, on the other hand, had a long history of taking strong and principled positions many years before he entered his 'superstar' phase." Doug Anderson goes further: "The point that seemed to so painfully elude Jim Gray and you ('... whose questions were no tougher than a good sportswriter would ask...') is the inappropriate context in which Jim Gray asked his questions. He is standing on the field at a historical moment in baseball that will never again take place. The players that were there and the significance of the event make Pete Rose's problems look trivial. He had a chance to interview Ted Williams about hitting and Hank Aaron about Jackie Robinson. When will you ever get to see Warren Spahn and Ken Griffey, Jr. on the same field again? I'm all for asking the tough questions to Pete Rose -- personally I don't think he should be reinstated to baseball -- but get a clue when to do it. He let 20-30 historical interviews stand behind him while he went on his goose chase with Rose that he should have known wouldn't get him anywhere. When was the last time Rose gave any inkling of remorse? Let him chase down Rose on 'Dateline.' Don't ruin the most memorable night in baseball for its fans." Harrison Wyman writes, "When you look at Cosell's reporting, he was the Edward R. Murrow of sports, rising to prominence in the tumultuous events of the late 1960s, when the real world began to crash in on the escapist world of sports. The real world was always there, but it took a Cosell to point it out. Cosell's legal training turned out to be the perfect preparation to cover where the changes in sports were really happening: in the courtroom and the negotiating table. "Even at the commanding heights of his popularity, Cosell still viewed himself as an outsider. It is no accident that the title of his 1985 book, 'I Never Played The Game' was similar to the title of Jackie Robinson's autobiography, 'I Never Had It Made.' The closest person to Howard Cosell in relation to covering sports on television is, ironically, Ted Koppel. When Koppel looks at the topic of sports on 'Nightline' he treats it as any other news topic. Not being part of the sports machinery liberates him to do his usual job without fear of reprisal. And that is the problem with the reporting of sports on TV: I like Al Michaels: his finest hour was in the wake of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake during the World Series for which he won a news Emmy. Bob Costas is a fine play-by-play announcer who has been critical of the baseball establishment at times. But you sense that there is not an issue or a person that most people covering sports on television would put themselves on the line for. Cosell was willing to put himself on the line for unpopular issues and it is that legacy that is the core of his reputation, not the celebrity that followed." Steve Byrd has noticed an disturbing trend on a certain daytime diva's show: "Late-night hosts generally give no interview time to musical acts, unlike everyone else they interview. Now, it seems that, as of late, the bug has spread into daytime, as Rosie O'Donnell has shrugged off three consecutive musical acts -- songs, but no interview.ÊThe segment where Rosie interviews the musical act after they perform has, in effect, been replaced with either a bit with the studio audience or some sketch, as with Jay Leno. What's the point in having musical acts on if the host isn't going to interview them?" Finally, Michael Jones responds to a previous letter-writer who was upset that Mariah Carey was plainly lip-synching her songs during a recent "Today" show appearance: "What's the big deal here?ÊI remember that awesome duo Milli Vanilli.ÊPeople didn't care when it was revealed they were lip-synchers. Let's put it this way:Ê I still have my wall-sized poster. What does surprise me, however, is that a few well-known singer/songwriters still stubbornly follow this outdated practice of singing their own songs during performances ( Neil Young and Paul Simon immediately come to mind).Ê But I believe they will eventually get with the times."

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He's only one man -- but he gave our man 16,000 reasons to like him. (Maria Melin/ABC) Final answer (Editor's note: It's been almost two weeks since TV Barn reader John Christensen of Madison, Wisc., was plucked from obscurity and became a contestant on the hit ABC game show, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." In that time, he has given countless interviews to the local and national media, been recognized all over town, and managed to find time to write a concise, 6,300-word account of his time in New York. We continue now with Part 2. Believe it or not, there's actually a small gap between Part 1 of his account and what follows, but it can be easily summarized: John answered a few easy questions and went a few steps up the money tree.) ... Click here to read Part 2 The daily digest ... for Thursday, November 18: "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" has been extended three more days, through next Wednesday ... Longtime TV Barn reader John Carney confesses his lifelong love of game shows (and plugs the website) in this op-ed in the Shelbyville (Tenn.) Times-Gazette ... Reader Bryan Farris, responding to a reader mail from yesterday, writes: "Although I too fell out of my chair when Regis started reading, 'There once was a man from Nantucket,' that has not been the most inappropriate quiz question this month. On the premiere installment of 'Greed,' Chuck Woolery asked the contestants which brand of condoms came in 'Extra-Thin' and 'Magnum' varieties. I guess Fox wins again ..." Speaking of inappropriate game shows, get a load of this pilot from New Line Television which recently taped (thanks to our friends at Backstage Pass for this): "(Show title:) FIRST DATE ... [BOYS]Ê13-14 years old to be contestants.Ê Any ethnicity ... [GIRLS]Ê13-14 years old to be contestants.Ê Any ethnicity ... [SET OF PARENTS]Ê Late 30s to early 40s.Ê Any ethnicity ... [HOST] 18-24, Males only ... FIRST DATE IS AN OUTRAGEOUS NEW RELATIONSHIP SHOW WHERE TEENS GET THEIR FIRST CHANCE AT ROMANCE WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM THE PEOPLE WHO KNOW THEM BEST, THEIR PARENTS!" Is that like the worst afterschool special or what? Finally, you must read John Carman's wonderfully condescending column in the San Francisco Chronicle on the surprise winner in the bidding for that city's NBC affiliate KRON-TV. Carman, whose employer is divesting Channel 4, notes that Young Broadcasting -- which beat out Fox and NBC with its offer of $823 million, a new record for a single TV station -- only owns stations in little hamlets like Rockford and Green Bay. Hello? Did anyone ever hear of a two-bit newspaper publisher named Al Neuharth? Previously on TV Barn: 17 November ... 16 November ... 15 November ... 12 November ... 10 November ... 9 November ... 8 November ... 5 November On this date ... in 1951, Edward R. Murrow's "See It Now" premieres on CBS, allowing the country to witness simultaneous cross-country images of both the Statue of Liberty and San Francisco Bay. Nowadays for this much excitement, you'd have to watch the Pax network. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Networks' youth kick gets old fast [ Read it ]
• Fox joins March Madness bidding [ Read it ]
• Richard Jewell settles suit against ABC [ Read it ]
• Time Warner backs campaign finance reform [ Read it ]
• Gramm stalling satellite TV bill [ Read it ]
• Longtime Comedy Central exec walks [ Read it ]
• ABC tops in demographics [ Read it ]
• Yet another story about TV dinner inventor [ Read it ]

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The next day, after a good night's sleep, we arrived back at the show's hotel suite to do it all over again. They had advised me to not reveal my status as the "holdover" contestant to the 10 newcomers, ostensibly to save me from being peppered with questions that I wouldn't be allowed to answer anyway, but also because it's customary for the producers of the show to keep the previous night's taping shrouded in secrecy. So when we walked in, Sara and I stayed away from the others and just listened. The contestant chatter was similar to what we'd heard the night before. During the qualifying rounds, they had been given four Dustin Hoffman films to place in order; I'd gotten four Paul Newman movies. Four novels for me, (Little Women, The Shining, The Old Man and The Sea, and Love Story), four magazines for them. On the way over, Joel McElvain, who later won $32,000, started to talk me up about the phone questions. Not wanting to reveal my secret identity, I demurred, though I felt silly keeping quiet. I felt even sillier when we arrived, and the contestant coordinators started greeting me by name, making it clear that I had been there before. I dropped the pretense of secrecy and started telling my fellow contestants how much fun the show had been. The producers descended anew, with Renee returning to milk me for more stories. Since she had been a constant presence most of the previous day, it was a struggle for me to think of anything else to say to her. Finally I confessed to having a collection of tickets to old game show tapings. Not exactly the stuff of the non-nerdy. We watched the same tape of Doug Van Gundy again, plus a tape of the British version of the show, which was actually quite interesting. The questions seemed much more difficult, and the host was much more demonstrative, kissing the housewifey contestant Fiona every time she got a question correct. What was really interesting, though, was that the show was exactly like the U.S. version in every other way -- or rather, our version was a perfect knockoff of theirs. The music, lights, set, camera angles, and graphics were all identical. Michael Davies explained later to me that when they started over here, they decided to not mess with success, and just copied everything. Hard to fault them for that. Today we recevied our briefing from Davies in the studio, instead of upstairs. I was seated by myself in one section of the audience -- a lonely figure in contestant isolation. But I had a completely different view than the day before; I could see the panel that Regis looked at, as well as his TelePrompTer screen. I was completely relaxed. Since Thursday I had gone to bed each night, totally unsure what I was going to face the next day. Today I knew exactly what was ahead of me. I knew I was going to be in the chair, I was going to be on television, and I could potentially win a lot of money. All I had to do was wait. After the rehearsal, we were brought upstairs again, and hung around for about an hour. Joel McElvain, his friend Russell and I had a really great time. Like Joel, Russell was a lawyer in Washington. We laughed a lot about how preposterous our whole situation here was, then actually talked a little shop. Russell was an antitrust lawyer and had some interesting (if uninformed) opinions about the Microsoft decision that had just come down. It felt good to talk about something in the real world. When we went for makeup, I got to go first in the chair this time, and the makeup lady seemed to take a little more care. The contestant coordinators and producers were also paying a little more attention to me than yesterday, constantly asking if I was nervous or needed anything. But I was feeling great. My only worry was making sure I didn't have to go to the bathroom during the taping. When we went downstairs, I saw Regis in the wings, and he waved and smiled. The contestants all lined up during Davies' briefing to the audience, and then he introduced everyone. I was last, and as I walked out, the crowd was cheering loudly. The stage manager had told me to walk out and shake Michael's hand, but I didn't know what I was supposed to do after that. So when he called my name, I walked out, waved, looked at Sara in her special wife seat, and went over to Michael. He leaned into my ear and said, "Just walk offstage over there and wait." I'm sure from the audience it looked like he was wishing me good luck. TV is so tricky! That reminds me of a story I read about a guest on the old Dick Cavett show who, as the credits rolled, leaned over and said to the host, "I've always wondered what the guest and host were discussing during these moments." Cavett replied, "Frequently, this." Once backstage, I chatted with Regis about Wisconsin Badger football (about which I know almost nothing), and he told me how he was pretty sure he'd been to Madison once, but it was a long time ago. I thanked him again for editing out the exchange from the night before, and he thanked me for pointing it out. Then the stage manager told us to take our places, and we each stood facing each other on pieces of plywood behind some black electrical tape, which kept us out of the camera shot. When I get nervous, I sing to myself, and I was singing "The Best is Yet to Come." Regis was watching me, and smiled again. He also was pacing a little bit, and seemed to be talking to himself. Well, I thought, it's come to this. I'm singing, and watching Regis Philbin talk to himself. But before I could reflect any more, it was time to come out, and so there we were, walking down the gangplank, shaking hands like we were old friends. I reminded myself of the proper technique to get in the chair without toppling it (use upper body to hoist self and avoid the footrests). We chitchatted for a moment, and then the game began. Amazingly, at least to me, I was really relaxed and feeling great. I liked my outfit better tonight, and I felt confident and sure that everyone was behind me. The first question was about pasta sauces (which one is named for the Italian verb "to hammer") -- and I wasn't sure about the answer until I talked it through a little bit. But by the end, after remembering the old mortar and pestle, I was confident that it was pesto, and I'm right ($8000)! Next, I was to identify which of the four Tom Cruise movies didn't co-star his wife, Nicole Kidman. I think I said on the air that I'd seen all four films. As my wife pointed out later, I told a lie on national television, since I have in fact only seen one of them ("A Few Good Men," which was the correct answer). Just like that, I was at $16,000. Then came my undoing. Like many people, especially those who watch a lot of TV, I'm weak on really useful knowledge, like the composition of the Earth's atmosphere. So when forced to choose which is the most plentiful element in our atmosphere (oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon), I reached for a lifeline. The night before I had said to Sara that I would know what I know and what I didn't, and on this question I knew I didn't know. It was time to phone a friend. The phone-a-friend was perhaps the most logistically complicated aspect of the whole show. When we arrived at the studio the first day, we had to come with a list of five names and phone numbers. Those five people had agreed in advance to be home between 2 and 4 p.m. on the day of the taping, and then again between 6 and 10 p.m. All the phone-a-friends were called during the afternoon and were read a bunch of legalese about using their voice on air, and were asked to swear that they had not insisted on a share of the winnings in exchange for participating. Once a contestant got to the hot seat, that person's phone-a-friends were then re-dialed and told to stand by and not take any other phone calls. They were also instructed to let the phone ring three times before picking it up. When I had watched the show at home, I had been sure that the phone-a-friend sequences had been edited. But they aren't. As soon as I asked for my friend Thom, a call was put through immediately, and Thom was talking to Regis 10 seconds later. Being a phone-a-friend is a big commitment, because not only do you have to stay home for four hours, you run an 80 percent chance of not being the one phone-a-friend who's thrown the lifeline. And the show's producers never call the other four friends to tell them they can relax, the taping's over. My brother-in-law, brother, mother, and friend Scott sat by their phones two nights in a row, never knowing if the call was going to come. Phil told me he didn't even go to the bathroom, which I guess gave him sympathy discomfort with those of us in the studio. So the 30-second timer started on my conversation with Thom. I read the question. Davies reminded us that while we can see the clock, our friend cannot, so we need to be mindful of the time. (Michael Shutterly, the show's lone $500,000 winner, ran out of time before his mother could get out her answer.) I tell Thom, "17 seconds ... 12!" He's hemming and hawing. Finally, he says he's pretty sure the answer is either hydrogen or carbon. The time runs out, and that music starts in again. Now to be fair to Thom, he is not really a science teacher as I said on the air, but a substitute science teacher, and only then for a few months last year. Mostly he teaches history. I also found out later that the local ABC affiliate in Madison was at his house with a camera in his face during the call, which made him more nervous than usual -- so nervous that he thought I was asking about the most abundant element in the universe, not Earth's atmosphere. But that was not the question, so I'm stuck. Thom had said the answer was either hydrogen or carbon, so I would decided to blow the 50/50 lifeline as well and maybe that would reduce my choices to one. With comic precision, carbon and hydrogen disappeared from my display. I rolled my eyes and said, "Oh, great." Now what? Regis reminds me that I can leave right now, and suddenly that becomes a very attractive option. We did just buy a house, and 16,000 damn dollars sounds pretty good. But maybe I should guess. If I'm right, I'm at $32,000. I picture that oversized novelty check with my name on it sitting on a stand next to Regis, and I want it really badly. Not the actual cash, but the oversized check. Wouldn't that be a cool souvenir! (By the way, the rest of the goody bag from ABC was pretty pathetic -- not even a "Millionaire" T shirt like the ones they're selling on the ABC website!) I discuss my strategy with Regis, who agrees that it's a tough decision. For the first time in three days, I thought about the money. I thought about the furniture we could buy, the floors we could refinish, the big-screen TV I could have. Sixteen thou is more than I made as a graduate student last year. Finally, I fall back on what Sara and I talked about in the hotel. I know what I know, and I know what I don't know. So, I announced I was walking away. Suddenly, I couldn't wait to get out of the chair. But first, Regis asked me to make a guess on my question. I quickly ventured "oxygen," which (thank goodness) proved to be wrong. And then, I was shaking his hand and walking offstage, to the smiles of the staff, feeling great about having my moment on TV, and winning a decent amount of money. "That's too bad. I really liked that guy," I could hear Regis saying as I was backstage. And I was sure he meant it. Backstage, the crew all congratulated me and told me what a great job I'd done, how terrific I'd been on TV, and how they all were glad I'd taken the money. The security guard who had been the first ABC employee I'd had contact with on Saturday told me was sure I was going be a winner when he saw me the day before. Pat Preblick from ABC Publicity whisked me off to do interviews with the media, including the ABC affiliate in San Francisco and People magazine (who ran a nice picture in this week's issue). But I already had the distinct feeling of being yesterday's news. Sara joined me backstage, and we had a lot of fun watching on the monitor with the crew. I did a couple other interviews between segments, but mostly I rooted as hard as I could for Joel and Jeff, the two contestants who followed me into the hot seat. Michael and Regis stopped by to wish me well again, and to tell me how great I was. It was a hoot. No one had really discussed with us how we would get the winnings, but we were introduced to the show's accountant, who looked like an accountant, and he had us sign some tax forms, after which he told us we'd get the checks in about a week. Then we were bustled upstairs to grab our clothes and catch a ride back to the hotel. After making the usual round of phone calls to friends and family, we joined the other contestants in the bar again. Jeff, Joel, and I agreed to buy a magnum of Dom Perignon for everyone, splitting it 3/2/1 (64/32/16), and we all toasted to our wild day. We swapped cards and promised to let each other know what it was like once we got home. When we did get home the next day, the local ABC affiliate was there with a camera and a TV for us to watch. So they taped us watching ourselves on TV. Later, when the news came on, I had the very weird experience of watching myself watching myself on TV. The station had been milking the story for all it was worth, and then some, all day and the next. I was on every one of their newscasts, and they dropped my image into promos for the show. They went to the offices of my graduate program and asked people about me. It was all John, all the time. Which was fun, I must admit. Sara and I did lots of radio interviews on stations we'd never heard of from all over the country (one of the perils of having a listed phone number). I'm getting recognized in supermarkets, at the movies, on the street. I even had a state senator stop a committee meeting I was attending for work to ask if I was that guy from "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." But now it's back to reality, and back to packing up for the move to the new house. We had a madcap Manhattan weekend, got our 15 minutes and pocketed 16 grand. Not bad for a weekend of work. Was it fun? Let me just say that winning some dough on network TV is an experience I'd recommend to everyone. And that's my final answer.

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Raising 'Kane'

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He could ... go ... all ... the ... way! A decidedly non-telegenic tax collector from Connecticut was the first contestant -- on either side of the Atlantic Ocean -- to run the table on the Anglo-American game show sensation "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." See "On the Wires" below

• IRS guy goes all the way on "Millionaire" [ Read it ]
• Play this Barenaked Ladies tribute to the big winner
• News of big winner leaks out early [ Read it ]
• Fed-up Marshall ankling "Snoops" [ Read it ]
• Latest TV news from ZENtertainment [ Read it ]
• "Drudge" canned from Fox News [ Read it ]
• "Millionaire" ratings still growing [ Read it ]
• CBS hangs onto March Madness rights [ Read it ]
• Sinclair back in a buying mood, picks up 9 [ Read it ]
• Finally, resolution on satellite TV bill [ Read it ]
• GE suit takes over NBC-owned stations [ Read it ]
• Now Turner's planning Mall TV [ Read it ]

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Regis Philbin writes the obligatory big-ass souvenir check payable to $1 million winner John Carpenter (ABC/Maria Melia). The color of "Millionaire's" money The question is not whether John Carpenter, the IRS employee who smugly ran the table last week on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," was given too many easy questions. Obviously he was. The question is not whether anyone will learn to use their "50/50" lifeline correctly, either in the three remaining nights of this run of television's biggest sensation or in the show's inevitable future runs. The most puzzling question that executive producer Michael Davies is hard-pressed to answer is: Why all are the contestants white? (continued) Picks to click. Bill Kurtis will make you wish you were staying home over the weekend ... a "Buffy"/"Angel" twofer ... and a PBS special raises Norman Rockwell appreciation to high-middlebrow. Read my picks to click (and remember, times and channels are local to Kansas City) The daily digest ... for Monday, November 22: Seriously, though, how many lifelines would you have needed to win $1 million Friday night on "Millionaire"? I would've needed one: to ask the audience whether the O.K. Corral was in Dodge City or Tombstone. The I.M. Pei question, I'm told, would've tripped up a lot of people, but a smart phone-a-friend could take care of that one, too. (I'm available.) As for the big finale, reader Dave Friedman writes, "I expected the million dollar question to be something less commonly known. I bet many people who visit your website know that Richard Nixon is the president who appeared on 'Laugh-In' -- as opposed to the million-dollar question Michael Shutterly got in August, "Who was the first artist to win a Grammy for best hard rock/heavy metal performance' in 1989?' (Jethro Tull). It seems the show's producers think it's more important to increase publicity by giving away $1 million than it is to maintain the integrity of the show" ... ... TV Barn reader Paul Farhi of the Washington Post assesses whether Black Entertainment Television, on the eve of its 20th anniversary, has come remotely close to fulfilling its potential in this article from Monday's edition. If you're new to the website, here's my critique of BET that appeared in Electronic Media in September ... Does this happen much with your local TV stations? A half-hour program appears in a key time period but is nothing more than an infomercial for an area health care provider. It happened recently in Kansas City; probably the worst thing about it was the failure of the ABC affiliate that aired it to come right out and tell viewers what it is they were watching. Here's my story from Saturday's Kansas City Star. Previously on TV Barn: 19-20 November ... 18 November ... 17 November ... 16 November ... 15 November ... 12 November ... 10 November ... 9 November ... 8 November On this date ... in 1968, southern NBC affiliates balk when TV's first interracial kiss is implied, not shown, on "Star Trek." The crew of the Enterprise has landed on a planet ruled by "Plato's Stepchildren," and are soon being used as playthings by a group of aliens who base their culture on that of ancient Greece. Among the humiliations of the crew, for the amusement of the Platonians -- a kiss between Captain James Kirk (William Shatner) and Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). The scene was actually filmed two ways: one with a fully shown kiss, the other with the embrace shown from behind William Shatner's head. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• ABC expected to win sweeps thanks to "Millionaire" [ Read it ]
• Jason Alexander inks 2-year TV deal [ Read it ]
• Steve Oedekerk signs for big bucks with Nick [ Read it ]
• No winners after 13 days of Cincy station promo [ Read it ]
• Inventor of remote control honored [ Read it ]
• Dot-com TV ad fever about to break [ Read it ]

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Earlier this month, in a conference call with reporters, Davies lamented the preponderance of white male contestants during "Millionaire's" summer run. To alleviate this problem, Davies announced a rule change: All contestants who answered a set of telephone questions correctly within 15 seconds would be entered into a random drawing to determine who advanced to the second round. Previously both qualifying rounds had been speed-plus-accuracy; now only the second round would be, in the hopes of getting more diversity out of the first "fastest finger" qualifier. The results were impressive, in one respect: Women began showing up on "Millionaire" this month in larger numbers. On at least two nights women made up the majority of the 10-contestant panels. So the gender gap has been closed. But in a sense that only brings "Millionaire" into line with its 1950s precedessor, "The $64,000 Question," which featured a goodly number of female contestants (most famously Dr. Joyce Brothers, whose photographic memory allowed her to run the table on her category of boxing) but like most TV of that era, excluded minorities. If Davies wants a show more representative of the Clinton era than the Eisenhower era, then shouldn't he be addressing the fact -- for instance -- that African-Americans, who are 13 percent of the population, haven't comprised even 1 percent of "Millionaire" finalists? Game show historian Steve Beverly has been watching the show every night and he's counted two black men as "fastest finger" contestants. A few Asians and one Latino player have shown up in the "hot seat." Black women are nowhere to be seen on the show, unless you count the one who wasÊcheering on her white boyfriend from the audience. "Yet I don't know what else you can do unless you just declare an open quota or change the whole system of picking contestants," says Beverly, who notes that "Jeopardy!" has come under the same criticism in the past. Still, the problem of minority contestants on "Millionaire" -- and it is a problem, so long as its executive producer continues to brag about the show reaching "every demographic" in TV land -- is part of a larger and more socially complex problem: whether a culture that has re-oriented its success system around test achievement is granting equal opportunity to all. That subject is the basis for author Nick Lemann's brilliant new book, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy, which offers a thorough -- and thoroughly engrossing -- account of the rise of standardized testing and its role in determining who got to go to college. Though I agree with the critique of Amazon.com's reviewer (Lemann casts a wide net and it's not always easy to figure out what he's trying to do in the book's midsection), I'd still recommend The Big Test to anyone concerned about black progress in America. One of the important subplots in Lemann's book is the birth of affirmative action as everyone from university presidents to testing officials to the U.S. Supreme Court struggles to reconcile race-based preferences with the "meritocratic society" in which those with the best test scores get the best opportunities. (Just last week, the NAACP announced a two-pronged assault on the current state of achievement testing to be more fair to black test-takers.) What does this have to do with an insanely successful game show? Nothing -- unless you're a minority viewer and would like to see more contestants on that show that look like you. In which case "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" is almost a perfect microcosm (right down to the test-taking format of the show) of a larger problem facing the shapers of American opportunity: how important it is to create a tableau of racial and gender diversity in all our major institutions, educational and cultural, while being fair to all.

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We got your Thanksgiving turkey right here. Turkey-day SF picks to cluck By John Zipperer When the Pilgrims, lean and probably a little giddy from surviving a cold winter in the New World, celebrated their first Thanksgiving with the local Indians, they spent much of the afternoon staring into space, because football hadn't been invented yet. That innovation would have to wait hundreds of years. Americans would have to wait another few more decades before an explosion of entertainment product -- and the cable channels to watch them on -- would offer something else to rally around: science fiction movies that finally freed them up from having to watch football. (continued) Picks to click. Bill Kurtis will make you wish you were staying home over the weekend ... a "Buffy"/"Angel" twofer ... and a PBS special raises Norman Rockwell appreciation to high-middlebrow. Read my picks to click (and remember, times and channels are local to Kansas City) The daily digest ... for Tuesday, November 23: The last days of "Action": While Fox TV is now denying that the network has stopped work on the ratings-challenged comedy "Action," behind the scenes it sure doesn't look like this marriage can be saved. Typical, we're told, is an internal memo recently obtained by TV Barn. Written by Kevin Spicer, Fox's executive director of broadcast standards and practices, it was sent to "Action" exec producer Chris Thompson earlier this month and concerns the fifth draft of a script for episode no. 12 (which in all likelihood will never see air). The memo reads in part: "This script is unacceptable and is rejected. The past three scripts [presumably the second through fourth drafts] have contained escalating levels of gratuitous nudity and graphic language. The exploration in this draft of Regan's nude scene, her attempts to arouse Peter, Holden's attempts to maintain an erection, the Holden/Reagan love scene (for starters) are completely inappropriate for prime-time television. The end result feels like the day-to-day activity on a porno set, not a mainstream action picture." Well, at least this confirms the show has a bright future at HBO ... Casey Abell, our Irate Reader of the day, turned Tom Sowell on me as soon as I mentioned the lack of diversity on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." "Why not start affirmative action with the TV critic for the Kansas City Star? His picture shows a white male, so we should replace him with a lottery rigged to favor minorities and women," writes Casey. "It's funny how so many affirmative action fans want the rigged quotas to apply to OTHER people, never to themselves." Whoa, little fella! Don't pop your eyeballs out of their sockets trying to read between the lines. (Then again, maybe I'm secretly in favor of them "rigged quotas." After all, my alma mater prides itself on geographical diversity, and as one of my high school teachers once put it, "So that's how you got in") ... "60 Minutes II" features an investigative report 9 p.m. Tuesday that has already led to federal action. An Indian manufacturer of the popular Beedi cigarettes is being cited for exploiting child labor to make the smokes. This is the kind of story that usually only gets on TV thanks to Charlayne Hunter-Gault or a "Cinemax Reel Life" feature. In its cozy new time period, "60 Minutes II" is TV's second highest-rated newsmagazine ... And taking nothing away from John Carpenter, a guy who works behind the scenes in TV also became a millionaire: Price Colman, the cable-beat guy in Colorado for Broadcasting & Cable magazine, a trade weekly, just won the Colorado State Lottery. The Price was right with all six numbers on a quick-pick ticket and takes home $14 million. Colman told the Denver Post he plans to invest and donate big chunks of his $3.8 million post-tax take on the 40 percent of the jackpot he's not deferring. A colleague said today that Colman has told his employer he'll stay on the job till his replacement is hired -- a nice gesture from a good guy. Previously on TV Barn: 22 November ... 19-20 November ... 18 November ... 17 November ... 16 November ... 15 November ... 12 November ... 10 November On this date ... in 1958, Ronald and Nancy Reagan appear together in the "General Electric Theatre" production of "A Turkey for the President." Decades later, Nancy will return to the national stage co-starring with a turkey as the President. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Will "Annie" revive the TV musical? [ Read it ]
• All you care to know about top "Millionaire" winner [ Read it ]
• Big numbers for "Millionaire's" historic Friday [ Read it ]
• Arena football reaches big leagues of TV [ Read it ]
• NBC takes over Pax ad sales [ Read it ]
• Paul Allen taking over ZDTV [ Read it ]
• Grushow begins second tour of duty at Fox [ Read it ]

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Did you know James Buchanan was the only unmarried U.S. President? Neil Larrimore (left) did. (ABC/Marie Melin) Reader mail Our readers not only have all the answers to the questions asked on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," they've got a few questions about those questions. I'll bet you do, too. Like why is "What kind of clothing is a sarong?" a $200 question? Is it because it was posed to a female contestant? Would it be a $200 question if the contestant were a guy? (Imagine asking that to a male contestant at the $250,000 level -- you'd have some excruciatingly great TV.) JHDover262-at-AOL-dot-com writes, "On Tuesday night's show, one of the lower-level questions went something like, What does the 'S' in 'SAT' stand for? The man answered 'Scholastic,' and was advanced to the next level. However, the College Board and the Educational Testing Service have decided that the letters S-A-T no longer represent any specific words." Say, did I mention that the SAT is to "Millionaire" as almond butter is to tahini? (continued) Weekend picks to click. Surprisingly slim pickings for the last weekend of the November ``sweep,'' led by the network premiere of "Men in Black," a new "X-Files" and the arrival of Bill Cosby's latest cartoon creation. ... Read my weekend picks The daily digest ... for November 24 and 25: New York Observer columnist Ron Rosenbaum provocatively suggests several ways for David Letterman to make his exit from late-night television. Read it for yourself and decide whether maybe it's Ron, not Dave, who needs a break ... Every 10 years it seems Andy Rooney must pay a visit to NBC. In 1989, his special on the 1980's appeared on NBC, not CBS. Now, he's the lead story on ``Dateline'' at 10 p.m. Friday, plugging his new book ... And speaking of plugging a new book, the one book I always say should be on a TV fan's shelf, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows (1946-Present), is coming out in its 7th edition next month. It's the 20th anniversary for the monster guide from Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, and you can pre-order it at Amazon.com now. Previously on TV Barn: 23 November ... 22 November ... 19-20 November ... 18 November ... 17 November ... 16 November ... 15 November ... 12 November ... 10 November On this date ... in 1983, 20 years after the JFK assassination, another shocking TV death occurs, but at least this time America's parents are ready to help explain it to their children: Will Lee, who played Mr. Hooper on "Sesame Street," has passed away at age 74. The show's producers were faced with the problem of how to explain the disappearance of Mr. Hooper. Rather than simply have another owner buy the store or have Hooper move away, the producers chose to wait until Thanksgiving Day to deal with the concept of death -- so that parents could watch the show with their kids. Big Bird is reminded by neighbor Susan, "When people die, they don't come back." "Ever?" Big Bird whispers. All the neighborhood adults are there to comfort Big Bird as the camera pulls back. "I was glad my friends were there. They said we can always think about Mr. Hooper. And I do. He used to make me birdseed milk shakes." -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Complete household ratings for the week of Nov. 15-21 [ Read it ]
• Networks firm up midseason slates [ Read it ]
• The battle over satellite TV [ Read it ]
• CBS/Viacom petitions feds for 2-year grace period [ Read it ]
• FCC wants descriptive video service mandatory [ Read it ]
• GE swatting down latest NBC sale rumors [ Read it ]
• Great month for syndicated shows [ Read it ]

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Bill Grieser asks, "There was a question about who won an Emmy for being a guest on Carson's last show (answer: Bette Midler). Wasn't his last show just Carson sitting on a stool, and Bette was on the next-to-last show?" If that was the final question, then you are correct, sir. Geof O'Keefe (who also mentioned the Midler question) adds, "On another show the question asked which of four listed David E. Kelley shows does not take place in a law office ('Ally McBeal,' 'The Practice,' 'Picket Fences,' 'L.A. Law'). Again, the outcome wasn't affected since the contestant correctly chose 'Picket Fences,' but 'L.A. Law' wasn't a Kelley show; it was a Steven Bochco/Terry Louise Fisher show. Kelley wrote for it during a number of seasons, but unlike the other three choices, it wasn't his creation." And Scott Saltzburg adds, "Have you noticed that ever since John Carpenter got those softball questions to gift-wrap him the million smackers, the questions once again became harder -- while the contestants became less intellectually blessed? I swear, when that guy honestly and truly did not know what Samuel Clemens' pen name was, I almost ruined my 27-inch Trinitron.'' Darren Glass responds to a previous letter-writer who wonders why musical guests aren't asked over to the host's interview panel more often on talk shows. "I'm a big music junkie and would love to see many of my favorite artists interviewed," says Darren. "However, anyone wanting to know why it isn't the standard practice just needed to be watching 'The Daily Show' last night as Jon Stewart tried to interview Tori Amos. It was one of the most awkward uncomfortable moments I have ever watched on a talk show, as she really just didn't know how to be a decent interviewee at all."

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A cross-section of "Millionaire" contestants, if not of America. (Marie Melin/ABC) Last word on 'Millionaire' (we promise) A couple of thoughtful readers wrote in response to my earlier piece on the preponderance of white contestants on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," which ended on a high note Wednesday as an infectiously happy deejay from Philadelphia walked off with $250,000 because he knew President James Buchanan was a bachelor. Leszek Pawlowicz, a winner of the 1992 "Jeopardy!" tournament of champions (and a more recent winner on "Win Ben Stein's Money"), writes, "You missed a key issue on the women contestant numbers. Sure, there are more in the 'fastest finger' rounds, primarily due to the lottery selection after the first telephone playoff (and secondarily due to the phone questions this time around being heavily skewed towards women). By my rough estimate, about a fourth of all 'fastest finger' contestants have been women this time around, versus fewer than 10 percent in the summer series. But in that series two of the 19 hot-seat competitors were women, or a bit more than 10 percent. Not including tonight's carry-over contestant, only three of 31 hot-seat competitors this month have been women, or just under 10 percent. Unless there's a dramatic reversal over the final three shows, the performance of women in the second series will be far poorer than that of women in the first series relative to their percentages in the 'fastest finger.' "If anything, you could argue that the second series numbers are even worse than they appear, since most of the shows in the first series were half an hour long while most of the shows this time around will be an hour long. Longer shows mean more chances at the hot seat in a single show; since men were the primary winners of the Fast Finger, as they left their Fast Finger seats, the odds should have improved in successive tries for the women on the show. They didn't." (continued) Happy Thanksgiving weekend! There's company 'round the Barnhart household and I didn't get around to all the things I wanted to write about this week. So that promised story about fan websites being shut down by the big bad studio will have to wait till next week. Picks to click. Surprisingly slim pickings for the last weekend of the November ``sweep,'' led by the network premiere of "Men in Black," a new "X-Files" and the arrival of Bill Cosby's latest cartoon creation. Read my weekend picks (and remember, times and channel assignments are particular to Kansas City, so check your local listings) The daily digest ... for the weekend of November 26-28: "The Strip," an action show I actually kinda dug, has been canceled by UPN, says the Hollywood Reporter. That makes Joel Silver, the "Die Hard" mogul who shepherded "The Strip" and "Action" (for Fox), 0-for-2 this fall ... And this important public service message was sent to us by reader Michael Jones. "Much thanks to John Christensen for chronicling his experience as a contestant on 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire.' It was an excellent read. I must say, however, that I was caught off guard and slightly disappointed that John placed some of the blame for not answering that science question ('the most abundant element in our atmosphere?') to excessive tv watching -- insinuating that this habit did not result in much 'useful knowledge.'ÊI take exception to this generalization--and can personally point to many useful facts that I probably would not have acquired apart from my TV set. A few of these include my knowledge of CPR (from 'Baywatch'), workmen's compensation law ('Home Improvement') and, admittedly going back in time some, military protocol ('Gomer Pyle'). Furthermore, my guess is that somewhere buried in a sci-fi episode is the correct answer to the very question posed to John (I believe Scully once talked to Mulder about the abundance of nitrogen during the '94 season). So, it's my belief that if John was more addicted, not less, to this American pastime, well, he could have at least won $32,000." Previously on TV Barn: 24-25 November ... 23 November ... 22 November ... 19-20 November ... 18 November ... 17 November ... 16 November ... 15 November On this date ... in 1993, Penn and Teller perform the world largest (if not stupidest) card trick on "Late Show with David Letterman." "Pick a card, any card," says Penn Jilette. But the cards are huge, are made of steel, and are so heavy the madmen of magic must use forklifts to shuffle them. Saturday, November 27: in 1980, Henry Desmond and Kip Wilson move to New York when their friend Amy promises them a great apartment that's dirt cheap. They soon find out why it's so cheap -- it's a hotel for women. The duo make one adjustment. The other ladies know soon know them as Buffy and Hildegarde, but also them as Kip and Henry, Buffy and Hildy's brothers. See? It's all perfectly normal, on ABC's "Bosom Buddies." Co-star Tom Hanks would later say that someone should ever make a movie version of the show, he thinks Keanu Reeves should play his part. (Fortunately there are no plans for it.) Sunday, November 28: in 1997, MTV airs the final original regular installment of "Beavis & Butt-head." After the boys are truant a full three weeks, the principal's office calls "the house" to learn the whereabouts of the boys...only to learn "Beavis & Butt-head Are Dead." Cue flashbacks. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• It's a small world of big media congloms [ Read it ]
• Rosie O'Donnell quits as K mart spokesperson [ Read it ]
• More boffo numbers for "Millionaire" [ Read it ]
• About that NBC-Time Warner talk: Uh, nevermind [ Read it ]
• Satellite TV bill passes Senate [ Read it ]
• DISH announces local TV stations in 30 markets [ Read it ]
• ... while DirecTV targets 20 markets [ Read it ]

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"The problem, I think, is a consequence of the addition of a lottery to the selection procedure. For the first series, all of the qualification for playoffs were based on the time required to enter the questions. While this always has skewed towards males, what it also meant is that any women who made it to the show were going to be as fast and as competitive as any of the men in answering the 'fastest finger' question. By eliminating the time factor this time around in the first round (because advancement to the second round was randomly determined), the number of women moving on increased, but the average quality of women contestants in the 'fastest finger' decreased. "Doubly ironic since the executive producer of 'Millionaire,' Michael Davies, has said that selecting show contestants will not involve a lottery because 'in this country, lottery winners are not really respected because they never earned it.' The same problem would occur if they went to a quota system to ensure slots for women and minorities; if they don't choose the best possible candidates for those slots, the 'hot seat' results will be the same. But I have less of a problem with quotas than I do with the lottery." Eric Deggans, TV critic of the St. Petersburg Times, adds, "The key difference between standardized testing in school and game show questions is that contestants must choose to participate in the game show. Indeed, it takes a lot of effort to get on 'Millionaire.' So I'm not sure it's fair to conclude that, because there is a lack of minorities on the show, it's because the questions are somehow unfairly slanted towards white people. Perhaps there's a lack of minorities because people of color are not competing in proportional amounts." "I think such shows are slanted towards white people for the simple fact that questions are written from the viewpoint of mainstream, white culture -- like just about every other game show. So you have whole categories on 'Jeopardy!' about European composers and few questions on blues or jazz artists from, say, 80 years ago. But is that something the game show people can do anything about -- given that they're trying to attract mainstream audiences? I doubt it." What? You mean not everybody knows the three-letter abbreviation printed on a bottle of suntan lotion? Here's my point, which I'll say one more time and then be done with it: "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" is a phenomenon. It's not the No. 1-rated syndicated show. It is the biggest show in television. Now take a look at the other top programs on TV. Two are lily-white comedies ("Friends" and "Frasier") ... but three have broader racial appeal and rate well among minority viewers ("ER," "Monday Night Football" and "Touched by an Angel"). Why? Because they incorporate African-Americans on camera. Until "Millionaire" figures out how to do otherwise -- and trust me, I haven't got the silver bullet -- its producers and promoters should stop claiming to be the show that "everybody watches." Finally, there's this from reader Larry Raymond: "Hmmmm ... while we're at it why don't we lower the nets that the white basketball players shoot at and shorten the lanes for the white guys trying out for the Olympic track team? I'm so tired of this. You'd think women and minorities would be too." Hm, well, last I checked "Millionaire" didn't involve very much physical prowess, except perhaps to stay balanced in that precarious hot seat. But it did require logical-analytical skills. Something analogous to the job description of a manager or coach or team executive ... and we all know how easy it's been for minorities to get those jobs. And that's my final riposte.

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The tape Dave wants you to hear (not!) Here is a true archival gem you've got to hear: a 5-minute excerpt of David Letterman on the radio in Muncie, Indiana, in 1969. It's an April Fools' Day broadcast on station WAGO at Ball State University, Letterman's alma mater, and in it he places a prank phone call to a "Lyla Whip," who in fact is his wife of one year, Michelle Cook. As you'll hear, Dave is already learning to fill the dead air with familiar banalities ("boys and girls," "ladies and gentlemen"). If you haven't yet downloaded RealPlayer, here's your best excuse yet. Click here to reach the archive site of radio buff Tom Corbett that has the Letterman clip. The daily digest ... for Monday, November 29: I promise I'll let it go after this, but I had to have Keith Olbermann of Fox Sports have the last word on the Jim Gray-Pete Rose interview: "Fortunately, I wasn't interviewing him," Olbermann was quoted Friday telling the Toronto Globe and Mail. "I would have said,'You're refusing to answer my question, so I'm going to hit you right in the face with this microphone for all the harm you've done to baseball'" (thanks to Kevin Desjardins for spotting that) ... TV critic Bob Sassone, whose Channel Surfer Journal is worth checking out, writes, "I read the letters about the Bette Milder question asked on 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.' Actually, 'Millionaire' did ask the question correctly, saying it was the next-to-last episode of 'The Tonight Show,' not the last." I guess you can tell I wasn't watching Regis that night ... Steve Beverly adds, "Without question the nomination for the Droopy Dog Award for the most uninspiring contestant in television history goes to John Capolongo, the middle player on Saturday night. He was enough to make John Carpenter seem like Red Skelton." Previously on TV Barn: 26 November ... 24-25 November ... 23 November ... 22 November ... 19-20 November ... 18 November ... 17 November ... 16 November ... 15 November On this date ... in 1985, on A Very Special episode of "Diff'rent Strokes," turns out to be white supremacy, which young Arnold has discovered as part of a civics assignment. The episode winds up dealing with First Amendment rights. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
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• Latest TV news from ZENtertainment [ Read it ]
• Canadians want gov't to solve TV ad clutter ... [ Read it ]
• ... but French ban "Buy Nothing Day" spot [ Read it ]
• Scrambled-porn case reaches Supreme Court [ Read it ]
• These shows need your help or they're history [ Read it ]
• MTV-hyped NetAid in trouble [ Read it ]

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One of the computerized creepy crawlies seen in "Starship Troopers Roughnecks" (courtesy of the TrooperPX site). 'Roughnecks' on the digital frontier By John Zipperer On those filmstrip-like ads-and-trivia screens shown in cinemas before the previews, one theater chain has a quote from an action film star in which he says "Americans don't have action films anymore. They have computers." The reference is to the increasing use of computers to do effects that formerly were done by stunt performers, makeup artists, and actors, most famously in George Lucas' blockbuster "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace." The folks at Sony and Adelaide Productions have gone even further on the small screen, producing "Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles" using real actors for the voices but animating the entire series using computers. The result is impressive, but only because the human talent behind the expensive computers knows how to tell a good story. ... Read Zippy's column The daily digest ... for Tuesday, November 30: Good news from the Michael Moore camp: "The Awful Truth" is heading for a second season and is being distributed to more countries than ever. Last week the show began airing in Venezuela, Norway, Chile, and Brazil, according to fanmail sent out by Moore. The show's first season will be available in home video next year, and Moore says he is working on another feature film -- this one dedicated to exposing abuses in the HMO industry. (On this week's "Awful Truth" rerun, just in time for the holidays: a choir of senior citizens who don't have voice boxes serenade the homes and headquarters of Big Tobacco executives. The show airs 10:30 p.m. Wednesdays on Bravo and Saturday late nights on Canadian Bravo). Previously on TV Barn: 29 November ... 26 November ... 24-25 November ... 23 November ... 22 November ... 19-20 November ... 18 November ... 17 November ... 16 November On this date ... in 1977, after 18 broadcasts over the course of two decades on all three major networks, CBS telecasts Bing Crosby's final Christmas special two months after his death. "Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas Show" features Twiggy, "Oliver!" star Ron Moody, Stanley Baxter, Trinity Boys Choir, the Crosby family and what the special is best-known for: "The Little Drummer Boy," a duet between Der Bingelmeister and David Bowie. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• NBC closing gap with ABC as sweeps end nears [ Read it ]
• A British take on American TV [ Read it ]
• No more Coke ads for the WWF [ Read it ]
• Dish owners to get local channels posthaste [ Read it ]
• When to bring back "Millionaire"? [ Read it ]
• NAACP to decide on protests by Dec. [ Read it ]
• ... but networks skip race panel [ Read it ]
• NBC tweaking its TV ratings (remember those?) [ Read it ]

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Max and Grinch (artwork courtesy Turner) We three kings of Christmas TV are ... ... "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." These three beloved animated specials are evergreens now -- what an apt name for a perennial holiday show! -- but in the beginning, things weren't so sure for at least two of the three. I explain in this story that appears in Wednesday's Kansas City Star. ... Read the story Air times for the specials: "Rudolph," 8 p.m. Wednesday (CBS); "Charlie Brown," 8 p.m. Friday (CBS); "Grinch," 2 p.m. Sunday (TNT) and 6 p.m. Dec. 8 (Toon). Here's Jon Burlingame's book on musical themes, TV's Biggest Hits. The daily digest ... for Wednesday, December 1: Mr. Deadlines here only had time for one of the end-of-sweep conference calls that the networks held with reporters Tuesday. I horned in on NBC as it announced what highlights there were from November -- mostly that "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" wasn't around this week to slap NBC's shows around some more -- and to make a few key announcements, namely: (1) Saturdays will become pure "Thrillogy" again as "The Others," a supernatural thriller from DreamWorks, arrives in the 10 p.m. spot on Saturdays and "Freaks and Geeks" moves to 8 p.m. Mondays. (2) "Dateline Monday" moves to 9 p.m. with the 10 p.m. spot now going to "Third Watch." (3) Richard Belzer should be feeling intense deja vu right about now because he's headed back to 10 p.m. Friday nights with "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit". All of these changes take place after the first of the year, when "Monday Night Football" ends over on ABC ... UPN announced a new show being added to its lineup Tuesdays at 8 beginning January 18, replacing "The Strip." It's called "I Dare You" and, quoting the press release, it's "a suspenseful super-stunt series that platforms the most spectacular, highly crafted stunts by professional daredevils ... filmed entirely on location in Las Vegas and will feature several mind-bending stunts." Well, at least the Vegas motif is intact ... Austin, Texas, is joining the family of Nielsen metered overnight markets in April 2001, at which time overnight ratings will reflect 50 markets covering 66 percent of the country (Buffalo and Albuquerque-Santa Fe get metered next year) ... Jay Leno will perform at the White House Correspondents' dinner in April 2000. According to the ever-reliable Dan Klores PR group, Leno last performed at the dinner in 1987. Previously on TV Barn: 30 November ... 29 November ... 26 November ... 24-25 November ... 23 November ... 22 November ... 19-20 November ... 18 November ... 17 November ... 16 November On this date ... in 1992, having proved himself a major talent on ABC's "Roseanne," comedian and sex symbol Tom Arnold is rewarded with his own sitcom "The Jackie Thomas Show." (Shhhh, let's let him believe that.) -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• ABC declares victory in November sweep [ Read it ]
• New quiz show from CBS eyed for Feb. [ Read it ]
• NBC web company goes IPO [ Read it ]
• We'll tone it down, WWF promises advertisers [ Read it ]
• Opening arguments in scrambled-porn case [ Read it ]
• Fox takes over GOP debate from ABC [ Read it ]
• NBC re-ups with Golden Globes; rivals irked [ Read it ]
• Clinton signs satellite TV bill [ Read it ]

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Apparently the cast of "The West Wing" is in too much of a hurry to study the Constitution, complains a viewer. (NBC/Kevin Foley) Reader mail Jonathan Bourne writes, "If Michael Davies is really looking for a way to get more face time for a woman or minority on 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire,' he can solve that problem with one simple change -- so long Regis, hello Oprah." Phil Scroggs writes, "Why is it that 'Talk Soup' on E! shows clips from all the late night talk shows except Letterman's?" Excellent question, which we posed to "Late Show" spokesfriend Kim Izzo. "Basically, we don't give stuff to 'Talk Soup' in order to protect the integrity of the broadcast and our guests, and to keep the guest interviews within the proper context of the broadcast," Izzo said. Read more letters The daily digest ... for Thursday, December 2: Thursday's episode of "Popular" carries a ringing endorsement from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation for its "matter-of-fact portrayal" of the lesbian relationship between one of the characters' moms and a co-worker. Here's the GLAAD fall TV scoreboard of gay/les/bi characters in prime time ... Speaking of "Popular," here are the top-rated shows among female teens, according to Nielsen data compiled by the friendly folks at WB publicity: 1. "Dawson's Creek" (WB), 9.4 rating/30 share; 2. "7th Heaven" (WB), 8.3/26; 3. "Sabrina" (ABC), 8.1/35; 3. "Wonderful World of Disney" (ABC), 8.1/26; 5. "Charmed" (WB), 8.0/25; 6. "Popular" (WB), 7.9/25; 7. "Buffy" (WB), 7.5/25; 8. "ER" (NBC), 7.1/29, 9. "Odd Man Out" (ABC), 7.0/31; and 10. "Angel" (WB), 6.9/22. Each rating point represents 1 percent of all females ages 12-17, while each share point represents 1 percent of female teens actually watching TV at that time ... The Hollywood Reporter is reporting from Hollywood that Say goodbye to producer David E. Kelley and ABC have mutually agreed to end production of "Snoops" after 13 episodes. The network had planned to move "Snoops" to Thursday nights opposite "ER," and Kelley wisely countered with a cyanide pill ... BET and the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation are collaborating on a series of specials through next April that will encourage sexual responsibility and HIV prevention ... MSNBC is bragging that it is attracts "the youngest audience of all cable news networks." Average viewer age: 50.5 ... Also, MSNBC's simulcast of Don Imus topped CNN's morning ratings for the month of November, a first (the margin was an 0.3 in households to CNN's 0.2) ... And speaking of firsts, the cast of "The Simpsons" will perform an unprecedented live episode for the attendees at the Sixth Annual U.S. Comedy Arts Festival (Feb. 9-13) in Aspen, Colo. The script to be used is from an as-yet-unidentified previous episode. Previously on TV Barn: 1 December ... 30 November ... 29 November ... 26 November ... 24-25 November ... 23 November ... 22 November ... 19-20 November ... 18 November On this date ... in 1992, having proved himself a major talent on ABC's "Roseanne," comedian and sex symbol Tom Arnold is rewarded with his own sitcom "The Jackie Thomas Show." (Shhhh, let's let him believe that.) -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• HBO to rerun "Sopranos" before season two launch [ Read it ]
• Rory Kennedy's improbable Appalachian trail [ Read it ]
• And the People's Choice Award goes to -- "Shasta McNasty"??? [ Read it ]
• L.A. TV stations broadcast another shooting live [ Read it ]
• CBS leads NAACP award nominees [ Read it ]
• Leno pleads for panel with George W. [ Read it ]
• CNBC's Ron Insana gassed on-air [ Read it ]
• Murdoch selling off his piece of DISH [ Read it ]
• Satcasters rush to offer local channels ... [ Read it ]
• ... but lag cable and telcos in high-speed Internet [ Read it ]
• NBC Interactive IPO off to shaky start [ Read it ]

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(continued from previous page) From one longtime reader to another, Stephen Pace writes, "Let John Christensen know he did a fantastic job on his write-up of being a contestant on 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.' Makes me sort of feel bad I yelled at him through the TV when he missed that question." Bill Grieser was torqued off by a recent broadcast of NBC's "The West Wing" that aired Nov. 3. "Here is a show trying to be so realistic and yet it makes basic factual errors," writes Bill. "The notion of a caretaker Congressman who is taking over his late wife's seat until a new one can be elected is based on an error. Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution is very clear that when vacancies occur, an election is called to fill the vacancy. There is no such thing as a caretaker congressman. The show is confusing the procedure in the House with that of the Senate, which allows a governor to appoint someone to fill a vacancy until an election is held. Even an 8th-grade social-studies teacher -- the congressman's occupation -- should know that. "The whole plot centered on how the census should be carried out. A White House staffer is quoting the Constitution to the (bogus) caretaker congressman, trying to get him to change his vote on some bill. The staffer invokes a line in the Constitution that talks about how representatives to Congress along the lines of "free Persons" and "other Persons." But we no longer make that distinction in this country, because that part of the Constitution was repealed and modified by the 14th Amendment. The aide's argument is moot. "Finally, in the climax of the show, the staff is seen watching C-SPAN to learn the vote of this so-called caretaker congressman. The clerk is solemnly reading off each member's name as he or she earnestly answers "aye" or "no." But anyone who has watched C-SPAN knows that that the House never votes this way -- only the Senate does. With 435 members in the House, a voice vote would simply take too long. Even on something as momentous as a presidential article of impeachment, the House votes electronically." For a transcript of Mr. Grieser's remarks, send 25 cents to Merkle Press, Washington, D.C. ... Rusty Pasini writes, "Well, after quite a long absence of watching Dave on the 'Late Show,' I was moved to check in with him lately after reading your comments on numerous occasions that his show has been getting better and better lately. I was quite surprised, and relieved, to find that I agree with you. For example, instead of finding three funny items in the Top Ten List (usually found at #8, #5, and of course, #2), lately his lists have had at least eight extremely funny jokes. (The recent "Top Ten Headless Horseman Pet Peeves" list comes to mind.) Overall, his whole show almost feels as of Dave had returned to 30 Rock and 'Late Night.' Just watching tonight as Chef Eric Ripert looked on at Dave guzzling liquor, then salad oil, just made it feel like 1987 all over again. All I need now is a nice little five-story brick building to toss various objects off of, and the circle would be complete." Rusty, I have just one word for you: Ga-ZE-bo! And Richard Handal, who is undeniably the most ardent Tori Amos fan she will ever have, writes, "Perhaps predictably, I feel the need to add a bit of perspective to Darren Glass' letter about the Tori-Jon Stewart interview on 'The Daily Show.' I do have to say that this was the most bizarre interview I ever saw Ms. Amos give on television--and I've seen plenty. I know that when she taped 'The Daily' on October 20, she was still reeling from the ambush-style cover article in the November 1999 Spin magazine, in which she and those who appreciate her music were portrayed as being crazy people beyond all sensibility. What did Jon Stewart say to her when she first came out and had a seat on the couch?

Jon: Wow, I gotta tell ya, when we told the audience that you were going to be here today, and they weren't aware of that.. Tori: Um hum.. Jon: Uh they literally, I could have said, like it was the "Price is Right" come on down. They were hyperventilating, one woman; blushing, uh, huge fans of yours. Tori: (turns to audience, waves) Hi. Jon: All right, fair enough. You have, I would say, a very rabid fan base, wouldn't you agree? Tori: Um, well... Jon: There was a woman that passed out when I mentioned your name. Tori: OK, some of them. But I think some people really kinda get them wrong and...

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Your book of books We'd say this even if one of its co-authors weren't a TV reporter's best friend: The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows 1946-Present is the most fun you can have watching television ... without watching television. And now -- just in time for holiday giving -- it's out in an authoritative-looking 20th anniversary edition, the seventh revised. Somehow, the publisher managed to cram in 550 new program capsules and the book still comes in a tad shorter than sixth edition. As Pat O'Brien (see p. 473) used to say, "How'd they do that?" (continued) Weekend picks to click. Black Entertainment Television's Arabesque movies: they're black and they're entertaining. What more can you ask? Also, "Tuesdays with Morrie." ... Read my weekend picks The daily digest ... for the weekend of December 3-5: May I recommend, for your weekend reading, this decidedly upper-middlebrow critical treatment of cable's Cartoon Network by my pal Richard Gehr in FEED magazine ... After all these years, NBC affiliate KARE-TV in the Twin Cities will begin carrying "The Tonight Show" at its god-given time of 10:35 p.m. Central time beginning Jan. 3. With the addition of KARE, which had been airing a sitcom rerun in that time period approximately forever, NBC now enjoys a 100 percent clearance rate for "Tonight" among its affiliates ... Funny PR line of the week: "Comedian Pauly Shore Guest Stars As A Shrewd Criminal in Upcoming Episode of 'NASH BRIDGES'" (CBS press release) ... ABC is letting Melissa Joan Hart direct Friday's episode of "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch," in which she stars. Tom Heald notes, "Next thing you know, they'll let the cat direct" ... And from our Off the Air Dept., media prankster extraordinaire Joey Skaggs is staging one of his "participatory events" at noon on Saturday in New York's Washington Square Park. It's called "Doody Rudy" and will feature "a giant portrait of Mayor Rudy Giuliani as the Madonna ... (and) a giant barrel of elephant poop will be provided as ammo. Each participant will be given a latex surgical glove with which to dip into the doodoo and heave-ho a handful at the portrait. A $1 contribution per 'load' will be donated to Housing Works, Inc. to benefit homeless people with AIDS." Joey's timing is off a bit, but if you're in the area you may want to check it out. Bring goggles. Previously on TV Barn: 2 December ... 1 December ... 30 November ... 29 November ... 26 November ... 24-25 November ... 23 November ... 22 November ... 19-20 November On this date ... in 1968, "If you're lookin' for trouble/You came to the right place," sings "The King," in a tight close-up opening "Elvis's 1968 Comeback Special," proving he's still got it, despite what trendsetters way, even if he's heavier than when you last saw him. Saturday, December 4: in 1970, Frank Reynolds ends his gig as Howard K. Smith's co-anchor of "ABC Evening News," to be replaced at the desk by Harry Reasoner. Reynolds wryly notes that "Due to circumstances beyond my control, the unemployment statistics rose yesterday." Sunday, December 5: in 1978, on "Three's Company," when Jack, Janet, and Chrissy plan a house party, landlord Stanley Roper won't hear of it and posts a sign reading "The party's canceled." His wife Helen sides with the tenants and tells Stanley that their "marriage is canceled, too." -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• "Millionaire" to go 3-a-week in January;
  "Snoops," "It's like," "Odd Man Out";
  "Action" canned (you read it here first) [ Read it ]
• ABC asking $3 mil a pop for Super Bowl ads [ Read it ]
• Senators chide Hollywood for high sleaze count [ Read it ]
• "Match Game" host Gene Rayburn dies [ Read it ]
• Sawyer, "GMA" comfortably in middle [ Read it ]
• "Malcolm in the Middle" gets "Futurama" slot [ Read it ]

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Some careful study of the 6th and 7th editions reveals that (a) Brooks and Marsh did not cut any of the descriptions of the thousands of TV shows already in the Directory; (b) the type is one point smaller in the 7th edition and (c) the margins have been practically eliminated. The type creeps right up to the edge in the 7th edition, but if that's the price you must pay -- well, that and $24.95 list -- to keep the Directory every bit as complete as it was before, then I'll take two. Unlike Alex McNeil's worthy anthology Total Television, Brooks and Marsh limit themselves to prime-time programs (although they have added a few dozen capsule descriptions of cable networks; Brooks until recently was senior VP of research at USA Networks). But they also include the complete broadcast history of each program, which is the big tradeoff of McNeil's book. What I've always found appealing in Brooks and Marsh is their interest in the history and the sociology of mass media, as embodied in this description of the "Nat 'King' Cole Show," below. I've reprinted the whole two-column listing (you can guess at the blurred text!) because the surrounding capsules give you some added flavor: "Nat 'King' Cole was a man ahead of his time, and that fact cost him his network series." Order the book at Amazon.com

Weekend viewing picks

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Why does the WB's AcmeCity encourage "Buffy" fans to build their own pages -- while Twentieth Television's lawyers are trying to shut them down? Fox slaying 'Buffy' Web sites Once again, Twentieth Television's legal eagles are swooping down on some easy prey and risking the ire of yet another vocal group of superfans. The targets are Web pages maintained by devoted fans of shows produced by Twentieth Television, including ``The X-Files'' and ``The Simpsons.'' Just before Thanksgiving, Twentieth's lawyers took aim at pages run by fans of ``Buffy, the Vampire Slayer,'' a show Twentieth produces for the WB network. (continued) Have a velly telly Christmas! So that you won't have to, Tom Heald has assembled the most comprehensive list of televised holiday specials exclusively for our TV Barn readers -- everything from "Mrs. Santa Claus" to "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics" -- plus the latest video releases and gadgets you can put under the tree, just in time for midseason! ... Read Tom's list This week's picks to click. Behind the scenes at the New York Post ... through the millennium with Dennis Miller ... and can it be -- a first-run "Frasier" during a non-sweeps-month?! Read this week's picks to click (and remember that times and channels are for Kansas City, so check your local listings) The daily digest ... for Monday, December 6: Further proof that the humor axis has shifted to the Internet: Following the huge success of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?", The Onion ran this fake story Thanksgiving week about a new Russian game show, "Who Wants to Eat a Meal?" As if by magic, the following week a joke writer for David Letterman dropped a similar-sounding gag into Dave's monologue ("Who Wants a Roll of Toilet Paper?"). And then this weekend "Saturday Night Live" mounted a sketch in which Russians compete for food on a hot new game show. Amazing! Now if only someone can come up with a copycat scheme for fixing the Russian economy ... You're not going to get a more exhaustive list of musical artists' TV appearances than the Rock on TV website. And now the site has been revamped with "new artist searches, genre, network and show browsing," according to Mischief New Media CEO Jason Hirschhorn ... Someday, digital TV will change our lives -- that's what we're told, at least. In the meantime, notes DTV writer Mark Schubin, "After more than two months of high-definition 'Monday Night Football' on the air, the biggest list I've seen of establishments where one can view it has six: Timmy Nolan's in Burbank, Calif.; Trophy's in San Diego; Scores in San Mateo, Calif.; The Escape at Los Alas in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.; and Dave & Busters in Duluth, Ga." ... Schubin also confirms what we've known all along -- the only way new media is going to take off is with old media booster rockets underneath. Case in point: The Nov. 17 webcast of "The Drew Carey Show" sent out 650,000 streams, outrating both NetAid and the Victoria's Secret fashion show, which generated arguably more hyperventilated press than ABC's webcast ever did. Previously on TV Barn: 3 December ... 2 December ... 1 December ... 30 November ... 29 November ... 26 November ... 24-25 November ... 23 November ... 22 November On this date ... in 1948, the search for stars begins on TV for "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts" on CBS. Among the talent introduced to the public during the series' 10-year run are Pat Boone, The McGuire Sisters, Rosemary Clooney, Tony Bennett, Steve Lawrence, Roy Clark, Patsy Cline, and 13-year-old accordionist Connie Francis. What do participants win if they impress the audience? The chance to become regulars on Godfrey's variety hour, "Arthur Godfrey and Friends," which premieres five weeks later. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Latest TV news from ZENtertainment [ Read it ]
• Sinclair to get 4 DTV's up in 2000 [ Read it ]
• MSNBC exclusive: Internet brings TV fans together! [ Read it ]
• MSNBC exclusive: Sniffing glue gives you headaches! [ Read it ]
• Fondly remembering "Omnibus" [ Read it ]
• Cartoon Network ratings up [ Read it ]
• Time Warner challenges limit on cable ownership [ Read it ]
• Sinclair to get 4 DTV's up in 2000 [ Read it ]

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(continued from previous page) The trouble started three years ago when Twentieth employed a firm to snoop out "rogue sites" that it believed were illegally using intellectual property from these shows -- especially sounds and images that home technology has made easy to capture off the air. In October 1996 the crackdown began in earnest, when Twentieth persuaded officials at the University of Texas-El Paso to take down a student's tribute page to "Millennium," a show that had premiered that week on the network. That raised a furor among fans of "The X-Files," which like "Millennium" was created by Chris Carter. And once word got around that "X-Files" sites were being targeted, too, the Internet seemed to rise as one against Fox. The network had to close down its mailbox after it received tens of thousands of angry e-mails from fans. "I think it's absurd," says Shawn Sampson, a more recent target of Twentieth's attorneys. His "Buffy" site featured screen shots and 2-minute video excerpts from recent episodes until Fox ordered him to remove the material this summer. "They are losing more fans than they are gaining," Mr. Sampson says. "Short video clips do nothing more than boost Buffy's popularity." Conversely, there may be few PR problems thornier than a fan who's been spurned. The Web is littered with the residual bad feelings of past battles between Twentieth and the fans of its shows. "This site has been shut down by the friendly people at Fox," declares the home page of Brian Wilson, a student at Wake Forest University whose "King of the Hill" tribute page was served a cease-and-desist letter in the fall of 1997. Several of the Web masters targeted by Twentieth have shown me identical copies of that letter, which states that because of its "many contractual obligations" to the creative community, the studio has a "legal responsibility" to go after unauthorized Web sites. (A Twentieth spokesperson confirmed the existence of the letters but didn't elaborate on which sites had received them.) But Twentieth is the only major TV studio or network that seems to feel that way. Most promotion departments are delighted to have an entourage of cheerleaders out on the Web. Besides the thousands of hours of unpaid effort they represent, these pages have excellent cred among young viewers, who often perceive these homegrown Web sites as more "authentic" than the official ones. Small wonder, then, that many official sites include links to their fans' sites. In fact, the WB network has built a whole online community, AcmeCity, around this concept, offering images and other resources to viewers for building their own tribute pages. Perhaps no WB program engenders as much Internet ardor as "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer." Two years ago, a young fan of the show, Alexander Thompson, began transcribing every episode of "Buffy," word for word, then posting it to the Web. It was a painstaking operation that took hours of video playback each week, but fans were thrilled with the results. So was the show's creator, Joss Whedon, who met Mr. Thompson at a national convention that was sponsored by the official buffy.com site. Mr. Whedon even signed one of Mr. Thompson's transcripts. What Mr. Thompson didn't know at the time was that Twentieth, not Mr. Whedon, controls the show's intellectual property. This summer Twentieth's lawyers contacted the Web site where the transcripts are posted, demanding their removal. (A spokesman for the WB was unaware that Twentieth was taking action against "Buffy" fan pages.) "I understand they have the right to do this," Mr. Thompson says, "but in my opinion they're just shooting themselves in the foot." Mike Godwin, the longtime counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and author of the book Cyber Rights, says that Twentieth can use copyright law to prevent others from using its copyrighted material. But Web sites can counter that with a "fair use" argument if the material is being excerpted for purposes of criticism, reporting or other non-infringing uses. "It is highly unlikely that (Twentieth) has lost a dime in revenue or in the value of their intellectual property because of the fansites," says Mr. Godwin. "The converse is vastly more likely." Beyond the legal questions, one must ask whether Twentieth's aggressive stance is all that practical. The Net seems infinitely expanded compared with even three years ago. And with the ability to create Web sites anywhere in the world (such as Tonga, home to such popular domains as come.to and welcome.to), renegades will always be able to stay out of the reach of Twentieth's lawyers. Melissa Boysen was one of those who led the protest against the closure of "X-Files" pages in 1997. Today, she notes, many of the sites that were closed down simply found new Internet providers and set up shop again. "Judging from [Twentieth's] lack of updates on the official page," says Ms. Boysen, "I think they don't really care that much anymore." Visit The Buffy Bringers, a page devoted to carrying on the protest against Twentieth and its shutdown of "Buffy"-related websites.

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This classic predicted the end of the Cold War. (courtesy Michael Sousier) The long-range forecast By John Zipperer Y'all gather around Uncle Zippy's chair as he tells you the exciting but true story about how science-fiction and -fact writer Arthur C. Clarke invented the geosynchronus-orbiting satellite. What? You've heard that story already? Well, of course you have. Along with "Star Trek's" prediction of the handheld medical scanner, Clarke's prophecy is one of the two best-known examples of real-life advances foreshadowed by the creators of SF. There are others, but why bore you with a long list of predictive hits and misses (transport beams no, talking computers yes, etc.)? What's more interesting, is how science fiction has tried over the years to make political and cultural predictions. From time to time, every self-respecting SF franchise asks the ponderous questions about society and our roles in it, questions most of us rarely contemplate. (continued) This week's picks to click. Behind the scenes at the New York Post ... through the millennium with Dennis Miller ... and can it be -- a first-run "Frasier" during a non-sweeps-month?! Read this week's picks to click (and remember that times and channels are for Kansas City, so check your local listings) The daily digest ... for Tuesday, December 7: A couple of you responded to yesterday's article about Twentieth Television by noting that the legal staff of Paramount has been known for an occasional itchy trigger finger, although perhaps more in the pre-Internet days, when it tried to squelch the wave of "Star Trek" fanzines in the 1970s. Gee, that wouldn't be too counter-productive ... Game show guru Steve Beverly informs us that "Greed" isn't going to make a one-time cash payout for any prizes over $100,000. Dick Clark Productions is opting for the more economical $100K-a-year annuity instead. Previously on TV Barn: 6 December: Twentieth TV shutting down "Buffy" websites ...
3 December: New edition for TV's best read ...
2 December ... 1 December ... 30 November ... 29 November ... 26 November ... 24-25 November ... 23 November ... 22 November On this date ... in 1969, it's a good day for kids TV as the Public Broadcasting Service is officially inaugurated, and "Frosty The Snowman" first comes thumppety-thump-thumping down the street on CBS. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
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• Duopoly in Kansas City: Scripps buys Ch. 38 [ Read it ]
• Once again, calls for free political air time [ Read it ]
• MLB, ESPN settle their suit, sign new deal [ Read it ]
• DirecTV announces deals with ABC, NBC [ Read it ]

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Oprah not as "Beloved" as she was in '98. Out of clout So according to the 1999 survey of the "50 most powerful women in Hollywood," conducted by the Hollywood Reporter, Oprah Winfrey no longer has the most clout. In fact, sez the trade daily, there are now 18 women -- eighteen -- ahead of her in the pecking order. Wha'happened? According an editor at the mag, two trends and one box-office bust put the mojo on Oprah. Talk show ratings are down (bad trend); more women are assuming positions of power in the entertainment biz (good trend); and then there was the matter of that "Beloved" movie that wasn't, at least not by audiences. Translation: Over the years Oprah built up a power source that was one part goodwill (that high "Q" rating) and one part mystique. She used that power to get "Beloved" made; when it bombed, not only was the goodwill shot, the mystique was punctured. No more Midas touch. It's a nice theory, but tell me this: When was the last time you backed a movie that finished the week ranked No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings? Oprah just did: its name was "Tuesdays With Morrie." This week's picks to click. Behind the scenes at the New York Post ... through the millennium with Dennis Miller ... and can it be -- a first-run "Frasier" during a non-sweeps-month?! Read this week's picks to click (and remember that times and channels are for Kansas City, so check your local listings) The daily digest ... for Wednesday, December 8: Cindy Crawford has found gainful employment once more, this time as a "regular contributor" to "Good Morning America." She signs on this morning ... Previously on TV Barn:
7 December: Sci-fi predicts the future ...
6 December: Twentieth TV shutting down "Buffy" websites ...
3 December: New edition for TV's best read ...
2 December | 1 December | 30 November | 29 November | 26 November On this date ... in 1984, two years after being relegated to weekends, with a new show on Saturday and a repeat on Sunday, the "Captain Kangaroo" Show last airs on CBS. It holds the record for the longest-running network children's show of all time, and probably the record for the most use of ping-pong balls. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• HBO to sign Garofalo to sitcom deal [ Read it ]
• Drudge a victim of his own excess [ Read it ]
• Shut up and buy already, Barry! [ Read it ]
• Network ratings don't suck [ Read it ]
• Carrey spars with "Tony Clifton" at press conf. [ Read it ]

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Time to unfurl those protest banners! The fed-up-with-Fox files An awful lot of harsh, negative mail has arrived in the last week and it all has the letters F-O-X in common. Now, the newspaperly thing to do would be to run one of these items each day for the next week and a half, or until somebody at News Corp. served us with a cease-and-desist. But the Christian thing to do would be to dump it all on you the readers in one sitting, and then (as they say on TV) move past this. At least that's how I've rationalized what follows. We begin with a longtime TV Barn reader named Rhonda, better known by her handle Tiny Dancer. She writes, "With regards to Fox closing the Buffy sites recently, trust me, they haven't stopped shutting down the 'X-Files' ones either. I was FOXed last week: a letter to me, a copy sent to xoom.com and I was gone within the hour! I made the mistake of offering free transcripts that people had poured their blood, sweat and tears into, and small sound files so people could brighten their dreary lives by hearing Mulder and Scully talk to them out of their 'puters, among many other things. The nerve, eh? Copyright notices all over the darn thing and no money ever changed hands -- in fact, I was the one spending moola on the server. Where exactly is the problem with free publicity for their ratings sagging series?!" (The happy ending, Rhonda reports, is that her page will soon be back up again at the Fox-sanctioned Fandom.com.) (continued) The daily digest ... for Thursday, December 9: A thousand years from now, some extremely advanced civilization is going to pop the top on the New York Times Capsule and find -- this Top Ten List from Dave Letterman and his staff. You need to be registered at the nytimes.com site to read it ... Reader Ed Bauman is mad as hell at the networks for making ubiquitous those annoying on-screen "bugs" that tell you what you're watching. So he and a friend have put up this protest page ... And reader Keith Privett warns, "The internet rumor mill is buzzing that the Danny DeVito-hosted SNL on Saturday will continue the Andy Kaufman-esque marketing campaign for the Kaufman biopic 'Man on the Moon,' with unbilled appearance or a take-over by Carrey, Carrey as Kaufman, Carrey as obnoxious Kaufman Character Tony Clifton, and/or Kaufman pal Bob Zmuda as Clifton, or showing Kaufman clips." Given those choices, I would definitely not take D. Previously on TV Barn:
8 December: Oprah losing power? ...
7 December: Sci-fi predicts the future ...
6 December: Twentieth TV shutting down "Buffy" websites ...
3 December: New edition for TV's best read ...
2 December | 1 December | 30 November | 29 November On this date ... in 1960, Elsie Lappin has just bought a little shop from Florrie Lindley on the first of twelve scheduled broadcasts of a soap opera called "Coronation Street" on Britain's ITV. If the show is not successful, the street will bulldozed in a possible final thirteenth episode. The tales of the working class not only do catch on, they become the most popular soap opera in Britain and the world's longest-running television serial drama. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Gene Siskel's last days [ Read it ]
• Povich to host "Twenty-One" revival [ Read it ]
• Huff puff, Dave still gaining on Jay [ Read it ]
• USA to try again with five new series [ Read it ]
• Half-hour "Ally's" ratings wafer thin [ Read it ]
• Canadian "real time TV" website under fire [ Read it ]
• "Tonight Show" audience member, hit by flying T shirt, sues [ Read it ]
• TV group that yanked Letterman is sold [ Read it ]

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(continued from previous page) Next we turn to the always fascinating world of reality TV, as captured through the lens that belongs exclusively to the network. Remember that Mike Tyson movie? Well, make way for the JonBenet Ramsey "mini-movie," coming soon to Fox. A one-hour drama, it's too short to be called a movie but, apparently, too juicy to wait until another hour of real-life drama unfolds in the still-unsolved murder case. Anyway, here's the casting call from our friends at Backstage Pass. Judging from the sheet, they're planning to use an interview format (a la "Once and Again") for part of the movie. But they're not casting for Geraldo Rivera! I guess that means he's playing himself -- Fox wouldn't leave him out of this, would they? ... TV Barn would also be remiss if we did not tip our hat to the staff of "Action," the series Fox cancelled last week, for working in a sly reference to their show's demise in the final episode. In case you missed it -- and chances are extremely good that you did -- Jay Mohr's character suffers a heart attack and expires. Time of death? "Thursday at 9:30," the time slot occupied by "Action." The writers were apparently hoping to have one more week to outdo themselves, however, because they cooked up a sequel to Peter's death scene, as evidenced by this Fox PR Tom Heald uncovered: "PETER DRAGON IS IN HEAVEN TALKING WITH THE 'MAN UPSTAIRS,' ON 'ACTION' THURSDAY, DEC. 9, ON FOX ... Peter (Jay Mohr) is in heaven and tries to negotiate his return to life with the man 'upstairs.' Holden Van Dorn is now living in the guest house of Titus Scroad, which causes Titus to fall off the wagon, so Peter must intervene in 'Dead Man Floating.'" Hurry up, HBO, and option that show! Mike Brown is a computer user who, like an increasing number of business and home users, likes to surf the Web on a Unix machine. Imagine his surprise when he checked into FOX.com recently and discovered he was persona non grata (or at least his computa was). "You have been denied access," said the page, which then gave him two reasons why this might be so. One was that he was running an old browser. Or: "You are running on a platform other than a PC or a Macintosh. Unless you run on one of these platforms, you will be unable to access FOX.com." Mike was understandably furious. "Extremely arrogant on their part," he writes. Or at least extremely cheap -- how hard can it be to enable Unix browsers? After all, they were around before PC browsers were ... Finally, Jerome Chapman does not think Fox's game show "Greed" is good, but maybe he just means that in an aesthetic sense. "Is it just me or does that Chuck Woolery ripoff of 'Millionaire' seem dark and evil?" he writes. "Team members are encouraged to turn on each other. What is fascinating is the disturbing tension created between team members. It's amazing that something that was designed to be so similar to 'Millionaire' -- with regard to the lighting, soundtrack, set, and purse -- is so different in its tone and feel."

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"Sailor Moon": Leggy tyro in hot pants We have met the anime "Pokemon" may be the most successful Japanese cartoon to wash onto American shores, but it's far from the only one. On Internet sites such as animenation.com or in video catalogs, you can purchase hundreds of video titles featuring "anime," as Japanimation is commonly called. But you may want to think twice before you let some of the most popular anime films fall into the hands of your "Pokemon"-loving kids. Take, for instance, "Ghost in the Shell," a violent action movie that was dubbed into English into 1996 and has sold half a million copies in the United States alone. Like many anime films, "Ghost in the Shell" takes place in a not-too-distant but barely recognizable future. Humans are surgically altered to assume the qualities of robots. These hybrids are then hooked up to the Internet so the police can keep tabs on their brains. All is well in this Big Brother fantasy until one day an evil virus hacks its way onto the Net and starts erasing people's hard drives ... er, memories. (continued) Weekend picks to click. The "Hallmark Hall of Fame" delivers another warm fuzzy for the holidays ... When Gus Grissom did you-know-what to the pooch, he left this on the ocean floor. Read my weekend picks (and remember to check local listings, as times and channels are local to Kansas City) The daily digest ... for the weekend of December 10-12: A couple more weekend picks I didn't have room to include in the paper (see above link): "Speaking in Strings," debuting 7:45 p.m. Sunday on HBO Signature (aka HBO3), updates us on the smoldering house fire that is violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. Perhaps no other performer was more aptly described as having burst onto the scene. But in 1981 Nadja did just that, winning the Naumburg International Violin Competition, soloing at Carnegie Hall the next year and then proceeding to electrify -- or in some cases, appall -- audiences worldwide with her on-stage dramatics. If there is a single dominant theme to this 72-minute documentary, directed by her friend Paola di Florio, it is that Nadja performs the way she does because she cannot do otherwise. As you can see from the CD cover to the film's soundtrack, Nadja emotes when she plays. She also lurches, and leans, and grinds her whole body into that inch-wide slab of wood with the fury of a 200-meter sprinter. For 15 years this is how she lived her life. And then, without warning, life began to slip away from her. This film is remarkably frank in recounting Nadja's journey from her arrival in America at age eight to the present day. Here is a rare entertainer, one who is both sizzle and steak. And no one does a better job of explaining her talent than the chain-smoking virtuoso herself. "I feel more than anyone else I know," she says. "I don't what it is. If I don't share that, I'm not happy." "60 Minutes" reports Sunday night on the failure of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military. At Fort Campbell, Ky., just two weeks agter a gay private was bludgeoned to death in his bunk, a sergeant led his platoon in the chant, "F----t, f----t, down the street/Shoot him, shoot him, till he retreats" Even a co-author of the current policy on gays in the armed forces now admits to CBS that it hasn't worked ... Also, "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" (11 p.m. Friday, Cartoon Network) features Conan O'Brien as the only guest. It's the 75th episode of the long-running intergalactic talk show. Previously on TV Barn:
9 December: A pox on Fox ...
8 December: Oprah losing power? ...
7 December: Sci-fi predicts the future ...
6 December: Twentieth TV shutting down "Buffy" websites ...
3 December: New edition for TV's best read ...
2 December | 1 December | 30 November | 29 November On this date ... in 1955, Mrs. Ethel Park Richardson of Los Angeles wins a record (at the time) $100,000 on the NBC primetime game show "The Big Surprise." One lifeline for contestants in the game is to get help from a friend. But if your friend gets the substitute question right, s/he also gets ten percent of your winnings. December 11: in 1980, on the debut of "Magnum, P.I.," our hero sets out to prove the innocence of an old Navy buddy Dan Cook who's been found dead with 10 bags of cocaine in his stomach. Among the other actors in the episode? Judge Reinhold and Robert Loggia. December 12: in 1988, Mike, Carol, Jan, Marcia, Cindy, Peter, Greg, Bobby, Alice and their respective husbands and wives gather for "A Very Brady Christmas" on CBS. And then Mike gets trapped at a construction site while trying to save two security guards from the building's collapse. -- Tom Heald On the wires:
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• Taiwanese viewers watch live fight in newsroom [ Read it ]
• Nielsen test may signal end of "sweeps" [ Read it ]
• Just like the 1950s: UPN to try 15-minute shows [ Read it ]
• NBC exec will moonlight at Pax [ Read it ]
• Cast of "Will & Grace" to make political ad [ Read it ]
• Newsmagazines' ratings dip [ Read it ]
• Another Letterman ratings story [ Read it ]

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(continued from previous page) Not only is "Ghost in the Shell" hard to follow -- one of its chief intrigues is that one never quite knows where a character's human nature ends and robotic nature begins -- but there also are frequent gun battles, female nudity and, in the opening minutes, a graphic assassination scene. That's not to say there aren't also several best-selling anime titles appropriately aimed at children. In fact, anime has almost as many different flavors as "Pokemon" has critters. In Japan, where the average adult reads 200 comic books a year, anime -- which grew out of Japanese comic book art -- has been a dominant force in the culture for three generations, with something for every age and interest. Think of anime almost as a medium rather than a genre and you get a sense of its breadth and diversity. Anime also is Japan's MTV, the one entertainment product it can export seemingly everywhere. In the United States, where anime videos began trickling onto the market 10 years ago, the genre is finally starting to go mainstream:

• Cable's Cartoon Network airs a "Toonami" anime block weekday afternoons from 3 to 5, leading off with the half-hour series "Sailor Moon," about a talking cat who turns a group of young girls into high-kicking warriors for justice. Since last year "Toonami" has helped double Cartoon Network's afternoon audience of 9-to-14-year-olds.
• Disney's Miramax Films last month had the premiere of the English-language version of "Princess Mononoke," the highest-grossing domestic film in Japanese history. Although it tells a complicated story set in the Middle Ages, "Princess Mononoke" captivated audiences with its lush scenery and its unusually graceful motion, the result of 80,000 animation cels[ folo ] drawn by its venerated creator, Hayao Miyazaki.
• Other anime releases are making their way to theaters for limited runs.The top distributor of anime in the United States, Chicago-based Manga Entertainment, is showing "Perfect Blue," a thriller it expects to be as big as "Ghost in the Shell," in more than a dozen cities nationwide. ("Perfect Blue" should arrive in Kansas City this spring, according to Jerry Harrington, owner of Tivoli Manor Square Theatre.)
• Hundreds of anime clubs have sprung up in cities and on university campuses across the United States, where members screen new releases and swap videocassettes of old favorites. An anime sales house, Right Stuf[ folo ] of Des Moines, Iowa, has a mailing list of 200,000.

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Jay Leno dominates late nights with young viewers. Remember me? This fall has been a good one for David Letterman. But as NBC is more than happy to point out, it has been an even better one for Jay Leno. A month ago, CBS began issuing glittering press releases about Dave's resurgence in the ratings. Helped by the network's strong prime-time performance in the November sweeps, CBS affiliates improved in their late newscasts ... and that in turn benefited the "Late Show." But in a turnabout that demonstrates just how much the late-night talk show landscape has changed in six years, Leno's people have come up with even more impressive Nielsen data about their man. And it concerns viewers that "The Tonight Show" did not exactly have in its corner when the competition with "Late Show" began in 1993. (continued) Picks to click. "Biography of the Year" ... silent "Buffy," unholy "Buffy" ... and a misty-eyed "West Wing" holiday special. Read my picks to click (and remember that times and channels are for Kansas City, so check your local listings) Previously on TV Barn:
10 December: Japanimation goes American
9 December: A pox on Fox
8 December: Oprah losing power?
7 December: Sci-fi predicts the future
6 December: Twentieth TV shutting down "Buffy" websites
3 December: New edition for TV's best read On this date ... in 1985, an episode of "Miami Vice" entitled "Phil the Shill" could've been called, "Who Wants To Be A Drug Dealing Game Show Host?" Pop star Phil Collins is tracked down tonight by Crockett and Tubbs, with time to spare for a Collins song ("Life Is A Rat Race"). On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• CBS insiders grumbling about "Early Show" [ Read it ]
• ... meanwhile, ratings for Gumbel mixed [ Read it ]
• Tom Snyder hinting at comeback [ Read it ]
• DirecTV adds six public interest channels [ Read it ]
• RELATED: TV Barn on the DBS set asides
• Another record month for DirecTV [ Read it ]
• PBS plans 25-hour millennium b'cast [ Read it ]
• Promises, promises: Oscarcast to shorten [ Read it ]
• Nov. not kind to syndie game shows [ Read it ]
• "What's Happening!!" stars dropping like flies [ Read it ]
• PBS prexy search: And you thought pledge drives were long [ Read it ]
• Another televised GOP debate [ Read it ]
• "Suddenly Susan" in peril [ Read it ]

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(cont'd from previous page) While it is true that Letterman's ratings are up substantially over this time last year -- "Late Show" has closed the gap with "The Tonight Show" by more than half a million viewers -- Leno actually has a wider lead in viewers ages 18-34 and 18-49 than he did a year ago. It's impossible to overstate what a shift in audience trends this is. "The Tonight Show" was once notorious for drawing older viewers. The median age of a "Tonight" viewer in the early '90s was right around 50 years, much higher than the median age for NBC's prime time. Network executives privately grumbled about this for years toward the end of Johnny Carson's reign -- but the situation didn't change under Leno during his first three seasons. Now, however, it's Letterman whose ratings are being powered by viewers closer to his own age (he turns 53 in April). Males ages 18-34 were once crucial to Letterman's success, and indeed are still a major chunk of his audience. But other 18-34 men are tuned to Leno instead, and don't forget that women watch late-night too -- and they're preferential to Jay. Indeed, "Late Show" has not done well in demographics since that week in the summer of '98 when Dave scored a 2 rating among 18-49's compared with Leno's 1.8 and Ted Koppel's 1.5. (A rating point stands for 1 percent of the viewers in that demographic, whether they are watching TV at that hour or not.) According to this Variety article, Leno's 18-49 rating has since climbed to 2.6 while Letterman's has slipped to 1.7. If there's any silver lining for "Late Show," it's the fact that when Leno was making his year-long run at Letterman's seemingly invicible lead in the ratings, he first improved in households -- demographics came later. People who write on the subject constantly make the mistake of assuming that there was something magical in Hugh Grant's July 1995 appearance on "The Tonight Show" that led to increased "sampling" (people checking out the show) and ultimate salvation in the ratings. The reality is that Leno first began to peck away at Letterman's lead in the fall of 1994 and steadily closed the gap. Even after Hugh Grant's appearance, Leno's ratings levels fell back to their pre-Grant levels. That those levels were rising anyway is something most of those analyzing Leno's change in fortunes fail to take into account. Why is this a big deal? Because Leno's trek inconveniently upends that timeless Madison Avenue myth that youth always sets the trend and everybody else follows youth. In fact, older viewers began returning to "The Tonight Show" in 1994, were joined by more younger viewers in 1995, and finally the younger viewers put Leno ahead for good in both demos and households in early 1996. None of this, of course, has anything to do with the relative quality of the two shows. Letterman has effectively reinvented himself -- something he did twice at NBC and has now done twice at CBS, by my count -- and is as satisfying to watch as ever. Jay is Jay, and I'm sure his partisans will write to let me know why he's still Nielsen's favorite.

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Please sir, might I have more? By John Zipperer

• Oh, myyy! Dick Enberg headed to CBS [ Read it ]
• BET competitor focuses on the family [ Read it ]
• GO.com loses $1.06 billion in 1999 [ Read it ]

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Here's a little something for your trouble. ("Lateline"/Paramount TV) Reader mail This week I told readers who receive my free weekly e-mail summary of this website two things. (1.) I had paid ONElist, the new distributor of my mailing list, a $60 annual fee to remove the advertisements that ONElist usually tacks on to the end of each mailing. My concern was that if TV networks began advertising on TV Barn -- after all, I did categorize it for ONElist as a television list -- it could harm our editorial integrity. At the same time, (2). I suggested that readers could help support my efforts by patronizing the Amazon.com links scattered throughout TV Barn's pages. Each time someone buys something from Amazon, having entered through this portal, TV Barn is paid a small commission. These two announcements seemed entirely consistent to me, but not to this reader who wrote, "Not that I for a minute would question your actual ethics, but am I wrong to perceive an inconsistency in your deploring the ONElist ads while embracing the Amazon.com deal? Of the two, I think the ONElist ads posed LESS of a conflict of interest than the Amazon deal. With the ONElist ads, you could at least issue a boilerplate disclaimer that they were (like the ads that appear alongside your work in the Kansas City Star) sold and prepared by a staff totally independent of you; and that they covered the costs of distributing to the TVBarn list. With the Amazon deal, any book recommendations you issue now carry the possible appearance of conflict. How does a (hypothetically skeptical) reader know a recommendation isn't, at least partly, influenced by the possibility you'll get a kickback for its sale? Can that reader depend on you to trash potential bestsellers? "I think you'd do better to follow the lead of another pioneering (and well respected) e-mail columnist, Adam Engst of TidBITS: Invite readers to contribute a subscription fee voluntarily. I don't know the mechanics of dealing with Kagi from the creator's end; but from the consumer side, it's a no-brainer. And the concept leaves you beholden only to your readers." (continued) Picks to click. "Biography of the Year" ... silent "Buffy," unholy "Buffy" ... and a misty-eyed "West Wing" holiday special. Read my picks to click (and remember that times and channels are for Kansas City, so check your local listings) Previously on TV Barn:
14 December: In praise of on-screen bugs
13 December: Jay and Dave and the Nielsens
10 December: Japanimation goes American
9 December: A pox on Fox
8 December: Oprah losing power?
7 December: Sci-fi predicts the future
6 December: Twentieth TV shutting down "Buffy" websites
3 December: New edition for TV's best read The daily digest ... for Wednesday, Dec. 15: The other shoe dropped at NBC Sports: Marv Albert, as expected, will return to his rightful place as the lead play-by-play announcer for the NBA on NBC during the 2000-01 season. He'll replace Bob Costas, who will concentrate on Olympics coverage. Earlier this week, 24-year NBC veteran Dick Enberg announced he's moving to CBS so he can call football games again ... The new issue of "P.O.V." magazine details shocking behind-the-scenes fudgery at "Change of Heart." That's the relationship game show hosted by Chuck Woolery where one member of a dating couple tries dating someone else and seeing if s/he has a change of heart about staying with his or her partner. Only, as a "P.O.V." intern who appeared on the show now charges, sometimes those couples aren't couples but just two good-looking contestants matched by the show's producers before air time. Somehow, I don't see a congressional investigation arising from this revelation. On this date ... in 1983, "Automan" makes its debut on ABC, starring Desi Arnaz Jr. as a geeky police officer who creates a computerized alter ego that can walk through walls, protect his creator from gunfire, and of course network with other machines in times of need. This credulity-straining series is deleted in April. On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Other TV shows we ripped off from Britain [ Read it ]
• "Firing Line" shutting down after 33 seasons [ Read it ]
• Billy Crystal, your Oscars host once again [ Read it ]
• New Bochco med drama to air Wednesdays on CBS [ Read it ]
• It's not just Letterman: Nets skewing older [ Read it ]
• CBS "12 Days of Christmas" a big hit [ Read it ]
• RELATED: Charles Schulz retiring in Jan. [ Read it ]
• More on Marv Albert's promotion [ Read it ]
• This just in from Anaheim [ Read it ]
• GE not selling NBC, and that's final! [ Read it ]

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(continued from previous page) Here's my response to the reader:

We went around the block with this when Salon.com came online, brought to you by Borders Books, right? And we determined after a short while that Salon's editorial integrity was strong enough to withstand any potential ravages of e-commerce, did we not? What I'm doing at TV Barn doesn't even approach that level of promotional tie-in. The most copies I've moved of a book was 12 for The Showrunners, and that was an unqualified rave (plus a help-me-out for an author I'd never met just because I liked his book and thought his publisher was guilty of underpromotion). For those dozen sales I think I reaped eight bucks. Now just the other day somebody used a tvbarn link to go to amazon, eventually made their way over to the electronics section and bought a $300 gizmo. My take was, I think, again eight bucks. For a product I didn't even list. Which is worse? I would answer "neither," which effectively neutralizes the payola angle. So do I select books and write short news items with an eye toward linking to Amazon? Sometimes. But (a) that's no different than a radio station or community newspaper saying, "Please patronize our sponsors," (b) I would never accept an offer by an interested party to cover a product of theirs in exchange for compensation of any sort, (c) my readers are smart, like you, and they have bulls--t detectors. If I make a bulls--t reference to a bulls--t book, it's not going to look good for me, and I certainly am not going to reap any cybercash from it. And I have, in fact, trashed at least one potential bestseller (And the Crowd Goes Wild).

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Costas gets back into the talk game He won't be interviewing the likes of Anthony Quinn -- try the attorney for Rae Carruth instead -- but it is nice to see that Bob Costas is returning to the talk-show circuit. NBC has given the veteran sportscaster permission to develop a new weekly interview show for HBO that will be modeled on the topical-interview format of "Nightline" (which is to say, it is modeled on "The MacNeil/Lehrer Report"). Costas and HBO Sports chief Ross Greenburg will develop the series, which will premier in February 2001, reports the AP. Greenburg will now have a companion piece to his terrific newsmagazine, "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel," and will arguably be getting better stuff out of both Costas and Gumbel than their main employers do. Previously on TV Barn:
15 December: Reader mail
14 December: In praise of on-screen bugs
13 December: Jay and Dave and the Nielsens
10 December: Japanimation goes American
9 December: A pox on Fox
8 December: Oprah losing power?
7 December: Sci-fi predicts the future
6 December: Twentieth TV shutting down "Buffy" websites The daily digest ... for Thursday, Dec. 16: Last night, as we were driving home from Barnes & Noble (of all places), Mrs. TV Barn pointed out that I have a story coming out later this week about the current rash of dot-com TV ads which includes prominent mention of the current campaign for amazon.com. Given TV Barn's status as an amazon.com associate, asked my wife, would readers see this as a shill? Uh, said her husband, I, ah, hadn't thought of that ... So by the time the story goes up this weekend, TV Barn will no longer be an amazon.com associate! We're headed over to Powell's, the best darned new and used bookstore in the whole U. S. of A. ... Also speaking of oops, Chris Jagger, of course, is the host of "Change of Heart," not Chuck Woolery as stated here yesterday. On this date ... in 1997, over 700 Japanese children suffer nausea and seizures of a condition deemed "light epilepsy" or "Nintendo epilepsy" after watching a strobe effect from a cartoon. It is announced within the week that the show will soon be imported to America, without the "dangerous effect." The cartoon's name? Now it's the adults who get sick watching the show, called "Pokemon." On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Winter TV schedules shuffles [ Read it ]
• "SNL" Chanukah skit may never air again [ Read it ]
• Gov't weighs broadcasters' digital obligations [ Read it ]
• Costas, HBO to do "Nightline"-like show [ Read it ]

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"PJ's" for Christmas So what do you do when a show you plan to bring back in January -- or even later -- hands you a Christmas episode? If you're Fox and the show is "The PJ's," you get it on the air during December. Thus, the claymated comedy starring the voice of Eddie Murphy returns 9 p.m. Friday for one episode only. Murphy and the other producers of "The PJ's" couldn't have known that their show would be off Fox's fall schedule when they hatched their scheme for a parody of Dr. Seuss' "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." Given the long lead times required to produce an animated show, the script had to be done long before Fox's fall schedule announcements, in which network chief Doug Herzog (to the surprise of many) opted to hold off on "The PJ's" until at least midseason. In the episode, entitled "How the Super Stoled Christmas," Thurgood (Murphy) makes a devil's deal with the local pawn shop in order to buy Muriel (Loretta Devine) a computer for Christmas. In no time, he's stealing goodies from under his tenants' trees. It's nice to see Dr. Seuss' tale is already deemed a classic worthy of interpretation -- they've even got a riff of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" sung by a Thurl Ravenscroft soul brother. I give it a pick to click. It might even become a holiday tradition. Provided "The PJ's" is around next year at this time. Previously on TV Barn:
16 December: Costas gets back into the talk game
15 December: Reader mail
14 December: In praise of on-screen bugs
13 December: Jay and Dave and the Nielsens
10 December: Japanimation goes American
9 December: A pox on Fox
8 December: Oprah losing power?
7 December: Sci-fi predicts the future
6 December: Twentieth TV shutting down "Buffy" websites The daily digest ... for the weekend of Dec. 17-19: Calling all tapers! I'm looking for somebody to volunteer to tape the new DirecTV channel 375 -- WorldLink TV -- so that I can get a look at this new international venture of InterNews and ITVS. There's TV graft in it for you so write me now ... Here's a press release with more information on WorldLink TV ... EchoStar's DISH Network also announced some of its educational set-aside channels: NASA Channel, C-SPAN, the Eternal Word Television Network and Trinity Broadcasting Network. Not a very impressive list so far, but there's more to come; EchoStar says it's in talks with "nearly 20 programmers" about filling up the remaining slots ... CBS is crowing again: David Letterman, in repeats, rated 9 percent higher last week than at the same time a year ago, when all-new shows were airing. Craig Kilborn rated 6 percent higher in viewers than Tom Snyder did a year ago, but was up 20 percent with those ever-desirable young adults. On this date ... in 1969, one of the great moments in late night television history occurs as an estimated 50 million viewers tune in to watch singer Tiny Tim and his 17-year-old-bride Miss Vicky exchange vows on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson." December 18: in 1963, "The Alan Brady Show" presents its Christmas show as Laura, Rob, Buddy, Sally, Mel, and the rest of the "Dick Van Dyke Show" cast perform classic vaudeville routines and songs. Sally sings, "Santa, Send a Fella" while little Ritchie performs "The Little Drummer Boy." December 19: in 1970, on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," though she'd planned to be home for Christmas, Mary Richards gives up her vacation so everyone else can spend time with their loved ones. She spends her time alone at the TV station singing "White Christmas" along with the TV, performing a dance from the Nutcracker and having a lonely conversation with Charlie out at the transmitter. Panicked by a hang-up phone call and the elevator coming up in what should be an empty building, she's soon comforted by Ted, Murray, and Mr. Grant and realizes she already is "home -- with her new family." On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Don't call it the Triplecast:
  NBC to farm Olympics out to MSNBC, CNBC [ Read it ]
• "Miss America" airdate may be moved [ Read it ]
• NBC rethinks decision to pull Chanukah sketch [ Read it ]
• Ted Turner sez: I'd like to buy NBC! And, and -- DirecTV too!! [ Read it ]
• "Drew Carey" re-ups in $105 mil deal [ Read it ]
• DISH Network has another record month [ Read it ]
• On-air promos driving viewers to Web sites [ Read it ]
• NFL goes after iCraveTV [ Read it ]

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Amazon.com's TV ads: All that's missing is Mitch Miller's bouncing ball. (Amazon/FCB Worldwide) And now a word from our sponsor dot com Oh, those dot-companies and their dot-commercials! When will they finally run out of venture capital and stop barraging us with their forgettable, lookalike ads? Internet companies spent 15 times what they did in '98 on TV advertising this year, and already more than a dozen dot-coms have bought ad time for Super Bowl 2000. Some 4,000 dot-coms advertising in some way, shape or form -- how can anyone expect to keep track of them all? And why do so few of them (Amazon.com being a notable exception) seem to know how to make an effective TV commercial? ... Read my story in Monday's Kansas City Star (P.S. TV Barn is no longer affiliated with Amazon.com. Most of my book links have been switched to Powells.com and the remaining Amazon links no longer ka-ching for TV Barn.) Picks to click. An absorbing new "Nova," a new miniseries about "The Twelve Apostles" and a special that argues the millennium is just a drop in the bucket. Read this week's picks to click (and remember times and channels are for Kansas City only) Previously on TV Barn:
17 December: "The PJ's" return for Christmas
16 December: Costas gets back into the talk game
15 December: Reader mail
14 December: In praise of on-screen bugs
13 December: Jay and Dave and the Nielsens
10 December: Japanimation goes American
9 December: A pox on Fox
On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Next on UPN's highbrow agenda: monster trucks [ Read it ]
• TV ad loaded with satanic messages? [ Read it ]
• Yet another arrest chalked up to "America's Most Wanted" [ Read it ]
• Still fighting over Kuralt's fishing cabin [ Read it ]
• DirecTV's NFL package up for grabs [ Read it ]
• Real-life mobsters love "The Sopranos" -- and here's
  the surveillance tape to prove it [ Read it ]

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"Battlestar Galactica": Gone but not forgotten -- and possibly not gone, either. The ultimate TV space western The pick to click for this holiday season is a guilty pleasure. The Sci-Fi Channel will be airing 21 hours of "Battlestar Galactica" beginning 9 a.m. on Dec. 24 and running until 6 a.m. Christmas morning. That's 21 hours of 1978-styled hair, top-notch special effects (even after 22 years), lots of big-name stars, a few hokey stories, a few more intriguing stories, and melodrama thick enough to cut with a laser. So forget about the midnight candlelight service; stay home and watch some good, old-fashioned space opera. This is prime time for "Galactica" buffs. Not only are there two competing film-and-television revivals in the works (one of which, headed up by series creator Glen Larson, will debut first in Imax form), but there are new books and comics on the shelves, too, exploring further the mythology of the short-lived ABC series. (continued) Picks to click. An absorbing new "Nova," a new miniseries about "The Twelve Apostles" and a special that argues the millennium is just a drop in the bucket. Read this week's picks to click (and remember times and channels are for Kansas City only) The daily digest ... for Tuesday, Dec. 21: The Los Angeles Times has published an 11-chapter narrative of the paper's stinky profit sharing arrangement with Staples Center. The whole megillah, written by the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning media writer David Shaw, starts here ... For those of you intent on reading my every published thought, I contributed to this weekend's travel section roundup of the 18 cities our writers visited as part of a two-year "Hands On" series. Here's the roundup and here's my original article, both on the city of New Orleans ... One of the first TV news talent scouts, Don Fitzpatrick, fired his staff and closed down his prestigious offices in San Francisco this weekend. But his daily newsletter "Shoptalk" will survive and Fitzpatrick plan to concentrate on his Internet site tvspy.com. Previously on TV Barn:
20 December: Dot-com ad fever
17 December: "The PJ's" return for Christmas
16 December: Costas gets back into the talk game
15 December: Reader mail
14 December: In praise of on-screen bugs
13 December: Jay and Dave and the Nielsens
10 December: Japanimation goes American
On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Nick is year's most-watched cable channel (again) [ Read it ]
• NBC gets into hi-speed Internet biz [ Read it ]
• AP writers rate decade's 10 best shows [ Read it ]
• ABC, CBS, Fox to combine newsgathering ops [ Read it ]
• New Year's Eve TV roundup [ Read it ]
• "South Park" creators plan Web cartoon [ Read it ]

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THE KANSAS CITY STAR
NIGHT AND DAY IN NEW ORLEANS
REST UP BEFORE YOU GO, BECAUSE THIS CITY
SIMPLY DEMANDS THAT YOU STAY UP LATE
BUT GET UP EARLY; GOING TO...
Sunday, May 3, 1998
Section: TRAVEL
Page: K1
By AARON BARNHART, Staff Writer NEW ORLEANS - Before my first visit to New Orleans, I was led to believe I was entering a nocturn's paradise, a place where revelers stayed out all night and spent the day catching up on their Z's - or downing a big breakfast, Big Easy-style, and then catching up on their Z's. That, I soon learned, was only half the story. It's true that much of the allure of New Orleans is because of its night life. But unless you're a college kid whose sights are set on the unending frat party that is Bourbon Street, you simply must find a way to balance your time here between sun and sin, darkness and light. Otherwise, you'll miss out on tours of the nearby swamps and leisurely strolls down Magazine Street and cemetery gazing and lunch at Uglesich's and bizarre street theater in the French Quarter and Mardi Gras World and all the other attractions that are best viewed, or can only be viewed, in New Orleans by day. Friendly to tourists Founded in 1718, New Orleans sprang to life in the early 19th century thanks to the steamboat, and by 1840 it was the fourth largest city in the United States. With the people and the commerce came gambling dens and bordellos, and the economies of business and pleasure have been intertwined ever since. It seemed very New Orleans for me to send e-mail from a cybercafe run by a techno-wise former stripper. The layout of the city is very tourist-friendly. It's compact, has two streetcar lines and good taxi service, is inexpensive by other cities' standards, and its weather is pleasant to pleasantly muggy in the fall and winter. It is one of the country's top six magnets for conventions, thanks largely to the expanded Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, which was built for the 1984 World's Fair on the banks of the Mississippi River. But if you're expecting a big howdy when you arrive, you may be disappointed. For all of its charm, New Orleans is too jaded and too urbane to offer that kind of Southern hospitality. My New York friends tell me New Orleans is the only Southern city where they feel welcome, and it's not hard to see why. I struck up a conversation with the proprietor of a ritzy antiques store, an older gentleman, and learned he was a retired real-estate mogul, eight-figure wealthy and jealously attached to his anonymity. He moved to New Orleans two years ago for the climate but soon found that the culture was to his liking as well. "People here don't give a damn if you approve or you don't approve," he told me. "They won't accept you, but they will tolerate you." Some say that diffidence is the reason New Orleans has a reputation as a cesspool of crime and corruption and citizens who either can't or won't do anything about it. The juxtaposition of civic pride and urban decay is like night and day in New Orleans. You can read it in the tourist guides, which routinely warn out-of-towners to take cabs when traveling beyond the French Quarter and never to visit cemeteries alone, even at high noon. Those cautions notwithstanding, there's a certain necessity to touring New Orleans on foot, as you'll discover after larding up on two or three days' worth of local cooking. And with two other well-known districts, Faubourg Marigny and the Garden District, rubbing up next to the French Quarter, there will be plenty of New Orleans for you to see. The Garden District is a good place to start your day, especially if it's a Sunday and you've just waddled out of Commander's Palace after one of its fabled jazz brunches. It's a short taxi or streetcar ride from the French Quarter and your best introduction to historic gentille New Orleans. The home to authors Anne Rice and Andrei Codrescu, the Garden District is 60 blocks of Northern exposure, a veritable coffee-table book of 19th-century mansions that would not be out of place in the tonier parts of Kansas City or suburban New York City. Many homes are gated by intriguing ornamental iron or tucked inside layers of year-round Southern greenery. And, of course, many feature lush, interesting gardens visible from the sidewalk. Flanking this pampered neighborhood (which, like the French Quarter, is historically protected) are two more industrial-looking streets, Magazine and St. Charles. Magazine Street extends uptown from the French Quarter, through the Garden District and all the way to the bend in the river at Audubon Park. All along the way you'll find antique shops, eateries, flea markets, used-record stores and other eclectic places interspersed among the lovely homes. The shops along Magazine tend to be less pricey than those in the French Quarter, especially on Lower Magazine (the stretch between the Garden District and downtown). Follow the jogging path to Audubon Park's north end and pick up the St. Charles streetcar, a poky 107-year-old relic that runs so gently along the grassy median of St. Charles Street that joggers usually can be seen running in the rail beds between cars. You can continue riding uptown to the 90-degree turn the streetcar makes onto Carrollton - although I found a dearth of interesting places to visit there - or take a scenic 45-minute ride back to Canal Street downtown. (A new streetcar system runs along the city's riverfront and will get you from one end of the French Quarter to the other in a few minutes, albeit not by the scenic route.) Mollusks and muffulettas The French Quarter is a good place to arrive near lunchtime; the only question is where. Only 12 blocks long and six blocks wide, the French Quarter is dense with restaurants and cafes. The French Quarter also has a cheerfully inebriated mood by day that I prefer to its seedier evening side. At Acme Oyster Bar, you can belly up and watch the employees shelling seafood while you wolf down a buttery oyster po'boy and Dixie beer. If you prefer a bag lunch, Central Grocery is the home of the muffuletta, a huge sandwich piled high with meats, cheese and olives. The French Quarter is also home to Antoine's, Arnaud's, Brennan's and Galatoire's, the upper-crust restaurants where the city's fat cats have gone for decades to get fatter. Now for your health stroll. If I were you I'd pass up Bourbon Street - still reeling from last night's hangover - and spend the afternoon browsing the antique shops and galleries of Royal Street. Yes, the items there are priced well beyond your means, but the proprietors tend to keep their distance and there's plenty to look at. At the corner of Royal and Orleans you'll come across St. Anthony's Garden; head toward the river and visit the 200-year-old Presbytere, which houses a museum of the city's history and numerous local artifacts. Next door is St. Louis Cathedral, the nation's oldest. Toward dusk you'll want to walk or take the riverfront streetcar to Esplanade Street at the eastern edge of the French Quarter. That is where Frenchmen Street begins, the zigzag that takes you into the heart of Faubourg Marigny, the funky, and in places frowzy, neighborhood that's attracted many newer venues that couldn't afford the spiraling French Quarter rents. Here is where one of the newer soul-food diners, Praline Connection, won me over just with its side dishes of macaroni and cheese and greens. (The stuffed bell pepper and pralines afterward weren't bad, either.) Two blocks down and just off Frenchmen, I chose an unpretentious 24-hour diner called La Peniche more or less at random. There I had delectable Cajun catfish with wild rice (total for dinner, with wine: $17) and left convinced that I simply could not eat a bad meal in this town. Listen to the music Frenchmen Street also is home to two terrific music places: Cafe Brasil, which plays host to a variety of groups on its espresso stage (no cover charge except on weekends); and Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro, where Ellis Marsalis, father of Wynton and Branford, is a Friday-night fixture. The cover there is $15 plus drinks and is worth every penny. Of all the jazz joints scattered along the French Quarter, Preservation Hall is the best-known and also the most inspiring. Started by jazz enthusiasts in 1961, it offers, for a nominal cover charge, the chance to crowd into a dark room with dirty wooden floors and pegboard on the walls and listen to old-style Dixieland jazz performed by old-timers. Passers-by on the street invariably press up against the window looking in; it is a nightly celebration of America's music in an atmosphere befitting its pre-commercialized roots. As the late evening widens into early morning, it's time to treat yourself to Cafe du Monde in the French Market. An outdoor venue that's hopping 24 hours a day even in January, Cafe du Monde serves coffee and beignets, hot doughy manna doused in powdered sugar. Some people prefer to start their days with this New Orleans specialty, but I found it the ideal nightcap, the strong, smooth java giving me just enough lift to get me home, where I invariably fell into bed at the party-pooping hour of 1 a.m. Let the good times roll without me; I have a cemetery to see tomorrow. Aaron Barnhart is The Star's television writer. Let the good times roll In New Orleans, home to Paul Prudhomme, Eggs Sardou and deep-fried crabmeat mushrooms, the keys to successful living can be summarized as follows: Eat. But leave behind your Zagat guide, which won't tell you about the gumbo with sausage and chicken livers at the creole restaurant Dooky Chase. Drink. Outdoor drinking is absolutely tolerated, even encouraged in some places (like Bourbon Street). But expect a plastic cup. And be merry. When don't the people of New Orleans throw a party? Even an ostensible fitness event like the Mardi Gras Marathon is an occasion for putting on pounds. Best line heard after breaking a dish: the waiter at the classy Commander's Palace who said, "I'm just going to set that down for a while." That's why they sing the blues: The Navy closed down Storyville, the district where the improvisational music known as "jass" originated, in 1917; as a result, musicians "King" Oliver and Louis Armstrong eventually moved to other cities. Even the lowly swamp - symbol of the business swindle - is valued here. You'll find plenty of motorized boat tours of the swamps that surround New Orleans. Less well-known are the two-hour canoe tours offered by a Mr. Denny (504-643-4839). Not surprisingly, the Audubon Zoo throws a Swamp Festival every October. The story of the Amistad has been kept alive by the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, one of the nation's largest archives of African-American history. Hailing a cab is like taking a 10-minute personal tour of New Orleans. You usually get an entertaining cabbie whose running commentary is fleet as well. Best taxi service is United Cab (522-9771). You can hear the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in the French Quarter - or this Friday you can hear it here at the Folly Theater. Tickets cost $23 and $25; call 474-4444. A city of dreams that changed two lives It is not exaggerating to say that Kiki and Richard Lucente's lives changed when they began spending vacations in New Orleans. Kiki, proprietor of Kiki's Bon Ton Maison on Westport Road, and Richard, head of the Bon Ton Soul Accordion Band, owe their livelihoods to the Crescent City and the indelible impressions it left on her cooking and his music. Each year the couple put on a Crawfish Fiesta in May and an Alligator Festival in August, traditions that celebrate the city they visited for the first time a quarter-century ago. Back then Richard was just starting to noodle on the accordion. He'd discovered the music of zydeco pioneer Clifton Chenier and, after learning that Chenier lived in New Orleans, took Kiki there to hear him perform. "We went and fell in love with the scene," Richard said. "I couldn't believe it the first time we drove into town there. We stayed in the (French) Quarter and just looked around. It was amazing. It changed our lives." Richard would eventually give up his first love of art for his new passion, and Kiki eventually would craft a restaurant in the style of one of their favorite dives, Uglesich's. "Places like that we really liked - nothing fancy, just really funky joints," Richard said. Kiki counts among her other favorites Commander's Palace and Casamento's, an oyster bar near the Garden District. "There's nothing better than a really good fried oyster," Kiki said. Most of the Lucentes' favorite places to eat have been around forever, and for good reason. "Restaurants set such high standards and they have to be followed, otherwise you're out of business immediately," Kiki said. "I think that's true for many cities now, but it's been true of New Orleans for a long time." The couple's routine usually takes them outof the city aftera few days,toward Cajun country. But New Orleans is still the place that exerts a special pull on the Lucentes. "New Orleans and Miami and San Francisco to us are places you can go in the U.S. that make you feel like you're someplace else, make you feel like you've crossed a line into some other little world that doesn't exist anywhere else," Richard said. "If you love it like we do, it never gets old. Although we don't go there as often as we used to, it's still our main destination." Going to New Orleans Getting there: TWA has six flights daily to New Orleans through St. Louis; Southwest flies five times a day through Houston. Best round-trip prices start around $200. Where to stay: During festivals and conventions, lodging rates can soar like an untied party balloon. In the summer months the rates wilt in the muggy conditions - but how much worse can it be than Kansas City in the summer? The city's bed and breakfasts are generally in older homes in the three major districts: the French Quarter, Faubourg Marigny and the Garden District. Rates start as low as $50/night and can run to $250/night for deluxe housing. Reserve through Bed and Breakfast Inc. at (800) 729-4640; they'll fax you details about each B&B you're interested in. I stayed at the Parkview Marigny, 726 Frenchmen St., where proprietor Larry Molaison has carefully restored the original appearance of this tall Creole home. It couldn't be closer to the haunts of Faubourg Marigny, and Molaison was a font of information about New Orleans. Rooms are $90 to $110. If you'd prefer to stay in the Garden District, ask for the Chimes, 1146 Constantinople, midway between the St. Charles streetcar line and shopping on Magazine Street. Jill Abbyad keeps several cozy cottages outside her home with husband Charles, who's a maitre d' at Arnaud's. Rooms are $89 to $120. New Orleans also features small, affordable "guest houses" like the Josephine in the Garden District, with rooms from $95 to $145 (800-779-6361) and Hotel Villa Convento in the French Quarter with rates from $89 to $155 (504-522-1793). There's a range of acceptable hotel choices inside the French Quarter, from Le Richelieu, with rooms from $95 to $150 (800-535-9653); to the cozy Dauphine Orleans, with on-site parking, rooms from $179 and a $95 summer rate (800-521-7111); to the stunningly appointed rooms of the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel, which features a rooftop pool and rates that start at $189 for a queen bed (504-529-5333). Where to eat: There's great food around most any corner, but here are two institutions to search out: For an unforgettable lunch, it's Uglesich's, a lunch-only dive shoehorned into a building at 1238 Baronne St. in the Warehouse District. You'll spend an hour or more standing elbow-to-elbow in the waiting area, munching stuffed artichoke buttons and swigging Dixie beer. Chat up the person next to you; you'll probably want to share your table with them to speed things up; (504) 523-8571. Dooky Chase is an exquisite creole restaurant a short cab ride from the French Quarter at 2301 Orleans Ave. Try lunch, or call for a reservation for dinner; (504) 821-0600. Events: Mardi Gras, naturally. Parades along Canal Street begin three weeks before Lent. The whole shebang culminates on Fat Tuesday (Feb. 16 next year) with parades, costumes, beads thrown from the balconies of Bourbon Street and - we're told - conspicuous drinking. The next most popular event after Mardi Gras is the Jazz Fest, which is going on as you read this. Set for two weekends in late April and early May, the Jazz Fest features practically every popular musician on earth who's even thought about playing jazz. Museums: Like the city itself, the museums of New Orleans are one of a kind. The world's only private museum dedicated to voodoo, the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum requires a tour to make sense of the strange artifacts packed into its tiny rooms. In the French Quarter at 724 Dumaine St.; (504) 523-7685. A quick ferry hop across the Mississippi River brings you to Algiers, home to Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World, a weird and wonderful warehouse stuffed with giant papier-mache figures and props used in Mardi Gras parades. Open seven days from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; tours ($8.50) on the hour. The more traditional Louisiana State Museum is made up of several historic landmarks in the French Quarter. Five of them are open to the public, including the Presbytere, 1850 House, Cabildo and Arsenal, all a stone's throw from each other on Jackson Square. A combination ticket gets you into all of them. Cemeteries and walking tours: For safety's sake, visitors are implored not to visit the city's historic cemeteries by themselves but to go with a tour group. The voodoo-oriented Magic Walking Tour leaves the Pirate's Alley Cafe on Jackson Square twice a day; (504) 588-9693. The nonprofit preservation group Save Our Cemeteries stages a more conventional walking tour four days a week; 1-888-721-7493 for info. Both tours charge admission. The National Park Service leads daily tours of the French Quarter and Garden District. You must pick up a pass in advance at the Park Service visitor's bureau, 916 N. Peters St. Information: The New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau at (504) 566-5011; www.nawlins.com. The New Orleans Welcome Center is in the heart of the French Quarter at 529 St. Ann St.; (504) 566-5031. A couple of good guidebooks are Access: New Orleans (Access Press, 1996) and the pocket-sized Lonely Planet: New Orleans by Robert Raburn (Lonely Planet, 1997). All content © 1998 THE KANSAS CITY STAR and may not be republished without permission. Close this window

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Andy Kaufman
is still dead Rumors about his non-death from lung cancer 15 years ago notwithstanding, Andy Kaufman in death has continued to loom larger and larger than life. We conveniently forget that he was at his nadir of celebrity toward the end -- out getting thumped by some no-name wrestler in Indiana or Tennessee; persona non grata on the talk shows, something he always blamed on that jerk Tony Clifton; star of exactly one feature film, an embarrassing dud that virtually ensured he wouldn't make another. What would've been had Andy lived is something we can only speculate about -- as I do in this piece from the Kansas City Star. For a different point of view, you'll also want to read "Andy Kaufman: Over-Indulged Nutcase," by my pal Paul Harris. And don't forget to visit The Andy Kaufman Home Page, a terrific resource for anyone wanting to know more about Andy and his work. Picks to click. An absorbing new "Nova," a new miniseries about "The Twelve Apostles" and a special that argues the millennium is just a drop in the bucket. Read this week's picks to click (and remember times and channels are for Kansas City only) The daily digest ... for Wednesday, Dec. 22: Harvey Pekar of the famed "American Splendor" comic strip, and erstwhile David Letterman guest, rips into Dave in the course of reviewing a new CD of the comedy of the late Bill Hicks. You may recall that Hicks had his appearance on "Late Show" cut in the fall of 1993 because the show's producers found his act too non-mainstream for their liking ... Here's yet another British game show being adapted for U.S. audiences -- what is that, four now? ... Reader Emile St. Claire writes, "I read your article on 'Action,' and with regards to HBO optioning the show, I wanted to let you know that fans are trying to make that happen. We've started writing letters to get 'Action' back on the air on a cable network ... or if nothing else get the 5 unaired episodes released on video/DVD." Good idea. Here's their website. And kudos to Entertainment Weekly for naming the show's star Jay Mohr one of 99 reasons to remember 1999. Previously on TV Barn:
21 December: "Battlestar Galactica" rides again
20 December: Dot-com ad fever
17 December: "The PJ's" return for Christmas
16 December: Costas gets back into the talk game
15 December: Reader mail
14 December: In praise of on-screen bugs
13 December: Jay and Dave and the Nielsens
10 December: Japanimation goes American
On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Narrow ratings win for CBS [ Read it ]
• NAACP calls off its boycott [ Read it ]
• Hillary calls for uniform ent. ratings [ Read it ]
• "SNL" Chanukah sketch stays, sez NBC [ Read it ]
• MSNBC carriage zooms to 68 million [ Read it ]
• Nat'l Geographic channel coming to U.S. [ Read it ]
• Are you ready for some "Sopranos"? [ Read it ]
• DirecTV adds local channels in 4 cities [ Read it ]
• Insanely great year for CNBC's Insana [ Read it ]
• Hey! I saw that New York actor in another New York show! [ Read it ]
• Chicago paper kills "Simpsons" comix [ Read it ]
• Showtime radio ad sparks furor [ Read it ] (second item)
• News cooperative targets CNN's [ Read it ]

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But if you think having blue hair makes any difference at all, read this plot summary. Reader mail I half expected this would come after my recent feature on Japanese animation: Japanese hate mail. "We are three really p---ed off otaku!" reads the letter, which is signed by Hiroe Ogawa, star of an adult anime called F3 part 2. "What kind of anime do you watch! We own over 300 titles and we have seen over 700 titles for our viewing satisfaction. There is only one incident of a big-busted blonde girl we could remember and that was Rio from 'Burn Up W'! She is the only blonde haired big busted anime girl we know! Most girls in anime have bright orange, blue, and green hair. Japanese Animation is meant to have complex plots; it is not made for the feeble minded american kids who have short attention spans and minimum intelligence due to the fact of TV watching. Pokemon, which you so highly praise, is not even the real thing. Many episodes which were aired in the U.S. were censored or dropped completely. Changed names of characters. It was a very poor anime for opinions to be made justifiable. Violence is common in every form of entertainment." (continued) The source. We pass this along from our pal Mike James of the world-famous NewsBlues site: "Want to know the mailing address of the ABC affiliate in Duluth, or the name of the News Director at the CBS station in Dothan? Want to send an e-mail to the WFTV news department or search for an old friend who you think is now the General Manager of a station somewhere in North Dakota? SourceBook is a new and extremely powerful online search engine by Excite, listing the current physical and mailing addresses, telephone and fax numbers, e-mail and web site addresses of more than 1450 U.S. television stations. The database includes the correctly spelled names of News Directors and General Managers, PLUS the current station ownership, including links to up-to-the minute filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (so you can follow the money). SourceBook allows you to search by station call letters, state, city, network affiliation or ownership. And, yes, you can even hunt for individuals. ALL of this information is constantly updated and revised...and the good news is, it's FREE...for a limited time. Visit www.newsblues.com and give it a test drive. The Excite SourceBook is the most powerful tool now available to the professional broadcaster...an absolute must for anyone with an interest in the world of TV News." Take it from TV Barn -- SourceBook is one cool tool. This has been an unpaid testimonial ... The daily digest ... for Thursday, Dec. 23: I watch The Weather Channel with the volume muted all the time -- but then, I always have the luxury of turning the sound back on. For those viewers who don't, however, the network is adding closed captioning five hours per day starting Jan. 1 (7 to 9 a.m. and 8 to 11 p.m.), increasing to 10 hours in June and 20 hours in 2001 ... One TV network that's not being blitzed with dot-com TV ads is Spanish-language Univision. But it's not discrimination: Univision execs are refusing all dot-com ads because they've got their own Internet plans ... Producers at Fox's "The X-Files" said this week they plan to incorporate "Cops," another Fox series, into an episode scheduled to air during February sweeps. The episode will be shot in video rather than film and will feature at least two guys with their shirts off. (I made up the second part.) Previously on TV Barn:
22 Dec: Andy Kaufman
21 Dec: "Battlestar Galactica" rides again
20 Dec: Dot-com ad fever
17 Dec: "The PJ's" return for Christmas
16 Dec: Costas gets back into the talk game
15 Dec: Reader mail
14 Dec: In praise of on-screen bugs
13 Dec: Jay and Dave and the Nielsens
10 Dec: Japanimation goes American
On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Latest TV news from ZENtertainment [ Read it ]
• No surprise: Comcast buys rest of Jones [ Read it ]
• Time sez Monster.com had best TV ad in '99 [ Read it ]
• Priestley booked on DUI charge [ Read it ]
• "Frasier" boosts NBC to 18-49 win [ Read it ]
• 10 pounds of TV in a 2-pound bag [ Read it ]
• Columbine killers' vid may air in Jan. [ Read it ]
• Court TV to launch "Biography" for cons [ Read it ]
• DISH Network adds local Twin Cities stations [ Read it ]
• Risque 7-Up ad nixed for Super Bowl [ Read it ]
• B.J. Honeycutt decries death penalty ... [ Read it ]
• ... while real-life Trapper John dies [ Read it ]

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(cont'd from previous page) Longtime reader Nick James writes, "We get Letterman here in Australia on network television and Leno on cable. Being a Dave fan myself, I think the latest resurgence in his popularity could be due in part to the increased banter between himself and Paul at the top of the show. Sometimes Paul appears to have no idea what's going on, but often he says something so unexpected that it is one of the few times that Dave appears genuinely amused. It's usually after one of Dave's anecdotes about his 'personal life' (e.g., 'Why is it that everyone that talks to you starts off with "uhhhh"?'), or whilst watching a train go by during the recent hilarious 'open mike' section of the show ('Maybe someone could jump off that train and do a quick five minutes"). He's the perfect straight man to Dave." And always was ... "Perhaps Dave just has more loyal viewers," adds Guinnesgrl@aol.com. "I watched him on NBC, starting in college, and I didn't give a thought to sticking with NBC when they brought in that weenie Leno; maybe Dave's audience is getting older just because they've been watching from the beginning." In response to my recent article about the lack of minority contestants on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," Andy Rose writes, "I was surprised you didn't bring up 'The Price is Right.' I watch it when I can on my lunch break. It has the most incredibly diverse contestant pool I've ever seen, not only in terms of race, but also in terms of sex and age. Of course, 'Price' has the advantage of having no entrance requirement except being 18 years of age and being in the studio, so the producers have a much wider choice." Also, audience members are interviewed ahead of time in the waiting area, so the producers can assemble the mix of contestants they want. Bill Abelson writes, "Speaking of endangered great shows, how about 'It's Like, You Know'? This season (after a good debut last spring) it has been simply one of the funniest, most inspired comedies in the medium. The cast has quickly become endearing and the writing consistently fabulous. My fave episodes this year: the brilliant black and white flashback through Robbie's failed romance, the massage chair (ridden to ecstasy by both Lauren and Jennifer) episode, and last week's hysterical take on PMS, with both Lauren and Shrug on The Pill. Additionally, creator Peter Mehlman (always my favorite Seinfeld writer) has buttressed the staff with ex-Seinfeld vets like Carol Leifer, Suzy Greenberg, and Jill Franklyn (co-writer of 'The Yada Yada'). Is there any hope at all this comic treasure will survive the show-eating monster that is 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'?" In a word -- nope! The show is toast, as this article explains. David Carroll writes, "Your article on Andy Kaufman and the one by Paul Harris were right on the money. Like other baby boomers, I appreciated Andy at first, and kept trying to explain to my wife in the early '80s, just to hang on, maybe he would do something funny eventually. But repeatedly, he let me down. It's too bad he didn't 'get' 'Taxi.' The early years really do represent some of his great work. It's too bad Bob Zmuda or some of his other enablers encouraged him or at least allowed him to keep up his weird crap." And to my question, "What would Andy Kaufman be doing had he lived?" Michael Jones as usual has the answer: "It's clear to me that Andy would have had a bright future in politics. I think he would have made an ideal Reform Party candidate for public office, with the obnoxious Tony Clifton heckling him during every stump speech. He would never win any election (often losing by around 25,000 votes) but that, of course, would not be his point. The heightened level of agitation brought to rivals, the press and the electorate would be enough satisfaction. Then there's always the possibility he could do unhipper-than-thou commercial spots for dot-com companies. Viewers would never really know what product or service Andy was pushing, which would fit nicely with most dot-com advertising themes."

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Happy holidays! Next update will be Monday, Dec. 27. Until then, read my weekend viewing picks (bear in mind that Kansas City times and channels apply) -- or just switch off the set and have yourself a wonderful weekend.
But if you think having blue hair makes any difference at all, read this plot summary. Reader mail I half expected this would come after my recent feature on Japanese animation: Japanese hate mail. "We are three really p---ed off otaku!" reads the letter, which is signed by Hiroe Ogawa, star of an adult anime called F3 part 2. "What kind of anime do you watch! We own over 300 titles and we have seen over 700 titles for our viewing satisfaction. There is only one incident of a big-busted blonde girl we could remember and that was Rio from 'Burn Up W'! She is the only blonde haired big busted anime girl we know! Most girls in anime have bright orange, blue, and green hair. Japanese Animation is meant to have complex plots; it is not made for the feeble minded american kids who have short attention spans and minimum intelligence due to the fact of TV watching. Pokemon, which you so highly praise, is not even the real thing. Many episodes which were aired in the U.S. were censored or dropped completely. Changed names of characters. It was a very poor anime for opinions to be made justifiable. Violence is common in every form of entertainment." (continued) The source. We pass this along from our pal Mike James of the world-famous NewsBlues site: "Want to know the mailing address of the ABC affiliate in Duluth, or the name of the News Director at the CBS station in Dothan? Want to send an e-mail to the WFTV news department or search for an old friend who you think is now the General Manager of a station somewhere in North Dakota? SourceBook is a new and extremely powerful online search engine by Excite, listing the current physical and mailing addresses, telephone and fax numbers, e-mail and web site addresses of more than 1450 U.S. television stations. The database includes the correctly spelled names of News Directors and General Managers, PLUS the current station ownership, including links to up-to-the minute filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (so you can follow the money). SourceBook allows you to search by station call letters, state, city, network affiliation or ownership. And, yes, you can even hunt for individuals. ALL of this information is constantly updated and revised...and the good news is, it's FREE...for a limited time. Visit www.newsblues.com and give it a test drive. The Excite SourceBook is the most powerful tool now available to the professional broadcaster...an absolute must for anyone with an interest in the world of TV News." Take it from TV Barn -- SourceBook is one cool tool. This has been an unpaid testimonial ... The daily digest ... for Thursday, Dec. 23: I watch The Weather Channel with the volume muted all the time -- but then, I always have the luxury of turning the sound back on. For those viewers who don't, however, the network is adding closed captioning five hours per day starting Jan. 1 (7 to 9 a.m. and 8 to 11 p.m.), increasing to 10 hours in June and 20 hours in 2001 ... One TV network that's not being blitzed with dot-com TV ads is Spanish-language Univision. But it's not discrimination: Univision execs are refusing all dot-com ads because they've got their own Internet plans ... Producers at Fox's "The X-Files" said this week they plan to incorporate "Cops," another Fox series, into an episode scheduled to air during February sweeps. The episode will be shot in video rather than film and will feature at least two guys with their shirts off. (I made up the second part.) Previously on TV Barn:
22 Dec: Andy Kaufman
21 Dec: "Battlestar Galactica" rides again
20 Dec: Dot-com ad fever
17 Dec: "The PJ's" return for Christmas
16 Dec: Costas gets back into the talk game
15 Dec: Reader mail
14 Dec: In praise of on-screen bugs
13 Dec: Jay and Dave and the Nielsens
10 Dec: Japanimation goes American
On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Latest TV news from ZENtertainment [ Read it ]
• No surprise: Comcast buys rest of Jones [ Read it ]
• Time sez Monster.com had best TV ad in '99 [ Read it ]
• Priestley booked on DUI charge [ Read it ]
• "Frasier" boosts NBC to 18-49 win [ Read it ]
• 10 pounds of TV in a 2-pound bag [ Read it ]
• Columbine killers' vid may air in Jan. [ Read it ]
• Court TV to launch "Biography" for cons [ Read it ]
• DISH Network adds local Twin Cities stations [ Read it ]
• Risque 7-Up ad nixed for Super Bowl [ Read it ]
• B.J. Honeycutt decries death penalty ... [ Read it ]
• ... while real-life Trapper John dies [ Read it ]

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Light the lights If the Odyssey Network hasn't been added to your cable grid yet, it soon will. Backed by two of the best-known names in family entertainment -- Hallmark and Jim Henson Company -- Odyssey is finally emerging as a contender for your attention after more than a decade as a little-watched religious network (known variously in the past as VISN, VISN/ACTS and the Faith & Values Channel). If you ask me, there's one reason Odyssey ought to be on everyone's cable system. It's "The Muppet Show," with your host, Kermit thee Frog! Yaaaayyyyy! Read my story from Sunday's Kansas City Star Please help me out! I'd like a better idea of what visitors to this Web site think of TV Barn. So I've set up a very simple survey that will require just a minute of your time to answer. Please do so by clicking here. Picks to click ... include two worthwhile hour documentaries on "Dateline" and New Year's Eve viewing that starts a full day early. Read my picks to click (and remember times and channels are for Kansas City) The daily digest ... for Monday, Dec. 27: So you've seen the AP's list of the 10 best shows of the 1990s. I was curious: What did the AP's television writers think were the best shows of the 1980s? Perhaps not surprising given the excesses of those years, they picked twenty. Here they are, in alphabetical order:

• "Brideshead Revisited"
• "Cheers"
• "The Cosby Show"
• "Crime Story"
• "The Days And Nights Of Molly Dodd"
• "The Equalizer"
• "Fawlty Towers"
• "Frank's Place"
• "Hill Street Blues"
• "Magnum, P.I."
• "Miami Vice"
• "Moonlighting"
• "Murphy Brown"
• "Night Court"
• "SCTV"
• "The 'Slap' Maxwell Story"
• "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "Smiley's People" (Alec Guinness)
• "A Walk Through The 20th Century" (Bill Moyers)
• "Wiseguy"
• "The Wonder Years"

• WB and UPN networks: Now we are 5 [ Read it ]
• Fox attorneys launch new crackdown of fansites [ Read it ]
• MTV sends six youths into bunker under Times Square [ Read it ]
• Russian "Millionaire" debuts -- "O Schastlivchik!" [ Read it ]
• Cablers channel the millennium [ Read it ]
• New book from Mike Douglas [ Read it ]
• Seinfeld gets hitched [ Read it ]
• NFL-approved game has throat-slash gesture [ Read it ]

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Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver (in blond wig) and the rest of the "Galaxy Quest" regulars. (Dreamworks SKG) Questarians unite! Time to organize! If you watch the Sci-Fi Channel very much, you've probably seen an oft-repeated commercial for a merchandiser devoted exclusively to items from the defunct "Highlander" TV series. Chances are that's the first time you realized that the short-lived syndicated series had a fan base large enough to support any merchandising, much less a catalog full of it. But devoted fans of any series would not be surprised, and they may even be envious, wishing their series offered them something similar. Those fans -- and everyone else, too, really -- should see "Galaxy Quest," the film based on a fictional SF TV series cast and its love-hate relationship with the fans. Will you see yourself in this film? (continued) Please help me out! I'd like a better idea of what visitors to this Web site think of TV Barn. So I've set up a very simple survey that will require just a minute of your time to answer. If you haven't already, please do so by clicking here. Picks to click ... include two worthwhile hour documentaries on "Dateline" and New Year's Eve viewing that starts a full day early. Read my picks to click (and remember times and channels are for Kansas City) The daily digest ... for Tuesday, Dec. 28: Today's end-of-the-year list comes to us via the Tyndall Report, the superb weekly fax on the network newscasts of NBC, CBS and ABC compiled by Andrew Tyndall (212-674-8913). Among Tyndall's summary findings:

• A three-passenger plane wreck off Martha's Vineyard -- one of them being John F. Kennedy Jr. -- commanded almost as much air time on the nightly news as the death of 217 passengers in a jumbo-jet crash off Nantucket.
• The three most-reported Capitol Hill stories (gun control, HMO Bill of Rights, Medicare reform) all involved Congressional gridlock;
• ABC reported a wider mix of stories than the other two, as the worldlywise Peter Jennings chose to devote fewer minutes to impeachment, Columbine and other overworked stories. Yet CBS had the most coverage of the two leading foreign policy stories (Kosovo, China espionage).
• NBC, which owns a financial-news channel, spent the most time covering the runups in the stock market.
• The top five stories of 1999, with the total minutes devoted by ABC, CBS and NBC: (1) Serbia-Kosovo fighting, 1644 minutes; (2) Clinton impeachment trial, 464 minutes; (3) Columbine, 315 minutes; (4) Wall Street, 282 minutes; (5) Hurricane Floyd, 227 minutes.
• Tyndall's man of the year: Slobodan Milosevic. Woman of the year: Monica Lewinsky (who also got top billing in 1998).

• Leonard Goldenson, last of the network giants, dead at 94 [ Read it ]
• ABC to air "Millionaire" on eight straight nights [ Read it ]
• Toronto TV station looks like a Web page [ Read it ]
• Finally, an independent TV station in Kenya [ Read it ]
• Record ratings year for National Geographic [ Read it ]
• Leno, O'Brien have stellar weeks [ Read it ]

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Sting was among the performers scheduled to appear on the now-defunct "Millennium Live." Y2K casts pox on Pax Less than 72 hours before showtime, the producers of the 24-hour TV spectacular "Millennium Live" pulled the plug, leaving its broadcast partners in more than 130 countries -- including the Pax network, which had exclusive U.S. rights -- scrambling to fill an entire day's schedule with alternative programming. Sources told Variety that the group behind the event, Millennium Television Network, could not raise the financing needed for more than five dozen satellite uplinks and other production facilities, which included the 90-foot geodesic dome in Los Angeles that was to serve as the broadcast center. Twelve other sites around the world were to be utilized, and a raft of musical acts, including a couple that had a hit in the '90s, were to be featured, including Sting, Blondie, Chicago, N'Sync, and Aerosmith. If you ask me, the event was doomed the moment ex-"Baywatch" babe Carmen Electra was signed as one of the six hosts for the event -- and she was the only name most Americans would even recognize. (The former Mrs. Dennis Rodman was quietly dropped from the bill after her well-publicized skirmishes with the law earlier this month.) Please help me out! I'd like a better idea of what visitors to this Web site think of TV Barn. So I've set up a very simple survey that will require just a minute of your time to answer. If you haven't already, please do so by clicking here. The daily digest ... for Dec. 29-30: CNBC is claiming a daytime ratings win over CNN for an entire quarter, the first time that's ever happened. Buoyed by a relentless go-go stock market, CNBC's financial markets coverage averaged 325,000 households to CNN's 292,000 households from 5 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. (CNBC's press release added that Nielsen ratings don't include out-of-home viewing, "which research has shown to add 40% additional viewers.") CNBC nearly topped CNN in weekend prime time as well, when CNBC is showing, of all things, nature programs ... American Movie Classics has ordered 13 more episodes of "The Lot," its behind-the-scenes comedy set in Hollywood circa 1937 ... Sci Fi Channel has picked up a new show, "Invisible Man," for June 2000 ... A&E and The History Channel are going to East and West Coast feeds starting March 27, 2000. Satellite customers will continue to receive East Coast transmissions. On this date ... in 1967 (or for the really picky, Stardate 4523.3), the starship Enterprise answers a subspace distress call from Space Station K7, and winds up ferrying a couple of tons of wheat, which soon are eaten by "only the sweetest creature known to man," as the crew of "Star Trek" has "Trouble With Tribbles," recently voted the favorite episode of that series by its fans. -- Tom Heald Previously on TV Barn:
28 Dec: "Galaxy Quest"
27 Dec: "The Muppet Show" rides again
24-25 Dec: Reader mail
22 Dec: Andy Kaufman
21 Dec: "Battlestar Galactica" rides again
20 Dec: Dot-com ad fever
17 Dec: "The PJ's" return for Christmas
16 Dec: Costas gets back into the talk game
On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Clayton Moore, TV's "Lone Ranger," dead at 85 [ Read it ]
• Networks have contigency anchors ready for Y2K [ Read it ]
• Strong ratings for NBC "Nightly News" [ Read it ]
• Report: Cablevision's Dolan has top bid for NFL's Jets [ Read it ]
• Cable ratings growth slowed in 1999 [ Read it ]
• DISH Network, DirecTV add more local coverage [ Read it ]
• Drew Carey can't get away from Cleve. [ Read it ]
• ABC, Time Warner in retrans standoff in NYC [ Read it ]

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Photo: CBS Starring Dick Van Dyke One of the great passions of Dick Van Dyke these days, we hear, is using computer graphics to drop himself into animated features. Van Dyke is both a workaholic and a loner, so you might guess that this makes for some pretty intense hobbies. None more so than the digital lab he set up in his home and, apparently, taught himself to use. (Actually, when you think about it, how cool must it be to re-create "Mary Poppins" yourself, without the help of a team of animators?) By the end of an above-average two-hour "Biography" special on Van Dyke's life and career, you realize that this is how the onetime adman from Danville, Ill., became a star on the stage, screen and TV. He did it all by himself -- like he does most everything in life. ... Read my review from Saturday's Kansas City Star MM TV viewing ... Here's my guide to the marathon of Y2K coverage going on this weekend on broadcast and cable. Bear in mind two things as you read it: The channel locations and times are for Kansas City viewers, and the Pax millennium special has been cancelled (here's that story in case you missed it). ... You may also want to consult this wire roundup of MM TV options. Please help me out! I'd like a better idea of what visitors to this Web site think of TV Barn. So I've set up a very simple survey that will require just a minute of your time to answer. If you haven't already, please do so by clicking here. The daily digest ... for Dec. 31-Jan. 2: One Y2K viewing pick I didn't include in my roundup, but wished I had, is the two-day recap of ESPN's "Fifty Greatest Athletes," taking place Friday on ESPN2 and then repeating New Year's Day on ESPN Classic. The 50 profiles comprise little more than talking heads and was produced on a shoestring (why pay for film rights when you can just shoot still photographs through a sepia-toned lens?). But what talking heads they are. ESPN has always had literary pretensions, and it shows here. They've assembled a litany of great print writers and eloquent broadcasters to pay tribute to the 50 greatest -- including, touchingly, the late Shirley Povich of the Washington Post. Every now and then a notable like Walter Mondale shows up, too. Must-tape TV for sure ... Here are more details on the sudden cancellation of Pax's "Millennium Live" that I reported in Friday's Kansas City Star ... Nick at Nite's TV Land put out this screwy list of the "2000 Best Things About Television" that ranked, for instance, Howard Cosell (#1327) beneath "Bosom Buddies" (#1229) and -- John Amos (#523)?!? Anyway, see for yourself at TV Land's Web site ... Thanks to the 300 of you who filled out the TV Barn reader survey. The rest of you, what's holding you back? On this date ... in 1979, if you think the Y2K bug is troubling, just look at the lineup for the 1979 edition of Dick Clark's "New Year's Rockin' Eve 1979": Erin Moran of "Happy Days" and "The Dukes of Hazzard's" John Schneider hosting the pretaped musical segments with Blondie, Chic, Barry Manilow, the Oak Ridge Boys and the Village People. January 1: in 1965, Soupy Sales rings in the New Year by being fired (though later reinstated) after he tells viewers to get their parent's wallets and take out "those little green pieces of paper" with pictures of Presidents on them, and send them in to him. January 2: in 1954, NBC gets demented with the debut of "The Spike Jones Show." Millions of viewers arrive each week with bells on to watch classical music be tortured by bandleader Jones who's occasionally there with bells on, even though he might be late. -- Tom Heald Previously on TV Barn:
29-30 Dec: Plug pulled on Pax party
28 Dec: "Galaxy Quest"
27 Dec: "The Muppet Show" rides again
24-25 Dec: Reader mail
22 Dec: Andy Kaufman
21 Dec: "Battlestar Galactica" rides again
20 Dec: Dot-com ad fever
17 Dec: "The PJ's" return for Christmas
16 Dec: Costas gets back into the talk game
On the wires:
(Stories open in a new window. Many links expire over time.)

• Fox cancels half-hour "Ally" [ Read it ]
• Bizarre Dutch show releases captives after 100 days [ Read it ]
• DVD encryption buster gets judge's OK [ Read it ]
• CBS shareholders approve Viacom merger [ Read it ]
• Journalists killed in 1999 nearly double 1998 [ Read it ]
• Broadcasters around world scramble to replace "Millennium Live" [ Read it ]
• Annual NATPE "pitch me" gets $50K prize from Microsoft [ Read it ]
• Still more MM viewing pix [ Read it ]

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"aaron.gif"I'm Aaron Barnhart, and I'm the TV critic at the Kansas City Star. For five years I wrote a weekly Internet guide to late-night television called Late Show News. It led to freelance assignments, which led to my current position. Since my beat covers all of television, I thought it best to make late-night TV part of a larger Internet presence. So I closed down Late Show News and opened up TV Barn.

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Q. I tried to send you e-mail from your "Send e-mail" link, but it didn't work! Well, then you need to configure your Web browser to send e-mail whenever you click on a mailto: Web link. If you don't know how to do this, just write this down and use it next time you're in your e-mail program: aaron@tvbarn.com. Q. When is the page updated? Every weekday. I try to have something up by noon Central, adding updates during the day as the muse strikes. "sealnab3b.gif"
Original "Seal of Good Practice" displayed by shows that conformed to the networks' old Television Code for broadcast standards Q. Do you remember the TV show "Sledge Hammer"? Please send me some info on the show and where I can get a copy of episodes. Much as I would like to, time prevents me from assisting on these individual requests. You might want to try The TV Connection, a sort of swap-and-shop for episode collectors. But in terms of acquiring old shows from the networks themselves — forget it. The studios who produce these hang onto the masters in the hope that one day a cable channel will come along and buy the rights. Because consumer video is a very low-profit-margin business, the studios choose not to get into it unless they have a TV show that's a proven hit with a devoted following and the show is not presently airing in repeats. Which would eliminate "Sledge Hammer" and about 99.9% of all shows. As for late-night talk shows, some newsgroups like alt.fan.letterman do VHS swaps. But to get something, you've gotta give something (or so I'm told by those who engage in this copyright-violating activity). Q. I don't want to swap videotapes. I just want to SEE the old episodes, not own them. Then you have three options: (1) The Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago has thousands of old TV shows covering a wide range. It was the place where I saw most of the programs that were before my time. You can use their archives for $2 a day. (2) The Museum of Television and Radio. Founded by Bill Paley, the museum's two branches — in New York and Beverly Hills — have identical collections of about 75,000 old episodes. There is a suggested admission that you don't have to pay (but the guards steer you into the ticket line, so you probably will pay). Cooler than the MBC but in my experience not as comprehensive. (3) The UCLA Film and TV Archive. You need to look up the shows you want to look at and order them prior to your visit. But it's a tremendous trove of old shows, including the only Jack Paar "Tonight" show video I've ever seen. Q. I thought (A-list celebrity) was supposed to be on the (late-night host's) show last night, but s/he wasn't! Talk-show lineups are like seven-day forecasts: they're less accurate the further out you go. So if you read these lineups on a Monday, there's a possibility a guest booked for Thursday will be rescheduled for unforeseen reasons. Sorry, but I only pass along the lineups from Sue Trowbridge's site — go there to learn if your celebrity has been rebooked. Q. I used that new search engine on your site to find something you'd written recently. But my search came up with no results. I replaced the searchbutton.com service with a better one from master.com. It gives a better listing of your search results, plus the engine re-searches my site every seven days (searchbutton did it every 30 days). And since I try to keep the last week's worth of articles on the main page, there should be nothing you can't find on the site either by using the Search page or by using the Find command on your Web browser to search the contents of the main page. "tvbarnbrills.jpg"
Best we can do, short of buying it from Contentville: scan of Brill's TV Barn rave Q. What happened to LATE SHOW NEWS? On February 17, 1999, its fifth anniversary, LATE SHOW NEWS was folded into the general-interest TV Barn website and e-mail list. The archive is still online, as is the collection of old Daveware. Q. But you're keeping the mailing list going? That's right, only now instead of being devoted exclusively to late-night television, the LATE-SHOW-NEWS mailing list now delivers a portion of that week's TV Barn website postings, plus the usual late-night line-ups from Sue Trowbridge's website. What you won't get from the weekly mailing are any breaking news or comment or any direct links to stories of mine that appear in the Kansas City Star. You'll have to come to TV Barn to get those, and naturally I encourage you to check in daily. Q. I will, I promise! But tell me how to join the mailing list anyway. Send a message to tvbarn-subscribe@egroups.com with the message SUBSCRIBE TVBARN Firstname Lastname (substituting your own first and last name, of course). If that doesn't work, send me mail and I'll get you on the list.

TV Barn features books throughout the website that are available for purchase at Amazon.com by clicking on the supplied links. By using TV Barn's links, you send a few shekels our way with each purchase.

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The full Andy

• As Good As It Gets (1997)
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• The Abyss (1989)
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How To Show Off an American Quilt

Friday, February 23, 2001

"[If] white couples argue ('Roseanne', 'Married ... with Children') it is refreshing, but Fred Sanford and Aunt Esther's chitlin' circuit feuding is nothing but a return to the Kingfish and Sapphire. I must say that I adored Aunt Esther, as many black viewers did, seeing in her an endearingly broad exaggeration of bits and pieces of any number of black women whom I have known. It is not obvious to me that I should regret the many pleasures that this character brought me because of an academic parallel to a character from a show created forty years before I was born. Fred and Esther's relationship, along with the relationship between the Kingfish and Sapphire, may be traced more plausibly to an ancient cliche in popular entertainment, the henpecked husband and the shrewish battle-ax wife. (Fred and Esther are uncannily reminiscent, for example, of the old comic strip 'Bringing Up Father.') In Fred and Esther I see not a statement about middle-aged black people, but a statement about America and its tortured, hilarious history of relations between the sexes."

Thursday, February 22, 2001

Wednesday, February 21, 2001

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• A fan rants about NBC's January disclaimer

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I decided to create this bookmarks file after having to reinstall all the software on my Macintosh — just to get back a crummy fax driver — and discovering afterward that all my Internet Explorer bookmarks had been deleted. So thank Microsoft for this page. There's not much here now but I expect it to grow rapidly over time.
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Copyright © 1999-2001 Aaron Barnhart. Redistribution prohibited.

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Close this window Frequently asked questions about e-books Q. Where do I get the Adobe Acrobat Reader? A. You may already have it on your computer. Adobe Acrobat is shipped free with lots of software these days, including those ubiquitous America Online CDs. Of course, you can always download it from Adobe. The most recent version of the Reader is 4.05. Q. Which versions of Acrobat does BUTV 2000 support? A. My book is compatible with all versions of Acrobat Reader numbered 3.x or higher. If you have an earlier version of Acrobat Reader on your computer, you really ought to upgrade (your version of Reader, that is, if not your computer). Q. Why Acrobat? A. If writing were just a matter of slapping words on a page and hitting the Send key, I could've published BUTV 2000 as a gigantic e-mail. But I think reading a book should be an aesthetically pleasing experience. Each of the e-book formats I've chosen supplies that experience, albeit in different ways. Adobe Acrobat provides the closest thing to a paper reading experience without the bulk involved in hauling print around. I get to select the type and leading, the margins, the artwork. In fact, Acrobat lets me go about building my publication in exactly the same manner I've followed for 16 years using PageMaker for the Macintosh. The difference is I no longer have to print out galleys on the laser printer, then painstakingly assemble the whole mess for the printer. With the time I save on those labor-intensive chores, I can devote more of my energies to expanding and enhancing BUTV 2000. There are other formats for publishing and reading e-books, notably the Microsoft Reader and Rocket formats. But both of those are limited; the Reader isn't available for Macintosh and the Rocket requires its own gizmo. I wanted my e-book to be instantly accessible to as many of my readers as possible. Acrobat was the only way to go. Q. How will you make the HTML version available? A. It will be a fully hyperlinked standalone Web site you store on your hard disk. Unlike the Acrobat version, you'll be able to adjust the typeface and size of the HTML page. I haven't decided whether to include photo art with the HTML version or keep it at a special Web location. By putting the artwork on the Web, I keep the HTML small and portable -- and if looking at photos isn't important to you, it gives you the option of reading offline without the artwork. Q. How will you make the Palm version available? A. In all likelihood as an AportisDoc file, which can also be read using TealDoc and other compatible shareware readers for Palm. Q. How will I get the book after I order it? A. The e-book will be sent to you as an attachment to an e-mail. Over a standard phone line, the whole thing shouldn't take more than 15 minutes to download with a 56K modem. Q. Admit it: You're just publishing an e-book because you're cheap. A. Actually, the cost of printing BUTV '98 worked out to a little more than $1 a copy. Then as now, the major expense in putting out this book was the time I spent writing and designing it. The reason the idea of doing BUTV 2000 as an e-book appealed so strongly to me was that it freed me to concentrate on the intellectual and artistic side without the unsatisfying tasks of hauling print copies around, haggling with newsstands, dealing with returned copies, etc. etc. Also, I knew I could do at least as good a job as professional e-book publishers, in some cases much better. For many of my readers, BUTV 2000 will be their first foray into the world of e-books. I want it to be a positive experience for them. I want readers to feel good about purchasing a high-quality book that wouldn't have been available had it not been for e-publishing. If I succeed, then hopefully other authors will take the plunge, thus fueling the supply and demand for electronic books of all kinds. Close this window

>>> Barnhart's Unauthorized TV 2000 BUTV 2000 — now available! "tvbarnlogo.gif"

"Barnhart manages in 114 tightly packed pages to include most of the insider information top agency media departments used to share only with their most cherished clients ... married to cheeky critiques and insider reporting."
-- Randall Rothenberg, Advertising Age

Nowhere will you find as thorough (50,000 words), or as comprehensive (nearly every new and returning network show), or as analytical (dozens of cable and broadcast networks picked apart) or as entertaining a guide as the new, just-finished BUTV 2000! From BUTV 2000 you'll discover:
• The top-notch CBS sitcom reviewers never watch
• The newsmagazine that's toughening up
• The most overrated drama on TV
• Which name-brand TV producer has "lost it"
• The facts behind "The District"
• Why Fox News is hot and CNN's not
• Why BET could be a lot better
• Why "Survivor" will clean up again
And lots more! All in an easy-to-read electronic book that comes in three formats: Adobe Acrobat (PDF), Web browser (HTML) or Palm (AportisDoc). If you're a regular reader of mine, buying BUTV 2000 is also a nice way to support the free work I do on the TV Barn Web site. It's just $10.95 and I think you'll find it worth every penny. Read the FREE sampler Check out the just-released BUTV 2000 for yourself! Download the 16-page sampler (312KB) in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format. Then order the full book for just $10.95 in either PDF, HTML or Palm versions. Or get all three versions for $12.95 — only two bucks extra! Buy the book Click here to order BUTV 2000 from a secure Web site. Have your credit card ready. After your order is processed, you'll get e-mail from Kagi (the credit-card handler), then a follow-up e-mail from me with your copy of BUTV 2000 sent as an attachment.

"Just downloaded BUTV and it looks great. Everything went flawlessly. Great idea!"
-- David Feldman, former NBC executive and author of the "Imponderables" series

Got questions? If you are new to the concept of e-books, or have questions or concerns about reading e-books, first check out my list of frequently asked questions. If that doesn't answer your questions, send them directly to me. Readers rave about BUTV '98

"Fun to read — and I can't think of much I've read about TV lately that was readable at all." — Lee Sandlin, Chicago Reader "Barnhart's Unauthorized is worth every penny. It is great to read about new and returning shows without the TV Guide-Entertainment Weekly-etc., hype." — Greg Glass, Pacific Daily News "Delivered on its promise to educate and entertain ... filled with solid insights and a no-b.s. approach to TV viewing ... one of the best investments I have made in quite some time." — Mike Mellon, senior VP research, Paramount TV "Enjoyed it enormously ... just enough info on the small stuff (MSNBC, etc.) and I loved the little boxes of info interspersed throughout the text." — Paul Harris, KTRS-AM, St. Louis "I'm putting copies of BUTV on reserve in our library for my beginning Telecommunications students. The insightful critiques are worth the price of admission, but what really makes it special is the sidebars on topics of interest to anyone curious about the TV business." — Karla Robinson, Ph.D. "I do not watch much prime-time commercial TV; however, once I started reading BUTV I could not put it down. Good work and well organized. Very glad I bought it! But I still won't watch prime time." — Brian James "You have a point of view not only about the entertainment, but about the industry and political context as well. So many people have an opinion but rarely is it one that matters." — Anthony E. Wright "It's very impressive. Almost makes me want to go out and buy a television." — Sheri Steinberg

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HBO tells it like he was
Howard Cosell gets his due in brilliant documentary
@by1:By AARON BARNHART
@by2:The Kansas City Star Last week NBC sportscaster Jim Gray brought on the wrath of sports fans by grilling Pete Rose on live TV about Rose's application to have his lifetime ban from baseball lifted. To many who watched that unpleasant exchange, Gray was nasty, a show-off, overly opinionated and insufficiently respectful of someone who had (unlike him) played the game. Funny, that's what they said about Howard Cosell when I was a kid. In fact, the reaction to Gray — whose questions were no tougher than a good sportswriter would ask — reminded me of something I heard in a brilliant new HBO documentary on the career of Cosell. ``The things people would accept in newspapers they were appalled by on television,'' says a voice in the opening to ``Howard Cosell: Telling It Like It Is,'' debuting at 7 tonight on HBO. And no one knew that better than Cosell, a tough-minded, self-centered, absolute original who for 21 years — from his first interview with fighter Cassius Clay to the cancellation of his ABC program ``SportsBeat'' — dominated sports journalism in a way no one had or probably will again. Cosell loved sports and he loved conflict, and once he got on a microphone he made sportscasting relevant, made it crackle with an electricity it hadn't had before. It was more than that easily recognized, often parodied voice. More than anyone else, Cosell helped tear open the hermetic seal that had kept professional athletes in a bubble, away from the troubles of the outside world. The HBO special is a remarkable document of the Cosell era, remarkable in its use of archival video, in the range of opinions its producers have collected about Cosell and in their understanding of the cruel paradox that encompassed his career: That the more famous Cosell became, the less influential he was on the issues that he cared most about. Born Howard William Cohen in 1918 (his father later changed the family name to Cosell), he grew up a sports-crazy kid in Brooklyn but dutifully got his law degree and opened a successful practice. As his daughters Jill and Hilary attest in ``Telling It Like It Is,'' the athletes their father admired the most were Jackie Robinson and Curt Flood. Cosell embraced the young heavyweight champion Cassius Clay, took an interest in his Black Muslim activities, called him Muhammad Ali when most journalists were still calling him Clay, and defended Ali's right to the due process he was denied after refusing to fight in the Vietnam War. ``Cosell was unafraid about race,'' says journalist Maury Allen. He had to be, just to withstand the cartons of hate mail and the profane, threatening phone calls that would come to his house. By the time Roone Arledge tapped him to be the third man in the booth on ``Monday Night Football'' in 1970, Cosell was already one of the most reviled and admired people on TV. With ``Monday Night Football,'' Cosell got the chance to show the world something else: He was unparalleled as a sportscaster, quite possibly the best there ever was. Tonight you'll see Cosell supplying the voice to the Sunday highlights that were a halftime staple of ``Monday Night Football.'' He did them in a single take, with only a few notes from his producers; the script came off the top of his head, in flawless, high-octane sentences. Let's see an hour of those sometime on ESPN Classic. (The documentary does not add that Cosell also delivered his daily radio commentary, ``Speaking of Sports,'' without any notes at all.) If there is a flaw in this documentary it is in its over-reliance on the insights of Al Michaels, the current ``Monday Night'' announcer who, along with NBC's Bob Costas, embodies the modern sportscaster: glib, with a fleck of attitude,a hint of personality and very little meaningful to say. To this day Michaels is remembering for screaming, ``Do you believe in miracles?'' at the end of the 1980 Olympic hockey match between the U.S. and the Soviets. But in a 1973 heavyweight title fight in Kingston, Jamaica, between Joe Frazier and George Foreman, Cosell blurted out three words that make Michaels' utterance seem like an advertising jingle. Cosell, ever the contrarian, had picked the young contender Foreman to knockout Smokin' Joe. But not even he had counted on such a furious opening. The two men came out and traded blows as though it were a one-round fight. And then -- ``Down goes Frazier!'' Suddenly, Frazier was on the mat. Cosell responded viscerally. ``Down goes Frazier!'' He said it a third time. ``Down goes Frazier!'' As ABC producer Lou Volpicelli points out, ``Anybody could say that — but the way he said it was the story.'' The HBO special includes the fight and the call. The effect, at least for this sports-crazy viewer, is positively moving. ``Howard in Jamaica is an opera,'' we hear comedian Billy Crystal say. ``It's a phenomenal, phenomenal performance by an announcer.'' Unfortunately, Cosell wanted to be more than just the best sportscaster. He also wanted to be the best evening newscaster and, time permitting, a movie star as well. He used to say, ``I am the biggest name in show business today!'' He even had his own prime-time variety show — briefly. His fame so overshadowed his other achievements that by the time Cosell referred to the Washington Redskins' Alvin Garrett in 1983 as ``that little monkey,'' it caused a furor. Many observers, deliberately or not, overlooked Cosell's sterling record on civil rights. The Rev. Joseph Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Council and others demanded an apology. Cosell being Cosell, none was forthcoming. On this charge, ``Telling It Like It Is'' exonerates Cosell. Besides a host of reputable witnesses, who note that Cosell often used that phrase, the producers have found a clip of a 1972 preseason game between the Chiefs and New York Giants in which Cosell calls another player ``that little monkey.'' Only this time the player is white: Mike Adamle, the pint-sized scrambler for the Chiefs, now a sportscaster. But by 1983 the end was in sight. Disgusted with pro boxing, fed up with football and (we're told) feeling the effects of a debilitating heart condition, Cosell slinked away from ABC in 1985. He wrote a scathing memoir that was filled with trenchant analysis of the state of professional sports but is remembered mainly for all the potshots Cosell took at his ``Monday Night'' cohorts. After his wife, Emmy, died in 1990, Cosell lived in almost constant grief. He blamed himself for being in Kansas City at a speaking engagement the night of her death. He passed away in 1995, far removed from the field he had not occupied so much as contained and controlled. Who follows in Cosell's footsteps today? Bryant Gumbel, who begins his new morning gig at CBS today, says his hard-hitting HBO program ``Real Sports'' is a tribute to Cosell. Chris Berman says the same about the football highlights he barks out on ESPN (``He could ... go ... all ... the ... way!'' is a Cosell-ism). Jim Gray could even be said to descend from the Cosell tradition of unapologetic pursuit of the facts. A shame, though, that NBC doesn't send him after more deserving targets than Pete Rose. For starters, they could put Gray in a room with baseball commissioner Bud Selig and not turn off the camera until Selig has explained why it is that only a handful of African-Americans are in baseball management, and even fewer Central and Latin Americans. That would be telling it like it is. To reach Aaron Barnhart, television writer for The Star, phone {(816) 234-4790} or visit the TV Barn Web site at {www.tvbarn.com}

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>>> The Dave Cave

The Dave Cave

Meet Don Giller, Letterman Archivist and Infomaven

By Aaron Barnhart In the small Minnesota town where my wife grew up was a Jack Sprat Food Store that an eccentric widower named Ed Krueger ran for 65 years. Early on, Krueger discovered he had an insatiable appetite for collecting things, and started using his store as a repository. Anything inanimate was saved: unbought merchandise, customer receipts, town records, movie memorabilia, opera music, his dead cat, and of course endless stacks of newsprint. By the time Krueger was ready for the rest home, the only usable work space in the store was a glass counter at the front where he sold candy and cigarettes. The rest, as he called it, was "Ed's Museum," but it worked kind of like the old full-service groceries. You came in and struck up a conversation with Krueger, and at the mention of anyone or anything having to do with the town, the cinema, or the opera, he would go rummaging through all the crap and find some relevant item to look at in remarkably short order. There are probably hundreds of Ed Kruegers in every major city, voracious gatherers of information who, in another era, might have endeared themselves to neighbors, or met under the flourescent light of a civic center. But in this increasingly anomistic age they have taken instead to the online services and the Internet, where they mingle with a larger and more diverse community than would otherwise have been possible. In turn, each of these infomavens performs the valuable service of helping civilize one more corner of the wild wild web called cyberspace. On the alt.fan.letterman newsgroup, the resident infomaven is Don Giller -- Donz5@aol.com as he is known to the newsgroup's 30,000 or so regular readers -- who specializes in answering questions about the 20-year television career of David Letterman. Donz5 can tell you on what game shows Letterman was a celebrity contestant in the 1970s, reconstruct the look and feel of Dave's 1980 morning show on NBC, list every date that your favorite entertainer appeared on Late Night with David Letterman, or produce detailed CVs for most every writer and musician who has worked on the show. My favorite Donz5 messages conjure images of a Midwestern sociologist combing census data, block-by-block. Someone recently complained on the newsgroup that Letterman was now habitually sacrificing the program's scheduled third guest, usually for the sake of some lame comedy bit. Inspired, Donz5 quickly compiled and posted a list of every guest bumped in the 101-week history of the CBS Late Show. His conclusion? Dave's been leaving more guests in the green room in recent weeks than ever before. Donz5 added a disclaimer: "I lay no claim to completeness, as I know I missed a few, such as one of Bobby Tessel's bumps." But it looked complete -- and anyway, who the hell was going to challenge him? Internet statistics rate alt.fan.letterman as the second most popular personality fangroup after Rush Limbaugh's. While alt.fan.jay-leno barely registers a pulse with 10 to 20 messages a week, alt.fan.letterman averages 1000, ranging from casual viewers to die-hard fans like Pam Cox, an Oklahoma City housewife who logged in to the newsgroup to crow about her unexpected selection as cohost-for-a-night of a recent Late Show. When others posted messages suggesting Dave should have picked someone else, she wailed, "This has been the greatest moment of my life so far and I am not going to let people like you ruin it for me." Donz5 arrived at alt.fan.letterman a little more than a year ago, when America Online, where he has an account, began offering its subscribers access to newsgroups. Before that, he had been recording Letterman programs for a decade and exchanging rare videotapes (such as broadcasts of Dave's morning show) with other collectors on AOL and CompuServe. Don Giller moved to New York in 1978 to earn his masters in historical musicology from Columbia, then worked for the music division of Holt, Rinehart and Winston until its New York office closed in 1987. He bought a Macintosh and began working out of his home as a freelance typesetter for Holt and other music publishers. Giller's one-bedroom apartment combines work with life-away-from-work so thoroughly that it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. The eight-year-old Macintosh sits on a table in his work room ("the earth station," he calls it); above it, shelves stretch to the ceiling with software manuals and several years of computer magazines, Beatles albums, bootlegs, and literature. To the left of the Mac, a stereo sits atop three VCRs; Giller points to the bottom machine and jokes, "I use that one as a clock." Against the other wall are more magazines, more music, a keyboard and a stack of analog equipment from a long-abandoned hobby. There is just enough room here for the two of us to conduct an interview, and none for the videotapes. Those are in the front room -- 3200 of them and counting, stacked three deep -- where they share space with hundreds of classical LPs from the musicology days, his bed, and his cat. Giller became the amazing Donz5 by inputting thousands of items from his collection into a database, which he tends like an organic garden. We get to talking about Rob Burnett, the Late Show head writer who is helming Bonnie Hunt's new CBS sitcom. Without warning, Giller whirls around in his chair and keys "Burnett" into a search field on his Macintosh. Not much happens; instantly he realizes he's searching the wrong part of his database. "Hold on," he tells me, "I know exactly what I'm doing." And like old Ed Krueger, he's right: soon we are looking at a list of every Burnett mention from the Letterman show's closing credits, 1985 to present, an impressive climb from "Production Staff 4" (meaning the fourth most senior member of production) to "Researchers 2" to "Writers 11" and up that totem to the top. Amidst the chaos of the newsgroups, a man can walk tall when he sports a hefty database. A newcomer to alt.fan.letterman posts a message asking who was Dave's worst all-time guest. Besides the usual suggestions (Cher, Shirley MacLaine), one message nominates the guy who invented the graffiti remover stuff that was orange- colored or -based or something. he had more jewelry than mr. t. Sensing trouble, Donz5 dips into the data and posts this message:

Don't recall the jewelry, but that was Rocky Dellutri. Bryant Gumbel was also a guest on the show, February 26, 1985 (#520) (as were the immortal Schmenge Brothers, who sang 'Cabbage Rolls and Coffee'), and since Bryant wasn't wearing socks, Dave spray-painted them on his ankles. Later in the show Dave gave a giant hand-shadow finger on the Exxon building with hand-shadow expert George Gilbert.

Someone else offers that a drunken and hostile Oliver Reed, circa 1987, was the worst-ever guest. Donz5 swats that down with a reference so obscure

What tempers this view is the fact that Reed stuck around after 2 segments to participate in a show promo with Dave that aired a few weeks later.

you wonder if even Letterman's people would remember it. In person, Giller seems a little embarrassed by this trove of Lettermania (at one point he says to me, "There's a fine line between getting information and creeping people out"). But his online presence commands respect, and things can get ugly when it doesn't. After someone challenges his mastery of the permissions guidelines for Dave's on-air phone calls, Donz5 sniffs, "Thanks for jumping in; you must be new here. And if you claim it, it must be true: I just make up things around here. Ask around and get back to me." Online and in person, Giller bears the pride and the countenance of the academic. He tells me he's working on a theory he'd like to publish about the evolution of Letterman's show. There have been three distinct phases since 1982, the most recent occurring when several senior writers, including Chris Elliott, quit Late Night in 1990 and Dave's longtime mentor, Peter Lassally, began to assume a larger creative role. At that point, Giller says, the format changed "from a repertory into a show that's just about Dave." I ask him if he's ever tried this theory out on Letterman's staff; he smiles and says, "The easy thing would be to just ask them. It's more fun to figure it out yourself." Indeed, despite living just a subway ride up Broadway from the Ed Sullivan Theater, attending the occasional taping, and engaging in frequent e-mail exchanges with Letterman staff -- a number of whom are online addicts (including producer Robert Morton) -- Giller keeps a respectful distance from the show. He is, however, trying to get an official blessing for a book project, modeled on Mark Lewisohn's exhaustive two-volume Beatles chronology. Lewisohn got the green light from producer George Martin, says Giller, because his proposal fixated on the sheer data of the Fabs' careers and avoided mentioning their personal lives. (Giller also has collected most of the records and performance dates of the three musicians who formed the original Late Night band with Paul Shaffer in 1982. He says he is still trying to fill in some of the musicians' early dates but adds, "If they were in rehabilitation then I don't want to know about it.") So far, three book publishers have taken a pass and a fourth has suggested a small trade paperback similar to other "unofficial" Dave guides published in recent years. It seems unlikely that an official encyclopedia will appear until Letterman's retirement, if ever. Fortunately, the fandom industry is shifting towards electronic media, where Giller excels. (Trekkies are so numerous on the Internet that the old rec.arts.startrek newsgroup had to spin off six new subgroups to keep the message levels manageable.) The coffee-table book Donz5 is compiling will in all likelihood be published on the the rapidly-growing Internet multimedia space of the World Wide Web. Giller would need a substantial computer upgrade to access the Web, and he wonders how he will be compensated for his efforts, since the Internet still lacks a decent payment scheme for online content. My feeling is it's just a matter of time before ultraspecialists like Donz5 generate at least a modest cash flow from cyberspace. Look at moneymakers like CompuServe's Entertainment Drive, which succeed despite mediocre content and interfaces. Giller doesn't have the marketing savvy or broad, bland focus of E-Drive, but his work ethic and his ability to think clearly amidst staggering levels of inventory bode well for him in the coming information economy. He is a curator in search of patronage, and given the mass appeal of Dave it's safe to say that eventually he will find it. Meanwhile, it's back to alt.fan.letterman, where someone has posted a message addressed to Paul Shaffer, asking what music the band played for David Hyde Pierce on the previous night's Late Show. Donz5, who has never sighted Shaffer (or Letterman) online, handles the question.

No need to ask Paul. The band has played the Beatles' 'You've Got to Hide Your Love Away' every time Hyde has guested on the show.

Notes

1. From: donz5@aol.com (Donz5)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.letterman
Subject: Re: Bump List
Date: 6 Aug 1995 19:52:25 -0400

I've received 2 email posts from folks who have said the bump
list never appeared, so here's a 2nd attempt:

As promised, here's my list of Late Shows where guests
were bumped. I've included only what I noted at the time
of the bump. I lay no claim to completeness, as I know I
missed a few, such as one of Bobby Tessel's bumps.
Making this accurate would require viewing those shows
where only 2 guests appeared, but life is way too short.

Week 1 (#1-5): 0
Week 2 (6-10): 0
Week 3 (11-15): 0
Week 4 (16-20): 0
Week 5 (21-25): 0
Week 6 (26-30): 0
Week 7 (31-35): 1 (George Miller, 10/11/93)
Week 8 (36-40): 0
Week 9 (41-45): 0
Week 10 (46-50): 0
Week 11 (51-55): 0
Week 12 (56-60): 0
Week 13 (61-65): 0
Week 14 (66-70): 0
Week 15: off
Week 16 (71-75): 0
Week 17 (76-79): 0
Week 18 (80-84): 0
Week 19 (85-89): 1 (Drew Carey, 1/3/94)
Week 20 (90-94): 0
Week 21 (95-99): 0
Week 22: off
Week 23 (100-104): 0
Week 24 (105-109): 0
Week 25 (110-114): 0
Week 26 (115-119): 0
Week 27 (120-124): 1 (Mark Leyner, 3/3/94)
Week 28: off
Week 29 (125-127): 0
Week 30 (128-130): 0
Week 31 (131-135): 1 (Jeff Sterns, 3/31/94)
Week 32 (136-140): 0
Week 33: off
Week 34 (141-145): 1 (Jake Johannsen, 4/22/94)
Week 35 (146-150): 0
Week 36 (151-155): 2 (Jimmy Walker, 5/2/94; Jake Johannsen, 5/6/94)
Week 37 (in L.A. - 156-160): 0
Week 38 (161-165): 1 (Dennis Rodman, 5/19/94)
Week 39 (166-170): 0
Week 40: off
Week 41 (171-175): 0
Week 42 (176-180): 0
Week 43 (181-184): 0
Week 44 (185-189): 0
Week 45 (190-194): 0
Week 46: off
Week 47 (195-199): 1 (Wendy Liebman, 7/20/94)
Week 48 (200-204): 1 (Dave Edmunds, 7/29/94)
Week 49 (205-209): 0
Week 50 (210-214): 2 (David Hyde Pierce, 8/8/94; Steve Buscemi, 8/11/94)
Week 51 (215-219): 1 (Julie Brown, 8/16/94)
Week 52: off
Week 53 (220-224): 1 (Samuel L. Jackson, 9/1/94)
Week 54 (225-229): 0
Week 55 (230-234): 0
Week 56 (235-239): 1 (Kevin Brennan, 9/20/94)
Week 57 (240-244): 0
Week 58 (245-249): 1 (Alan Zweibel, 10/6/94)
Week 59 (250-254): 1 (Mario Joyner, 10/14/94)
Week 60: off
Week 61 (255-259): 1 (Fran Lebowitz, 10/27/94)
Week 62 (260-264): 0
Week 63 (265-268): 0
Week 64 (269-273): 0
Week 65 (274-278): 0
Week 66 (279-283): 0
Week 67: off
Week 68 (284-288): 1 (Iris DeMent, 12/12/94)
Week 69 (289-293): 0
Week 70 (294-298): 1 (Marv Albert, 12/29/94)
Week 71 (299-303): 1 (Warren G, 1/6/95)
Week 72 (304-308): 0
Week 73 (309-313): 2 (David Duchovny, 1/16/95; Bobby Tessel, 1/20/95)
Week 74: off
Week 75 (314-318): 0
Week 76 (319-323): 2 (John Witherspoon, 2/6/95; Bobby Tessel, 2/10/95 - I
missed his 3rd bump somewhere)
Week 77 (324-328): 0
Week 78 (329-333): 0
Week 79 (334-338): 0
Week 80 (339-343): 2 (Lee Marek, 3/7/95; Dave Chapell, 3/8/95)
Week 81 (344-346): 0
Week 82 (347-349): 0
Week 83: off
Week 84 (350-354): 0
Week 85 (355-359): 0
Week 86 (360-364): 1 (Andrei Codrescu, 4/19/95)
Week 87 (365-369): 1 (Justin Miller, 4/26/95)
Week 88 (370-374): 0
Week 89 (375-379): 1 (Julianna Margulies, 5/10/95)
Week 90 (in London - 380-384): 1 (David Duchovny, 5/17/95)
Week 91 (385-389): 1 (Tara Fitzgerald, 5/23/95)
Week 92: off
Week 93 (390-394): 2 (Jenna Belger, 6/5/95; Alison Krauss, 6/7/95)
Week 94 (395-399): 3 (Jonathan Katz, 6/13/95; Warren Zevon, 6/14/95;
Jonathan Katz, 6/15/95)
Week 95 (400-404): 1 (Debi Mazar, 6/23/95)
Week 96 (405-409): 0
Week 97: off
Week 98 (410-414): 2 (Kathleen Quinlan, 7/11/95; Clare Danes, 7/14/95)
Week 99 (415-419): 1 (Greer Barnes, 7/21/95)
Week 100 (420-424): 1 (Roger Clinton, 7/27/95)
Week 101 (425-429): 2 (George Perrier, 8/1/95) (Kyra Sedgwick, 8/4/95)
Return to story

---

2. There seems to have been some relation between Dave's dropping popularity among viewers and newsgroup chatter, however. Though the a.f.l. newsgroup still numbers hundreds of new messages per week, the volume has steadily declined throughout the year. On the other hand, no noticeable change in message volume can be seen at alt.fan.jay-leno, which would suggest (a) that Jay is still not attracting Internet users (who just happen to form a prized demographic of their own) in large numbers and/or (b) that the Tonight Show is merely a show, while Late Show is more like a following. Return to story

---

3. I asked Giller what the "Donz5" handle stood for. His response:

Pretty innocuous and ultimately uninteresting answer: When I worked as a music editor at Holt Rinehart and Winston 1985-87, one of the art directors added a "z" to our names just for the hell of it; thus, I was Donz; a Stan became Stanz, a Tad became Tadz, and so on. So when I signed on to AOL in 1990, I figured I'd use her nickname. I chose "Donz," but AOL prompted me that there were 4 other "Donz"s in their directory, a Donz1, Donz2, etc. So the next available "Donz" was "Donz5." Fascinating, huh? :)

Return to story

---

Barnhart's Home Page | Late Show News

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The Barnhart scale:

• Don't miss;
• Has potential;
• Needs show doctor;
• D.O.A.

DON'T MISS

"Harsh Realm" -- "X-Files" creator Chris Carter is back with his third series for Fox. Unlike "Millennium," a bloody morality play that never emerged from the shadow of "The X-Files," this one stands firmly on its own footing -- although you'll forgive Scott Bairstow's character if he isn't exactly sure where his feet are planted. Bairstow, an Army hero stationed at Fort Dix, is summoned one day by his superiors to take part in a top-secret virtual reality simulator called Harsh Realm. He is instantly transported to a world that at first looks exactly like Fort Dix. But soon he realizes he is in a parallel universe, one ravaged by war, swarming with human clones and dominated by a mystery man named Santiago -- the Pinball Wizard of Harsh Realm. His object: take out Santiago. ... It won't be easy. Bairstow knows no one in Harsh Realm -- even the people he thinks he knows are, at best, analogues of the people he left behind. Bairstow, best known for his turn on "Party of Five," is a credible, if predictably stiff, virtual-reality rookie. He gets help from D.B. Sweeney and Carter favorite Terry O'Quinn as Santiago. "X-Files" fans have been talking up this show, sight unseen, for months, based mainly on rumors and snippets from the set. But "Harsh Realm" may well validate all that hype. (Fox, 9 p.m. Fridays) "Angel" David Boreanaz, the vampire cursed with a human soul, wanders the desolate streets of L.A. in this spinoff of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." This is one of the fall's most anticipated debuts -- and, I'm happy to say, one of the most impressive. And its success doesn't really have much to do with Boreanaz, who at times seems to be little more than eyebrow and pout. But his character Angel is intrinsically interesting, and with the move to Tinseltown you can just imagine the possibilities. A bloodsucker among bloodsuckers! But the humor in the pilot episode, at least, is muted by the show's moral seriousness: Boreanaz is out to atone for his sins by defending the human race against his fellow vamps. He's joined in his mission by, of all people, "Buffy" alumna Charisma Carpenter, who has also made the move to the City of Angel(s) and hasn't turned down the cattiness one notch. New on the scene is Glenn Quinn, as the charming sidekick who also has a tainted past -- as well as an eerie ability to turn himself into a walking porcupine. (WB, 9 p.m. Tuesdays) "Once and Again" -- Sela Ward and Billy Campbell are divorcees who discover each other in this absorbing drama. He's been splitsville for years, but she's still on the rebound, and complicating matters, they both have problem kids. This beautifully sculpted show has the same interpersonal tone viewers will recognize from Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz's earlier collaborations, including "thirtysomething," "Relativity" and "My So-Called Life." My only quibble with "Once and Again" is that, like too many TV shows these days, it's shot like a commercial. Actors give sound bites to the camera, and moody dreamscapes are inserted that have little to do with the storyline. ... Maybe the failures of their last two shows have made Zwick and Herskovitz nervous; maybe these little visual hooks are their way of trying to hold on to viewers. They needn't worry: "Once and Again" gets some choice real estate this fall as it holds down "NYPD Blue's" time period for its first few episodes. (ABC, 10 p.m. Tuesdays, through Nov. 2) "Action" -- This behind-the-scenes farce at a Hollywood film studio has a potty mouth and a dirty mind. It has no respect for the viewer. And it's hilarious. Jay Mohr is the insufferable Peter Dragon, a big shot movie producer who's about to meet his worst nightmare. "Beverly Hills Gun Club" is the film that just may revive his flagging career -- if making it doesn't kill him first. Illeana Douglas, as the former child star turned high-class hooker turned script reader, will help him coax it to the big screen. ... No one ever doubted that Mohr could do comedy, and the in-your-face nastiness of "Action" suits him unusually well. Douglas, not known for her comedic skills, is an ideal match. Buddy Hackett plays Mohr's hard-luck uncle and limo driver. As on "The Larry Sanders Show," real-life Hollywood insiders will make cameo appearances on "Action," though not all will be household names (e.g., the real-life agent who in the first episode tries to get Mohr to sign a certain infamous ex-football player). Stylishly filmed and intentionally provocative, "Action" is the first network show to leave the swear words in the script. (They're bleeped out for air.) It may be the first network show in which the male, uh, endowment is the object of a recurring gag. And "Action" lives up to its name, rivaling the pace of ABC's "Sports Night." Once viewers get over the shock of seeing all this on network TV, they may decide "Action" is the best new show of the whole bleeping season. (Fox, 9:30 p.m. Thursdays)

Has potential

"Roswell" So you're a hunky, tousle-haired (and, since this is network TV, fair-skinned) teen-ager in town. And there's this certain classmate at school who's caught your eye. Just one problem: While waitressing one day at the local cafe, she's accidentally shot dead in your presence. Fortunately, you're an alien, so you instantly call on your extraterrestrial powers to bring her back to life. That's the premise of "Roswell," the WB's latest teen drama, which has its premiere tonight. The story of three "E.T." babies abandoned by their parents and raised by humans -- in of all places, the UFO capital of the world, Roswell, N.M. -- this one won't win any plausibility awards. But paired with a proven WB hit in "Dawson's Creek," and blessed with one of the season's more interesting casts and concepts, "Roswell" won't have any trouble finding a home on Earth. (WB, 9 p.m. Wednesdays) "Popular" -- On its surface _ which is where a lot of TV shows prefer to stay -- "Popular" looks like a fun, fluffy exploration of the perils of high school as seen from opposite points of view. In fact, it's something moodier than that and might be able to shed new light on the social caste system enforced at hundreds of high schools every year. The two leads, Leslie Bibb (she's popular) and Carly Pope (she's not), and seven other regulars share their views from both sides of the tracks, albeit pretty ritzy tracks. Tammy Lynn Michaels is the only real vixen; she'd fit right in on "Clueless" (were it still around), enforcing the social code with the relish of a cruise director. ... I'm hesitant to praise "Popular'' too quickly, seeing how quickly the WB dismantled last year's promising drama ``Hyperion Bay.'' The writing is uneven and at times goes after cheap but implausible laughs. And the show is up against "Friends," which gives it the TV equivalent of a bad hair day. But if "Popular" can do for social stratification what ``Party of Five'' did for addiction, it may have a chance. (Part 1 of the premiere airs 9 tonight; part 2 airs 8 p.m. Thursday, in show's regular time period) "Work With Me" -- If I had to put together a comedic duo, Nancy Travis and Kevin Pollak might come to mind before the third millennium. Or not. But this unlikely tandem are simply terrific as a married couple who decide to share their professional lives by teaming up in a law practice. Pollak, always a great talk-show guest, is the fast-talking passive-aggressive; for Travis, whose "Almost Perfect" had a short life on CBS a few years ago, it's a chance at sitcom redemption. The only cautionary note: Romantic office comedies all look the same, which may make it hard for this one to keep its spark after the honeymoon is over. (CBS, 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays) "Now And Again" -- From Glenn Gordon Caron, who created one of the 1980s' most memorable shows in "Moonlighting," comes a thriller with one of the most memorable openings in some time, a horrific terrorist attack that plays like a sonata. Not recommended for the young ones, and perhaps not recommended for 8 p.m. in the Central Time Zone, but effective. The scene quickly shifts to suburbia, where an insurance executive (played by John Goodman) is spending what will be his last day in this body. When he later falls in front of a subway train, only his brain survives. A top-secret government agency -- what else? -- is about to drop Goodman's cranial cargo into a bionic body that will then do combat with some of the world's worst baddies. The lingering problem of the first episode is: Who's the star? Not Goodman. Eric Close plays the body supposedly built by Uncle Sam. Close however isn't nearly as commanding a presence as Dennis Haysbert, who plays the smooth-talking federal agent. (CBS, 9 p.m. Fridays) "Ally" -- This half-hour reconstitution of the one-hour "Ally McBeal" couldn't have been better named. Well, perhaps they could've called it "Ally Ally Ally Ally Ally," because that's all the episodes are about. Previous episodes of "Ally McBeal" are reduced to a single story line -- invariably the one involving Calista Flockhart. That likely won't win over fans of the hour show who think the supporting players are more interesting than the star. But they'll probably tune in anyway, because most "Ally McBeal" episodes are great fun to watch, no matter which half you choose. (Fox, 8 p.m. Tuesdays) "The West Wing" -- One of fall's most anticipated hours, this behind-the-scenes look at the American presidency from the creator of "Sports Night" gets off to a bumpy start tonight when viewers realize that the supposedly liberal chief executive played by Martin Sheen -- who in real life is an actual fire-eating Hollywood liberal -- has no minorities in his inner circle. (The first black face seen in the premiere episode is a traffic cop who pulls over one of the show's regulars.) Since filming this episode, the show's red-faced producers have promised to add minority characters to later episodes. For now just savor the irony of this fictional Democrat pontificating around a White House that's a whole lot whiter than the actual one. ... There's another problem with this show, and it mostly flows from the pen of its creator. As fans of "Sports Night" know, Aaron Sorkin enjoys creating outsized conflicts only to resolve them in the closing moments with a deus ex machina -- some unexpected story line or rhetorical flourish from out of nowhere that snips off all the loose strands. This technique works for comedies and courtroom dramas but seems too heavy-handed for a show as complex as "The West Wing." I also didn't like the buffoonish treatment of political evangelists, who in the premiere make themselves thorns in the administration's side. One of the religious leaders gets the first and third commandments mixed up, an error that fundamentalist college graduates simply do not make. (Imagine a civil-liberties lawyer getting the First and Second Amendments confused.) Still, this debut would not be so disappointing if it were for a less ambitious effort than "The West Wing." There are still 21 episodes to go this season and no reason to believe it can't become a first-rate drama. (NBC, 9 p.m. Wednesdays) "Oh Grow Up" -- Imagine if "Full House" were done by the producers of MTV's "The Real World" and you might have this show about three men -- two straight, one gay -- who end up living under the same roof. One of the few conventional new sitcoms this year, "Oh Grow Up" shows promise of maturing, if that is the right word, into a show that knows how to put the fun in dysfunctional. Stephen Dunham plays a carefree philanderer whose ways are so familiar to his roommate, played by David Alan Basche, that Basche even knows how many minutes will elapse before that night's conquest will come downstairs for a glass of water. One day an old friend (John Ducey) shows up at their door, having just come out of the closet. Not far behind is his soon-to-be-ex-wife (Rena Sofer). Then Dunham's little world is interrupted by the arrival of a daughter he sired 18 years ago (Niesha Trout). Creator Alan Ball avoids going for easy laughs with this troupe, all the while keeping the pot stirred. And while Dunham's and Basche's characters bear more than a passing resemblance to Robbie and Shrug, the laconic tandem on another ABC sitcom, "It's Like, You Know," by episode's end they show signs of actually caring about their fellow man -- and woman. (ABC, 9:30 p.m. Wednesdays) "Third Watch" -- From John Wells, the creator of "ER," comes the pre-ER version of "ER." New York City cops, paramedics and firemen battle everything the mean streets of Manhattan can throw at them. As on "ER," there's a Mulligan's stew of characters: the dedicated do-gooder, the grizzled pro who knows when to bend the rules, the impossibly green rookie, the free spirit etc. The first couple of episodes are certainly action-packed, and Wells gives us a good look at most of the prodigious cast. But it will be a few weeks before a breakout character emerges, if any. (My nominees: Skipp Sudduth's burly officer Sullivan and Molly Price's working mom-slash-cop.) (NBC, premieres 10 p.m. Thursday; regular time slot 8 p.m. Sundays) "Mission Hill" -- Two of the more renowned alumni of "The Simpsons" created this charming and at times laugh-out-loud animated sitcom for the WB audience of teens and 20-somethings. Creators Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein promise to satirize everything important to their young audience, including the WB itself. "Mission Hill" has a tall task drawing cartoon viewers to Friday nights, where it will usher in the WB's three live-action comedies aimed at African-Americans. (WB; premiere is at 9 tonight and moves to 8 p.m. Fridays starting Oct. 8) "Judging Amy" -- Amy Brenneman ("NYPD Blue") is Amy Gray, a New York lawyer who moves to Hartford, Conn., to accept a judgeship. Because this is television, she decides to move herself and her young daughter in with her domineering mother, played by CBS perennial Tyne Daly. But "Judging Amy" has an inviting premise and above-average writing. Brenneman is sort of a fish-out-of-water in reverse -- hotshot city lawyer turned family-court justice. Her court cases range from the wacky to the melodramatic, although melodrama never hurt "Touched by an Angel." And no one will question this show's commitment to diversity, with numerous black supporting actors (if no regulars) and a strong older woman in Daly, an accomplished community pillar who supplies her daughter with the context she dearly lacks. (CBS, 10 p.m. Tuesdays) "Get Real" -- Sophisticated teens dance around their feuding parents in this lighter take on the short-lived TV drama "My So-Called Life," that had its premiere Wednesday. The kids address the camera throughout, a technique I don't care for. And it gets worse, as when Meghan Green (Anne Hathaway), who even looks like Claire Danes, tells us that "we're making 'My So-Called Life' look like '3rd Rock From the Sun.' " Excuse me, but I'll be the judge of that. Meghan has two younger brothers, unfulfilled mom (Debrah Farentino) and overworked dad (John Tenney). Then there's Grandma, a sort of anti-Dr. Laura who at one point tells her daughter, "Whenever there's trouble in the marriage, sex is the answer." Solid writing, but this show may be haunted by its inability to "get real," with too many daydream sequences, too many asides and way too many references to other TV shows. (Fox, 9 p.m. Wednesdays) "The Grown Ups" -- How eager is Jaleel White to show us he's no longer Urkel? In this new sitcom, White often is seen sporting sleeveless tops, all the better to flex those well-developed biceps. This mostly conventional sitcom wins points for its biracial cast, but that and the casting of White may not be enough to cut through the clutter. Dept. of Eerie Similarity: "Oh Grow Up," on ABC, also features two straight guys more attached to each other than to the women in their lives. (UPN, 8 p.m. Mondays) "WWF Smackdown" -- Already a hit on pay-per-view, cable and syndication, the World Wrestling Federation ventures onto broadcast TV with "WWF Smackdown," the first pro wrestling series to air on a network in 45 years. It had its premiere Aug. 26 and promptly became UPN's highest-rated show. Not much has changed in the move from cable to network except for the "Smackdown" logo, a cool blue flag that tones down the bloody-red logo used on cable. But the players are the same, the hype is the same, and the audience, by all appearances, is the same. Maybe you don't know where UPN is on your dial, but your 10-year-old does. (UPN, 8 p.m. Thursdays) "Odd Man Out" -- OK, I'm grading this one on the curve. Truth be told, the only show on ABC's teen-oriented "TGIF" I've ever warmed to is "Sabrina." They're sitcoms for kids who don't get those grown-up sitcoms -- a scary thought, actually. "Odd Man Out" stars Erik von Detten as a 15-year-old boy living in a household of women: his mom (Markie Post), aunt (Jessica Capshaw) and three sisters. The running joke is that von Detten doesn't understand girls and relies on the women he lives with to translate the teen-age feminine code. Typical sitcom story lines (e.g., boy says "yes" to two girls at same time) lead to dependable outcomes (boy comes clean and pays the price). (ABC, 9:30 p.m. Fridays)

Needs Show Doctor

"Love & Money": This cynical romantic comedy recycles the "Dharma & Greg" concept, only this one takes place in Manhattan, involves a rich girl and a working-class boy and isn't nearly as endearing. It's nice to see David Ogden Stiers get some decent sitcom work after his embarrassing turn in "Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place." Here he's the billionaire whose daughter gets cold feet and revives an old flame with the doorman's son. But other revivals are not as welcome: Swoosie Kurtz is unappealing as the drunken, sex-starved wife, and Brian Doyle-Murray plays an obnoxious lout as the doorman. As for the would-be couple (Brian Van Holt and Paget Brewster), they have all the sex appeal of two people in the park reading the newspaper. There's a pretty good gag involving an elevator alarm -- but it doesn't come until next week's episode, by which time you've probably stopped watching. (CBS, 8:30 p.m. Fridays) "Wasteland" From Kevin Williamson, the creator of teen favorites "Scream" and "Dawson's Creek," comes a drama about remarkably jaded 20-somethings living in Manhattan. Dawnie (Marisa Coughlan) is the apparent leader of this uninspiring pack of mopes; she's all fired up to write her master's thesis on her fellow 20-somethings and their long march through a "wasteland" of bad relationships and unfulfilled careers. I've heard of anthropologists studying TV, but this may be the first time a TV show turned the tables. Unfortunately, Williamson feeds Dawnie some very dopey lines early in the first episode, and the rest of the hour is spent recovering from those first two scenes. None of the other lead characters grabbed my attention; perhaps that will change when Jeffrey D. Sams, a late addition to the cast and its only African-American, shows up. Sams was terrific on "Cupid," last season's short-lived Thursday show. ABC hasn't had a hit on Thursdays in years, and clearly the network is hoping "Wasteland" can attract a large enough core of young viewers to make up for its overall ratings, which are expected to be low. "Freaks and Geeks" was separated at birth from "Get Real" on Fox and "Popular" on the WB. Only this show about misfit teen-agers takes place in 1980, when all the clothes were polyester and everyone's hair was goofy. And rather than gazing at the popular people, "Freaks and Geeks," as the title suggests, celebrates the downtrodden masses whose high school existence was one of unceasing torment made livable only by joining the fraternities of freakdom or geekdom. (Which one you pledged depended on how many times you watched "Star Wars.") Color me confused on the concept. Are 20-somethings supposed to like this show? Good luck with those archaic pop culture references (Molly Hatchet, Carter/Mondale). Teen-agers? Sure -- let them see that high school was just as vicious 20 years ago. (In capturing the cruelty of adolescence, "Freaks and Geeks" is all too real.) Most likely the show is aimed at young adults who went to high school back then and remember what it was like to be picked on by bullies and misunderstood by friends and lectured by clueless adults. In other words, ``Freaks and Geeks'' recalls a time a lot of viewers would rather forget. (NBC, 8 p.m. Saturdays) "Snoops" -- We may be butting up against the limits of David E. Kelleydom. This ABC show from the creator of "The Practice," and "Ally McBeal" is smartly written, delightfully cast, full of eye candy -- yet it's missing a soul. Paula Marshall and Gina Gershon play private detectives surrounded by lots of high-tech toys and yummy young folks like themselves. They bend the rules like the lawyers on "The Practice," and their unreal office dynamics come straight out of "Ally." But "Snoops" doesn't have the moral urgency of those other shows, the technology is obviously there to patch story holes, and there's nobody over age 31 in sight. Kansas City's Edward Kerr has a limited role as Marshall's ex-love interest. (ABC, 9 p.m. Sundays) "Cold Feet" -- On the same night as the daft "Providence" is this one-hour relationship comedy for the subtlety-impaired. Two couples are married, another is falling in love, and they all have trouble communicating with each other in that peculiar way people don't communicate on TV. Based on a British series, "Cold Feet" also has elements of "Ally McBeal" stirred in (dream sequences, absurdist dialogue). But the show's inferior writing just makes a mess of it. The unmarried twosome is sweet, of course, as many unmarried twosomes on TV are. But the marrieds are almost painful to watch; one of the husbands is a witless dolt who opposes hiring a nanny to help his beaten-down wife. If he has his reasons, he doesn't bother sharing them with her or us. The romance between the two singles takes up most of this hour, so perhaps the marrieds will get more cuddly in later episodes. They'd better. (NBC, 10 p.m. Fridays) "Stark Raving Mad" -- The title suggests sheer insanity, unfettered lunacy -- but it's just another mildly amusing stick of fruitgum courtesy of the NBC comedy mill. Steven Levitan, creator of "Just Shoot Me," was contractually promised a spot on the NBC schedule this fall for his new sitcom. And it shows. Neal Patrick Harris plays an uptight book editor assigned to hound a creepy horror novelist who hasn't produced anything in a year. Problem is, whether intended or not, Tony Shalhoub's novelist guy isn't that creepy, or troubled, or anything he's alleged to be. And I'm wary of any sitcom in which the dog gets the biggest laughs. ... NBC will undoubtedly throw new cast members, writers and promotional dollars behind "Stark Raving Mad" to keep its vaunted Thursday-night lineup strong in the ratings. But this year that may not be enough: Fox has pitted "Action," a comedy that really is stark raving mad, against this show and is giving it a huge push. I know which 8:30 comedy I'll be watching. (NBC, 9:30 Thursdays)

D.O.A.

"Shasta McNasty" Earlier this year, when I saw a five-minute preview of this show about three obnoxious 20-somethings, I thought "this isn't so bad." What was I thinking??? Perhaps wisely, UPN didn't show TV critics a full episode in advance and chose to unfurl its freak flag last Thursday after "WWF Smackdown." I never thought I'd see a show that made pro wrestling seem politically correct but "Shasta McNasty" is it. Written for 12-year-olds, this vehicle for Jake Busey, Gary's whacked-out kid, is relentlessly half-witted and cruel. And don't let the one black guy in the threesome fool you -- "Shasta" embodies a diversity-free young white male viewpoint, that UPN network is so obviously pandering to here. No thanks. (UPN, 8:30 p.m.) "Jack & Jill" -- Like other new shows on the WB, this one bears an uncanny resemblance to an existing hit. In this case it's "Felicity," the show that precedes it on Sunday nights. In this artless comic soap, two young women fight for the affections of one young man -- and did somebody just turn back the clock to 1959? (WB, 9 p.m. Sundays) "The Mike O'Malley Show" -- "The Rick" from ESPN's long-running ad campaign gets his own sitcom. At a press gathering this summer, O'Malley predicted his show would be among the first to be canned. Who are we to argue? ( CANCELLED! ) "Family Law" -- CBS might have been better off leaving "Chicago Hope" on Mondays. The network has tried "Brooklyn South" and "L.A. Doctors" in "Hope's" old time slot. Now comes "Family Law," which by comparison makes "L.A. Doctors" look highbrow. Kathleen Quinlan plays a lawyer who must rebuild her life and her practice after hubby runs off with her best friend -- and the client files. Quinlan's meltdown when she learns the news is excruciating to watch, but not as painful as watching new partner Dixie Carter unleash her venom against the entire male gender. As for making Christopher MacDonald the firm's third partner, it reminds me of CBS' decision last year to add a woman to the "L.A. Doctors" cast: too little, too late. "Family Law" will quickly drive away any male viewers not watching football and probably won't fare much better among the Lifetime crowd, either. (CBS, 10 p.m. Mondays) "Ladies' Man" -- Alfred Molina loses his British accent to play an all-American sexist schlub in this unbelievably tasteless, paint-by-numbers sitcom from "Action" creator Chris Thompson. Similar to ABC's "Odd Man Out," Molina plays the lone male in a three-generation house of women -- all of whom spend inordinate amounts of time in the kitchen. Betty White plays against type, again, as Molina's sweetly outrageous mom. Sharon Lawrence demonstrates, as she did on NBC's "Fired Up," that she is not a comic actress. The obligatory child actor is insufferable. At least she's in good company. (CBS, 8:30 p.m. Mondays) "The Parkers" -- This charmless sitcom is a spinoff of the smart, sensitive Brandy vehicle "Moesha," with co-star Countess Vaughn and introducing Mo'nique as her mom. Wacky high jinks ensue as they enroll in the same college together. The subtlety of "Moesha," such as it was, is gone here as Vaughn and Mo'nique shout out the same old punchlines. As though that will get us to pay attention. (UPN, 8:30 Mondays)

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>>> Aaron Barnhart's TVBARN.COM Close this window TV Barn goes handheld! If you own a Palm Pilot or other Palm OS device (like the Handspring Visor), or a handheld device running Windows CE, then you can download the day's TV Barn Web site and take it with you! Just sign up with the AvantGo service, if you haven't already -- it's free -- and then click here to add TV Barn to your list of channels. (You may be asked to sign in first.) You'll be taken to a page where you can review the options for your new TV Barn channel. I've preset all the options, so all you need to do is click the SAVE CHANNEL button at the bottom. It's as simple as that. Close this window Top Stories • DADDIO: MOMMIO MADE ME DO IT! • PULSE: YOUR GUIDE TO GOOD HEALTH • NEW BABY BUT NO WEDDING FOR 'MURPHY BROWN' STAR Hot Stories • MONICA RUNNING WILD • ROSIE O: MY BABY'S BATTLING DEADLY LYME DISEASE • MAGNETS REALLY DO HAVE THE POWER TO FIGHT PAIN • FUN QUIZ: MATCH UP THESE PROUD H'WOOD MOMS & THEIR CHILDREN Star Magazine Country Weekly Home Insider News Got a Tip? More Stories Stories Archive Reader Services Classifieds Advertise With Us Horoscope Medical News Free Contests Mike Walker Free Email Enquirer Store DatingClub.com FranklinMint.com Crossword Greeting Cards Astrology HOT NEW TV SHOW ROCKED BY SCANDAL THE CONTROVERSIAL new "Survivor" TV series will have to survive a blistering scandal! One of its stars has been busted on felony child abuse charges — his son says he beat him for putting on weight. The CBS show will debut May 31 but has already generated TV-has-gone-too-far controversy, akin to FOX's "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" The show strands 16 people on an island, then follows their efforts to survive. Weeks before its premiere, the program is reeling from its first off-air scandal. Contestant Richard Hatch, an openly gay sportsman, was arrested in late April. His 9-year-old adopted son charged that the fitness fanatic, after returning from the bizarre weeks-long survival ordeal, manhandled him, choked him and slammed him to the ground. But Hatch says he wasn't abusive. The ENQUIRER spoke with police and close sources for this news exclusive of the real-life drama that has pitted a young boy against his father and raises troubling questions of whether a TV show helped split apart a family.


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FAST FACT!
"Survivor" is based on a Swedish television format originally known as "Expedition Robinson."

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"A bump on the boy's head was the size of an egg. He had red marks on his neck and other bruises," Middletown, R.I., police lieutenant Barry Smith told The ENQUIRER. Police say 39-year-old Hatch — who scuba dives, goes camping, sky-dives and jogs religiously — beat the boy while trying to get him to lose the pounds he'd packed on while Hatch was gone for nearly six weeks taping the CBS show. Hatch vehemently denies his son's charges. Friends insist he is a great dad and that the youngster — adopted two years ago — is the troubled, abandoned son of a prostitute. They say the child is lying. Hatch proved to be a tough competitor on the much-ballyhooed reality program which is already taped. On the show, eight men and eight women are placed on a remote Malaysian island with nothing but the clothes on their back. They must use their wits and skills to survive for 39 days. Competitors get eliminated as they vie against each other in a series of mental and physical challenges. The "ultimate survivor" wins a million dollars. On April 27, just two days after Hatch returned from Malaysia to his home in Middletown, R.I., he woke the youngster at 4:30 a.m. to go running in the darkness. "I got a shortage of breath and my side hurt. I couldn't keep up," the boy said in his statement to police, according to an inside source who spoke exclusively to The ENQUIRER. "My father ran with me by pulling me by the ear. I fell to the ground. He then had both hands around my neck from behind and began running again, choking me and pushing me to run." The boy says he yelled for help but Hatch, who runs a Newport, R.I., training program for business executives, ordered him to do 50 push-ups. The exhausted child could manage only a few. "So he grabbed me by the hair from behind and slammed my head down on the street," the youngster told police. "He twisted my right arm behind my back and began running . . . I made my way home." The ENQUIRER learned the child also told cops he has been slapped "a lot" and roughed up by Hatch ever since his adoption. Hatch was charged with child abuse — a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a maximum $5,000 fine — after the boy told his story to teachers. The youngster was placed in a foster home, said Lt. Smith. Hatch intends to mount a strong defense and his mother Margaret brands the charges "untrue." Rick Hood, a pal of Hatch, maintains the boy once spread a false rumor that Hood's son was molested by a neighbor. The youngster has a weight problem and his father got him to lose weight by jogging, Hood told The ENQUIRER. "Kids at school were calling him a fatty and Richard helped him. "But while Richard was taping 'Survivor,' the boy put on about 20 pounds." A finely tuned athlete, Hatch was one of the finalists on "Survivor," said Hood. "He was good at spearing fish, which made for a better meal. Some of the contestants had to eat rats." During taping of the 13-episode series, participants had to hunt and build their own shelters while coping with poisonous snakes, rats, sharks, barracudas and even food-stealing monkeys. But Hatch is facing his most painful challenge right at home. "Richard is devastated by his son's charges," says Hood. "He is just trying to cope." -- DON GENTILE





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Friday, February 23, 2001

"Zen" writes, "In your story about Fox and NASCAR, you missed what could probably be construed as the worst case of karmatic irony. In the week leading up to Daytona, Fox ran radio ads in the New York market, and presumably nationwide, hyping the Daytona race. The ads took a swipe at the XFL while promoting NASCAR at the same time. They didn't play up the 'art of the race' or how cool the drivers were. Instead they emphasized the danger of racing — lines like 'Our turnovers AREN'T safe!' and 'If they get injured, our guys don't walk off the field!' and 'They smash the hell out of each other!' "Even with 20/20 hindsight, the spectre of Adam Petty's death should have made Fox realize that the ads were tasteless. After Sunday's tragedy, the loss of one of the top drivers on the circuit should make Fox completely re-think its strategy." **** Andy Ihnatko graces us with another DVD review; this time "American Movie" (1999), an honest-it's-true documentary about a luckless would-be filmmaker from Wisconsin whom Andy describes as "a fascinating subject surrounded by characters straight out of a Coen Brothers film." Read Andy's review **** I'm revising the headline style on each day's entry. Namely, I am giving it a single headline covering all items posted that day. It's part of the transition to the new Weblog format (see below) that will happen In the Near Future. **** The new issue of The New Republic contains what may well be a seminal piece of criticism of black images on television. Though confined to prime-time series, mostly sitcoms, John McWhorter's polemic has more than a ring of truth to it. On first reading, it feels like a long-overdue and much-needed dissent from a school of thought that finds fault with nearly every depiction of African-Americans on TV today. McWhorter, professor of linguistics at Berkeley and author of Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, uses a book review of Donald Bogle's Primetime Blues to take on what has become — with the help of critics like me — the nearly universal view that today's TV shows do nothing more than rehash old, old stereotypes of blacks. That they are sexually craven. Loud and obnoxious. And when they are not confined to their own television ghetto, it is always clear that they serve at the pleasure of the white characters on the program. Calling upon examples from three decades of prime-time TV, McWhorter demonstrates that not only were these programs more enlightened than their critics give them credit for being, but that the methodology used by black critics is so reductive that few, if any, TV shows with African-American stars could possibly meet with their approval. Here's one example, excerpted from McWhorter's review:

"[If] white couples argue ('Roseanne', 'Married ... with Children') it is refreshing, but Fred Sanford and Aunt Esther's chitlin' circuit feuding is nothing but a return to the Kingfish and Sapphire. I must say that I adored Aunt Esther, as many black viewers did, seeing in her an endearingly broad exaggeration of bits and pieces of any number of black women whom I have known. It is not obvious to me that I should regret the many pleasures that this character brought me because of an academic parallel to a character from a show created forty years before I was born. Fred and Esther's relationship, along with the relationship between the Kingfish and Sapphire, may be traced more plausibly to an ancient cliche in popular entertainment, the henpecked husband and the shrewish battle-ax wife. (Fred and Esther are uncannily reminiscent, for example, of the old comic strip 'Bringing Up Father.') In Fred and Esther I see not a statement about middle-aged black people, but a statement about America and its tortured, hilarious history of relations between the sexes."

I commend the entire piece to you — it's on newsstands or you can read it online — and then I'd welcome your reactions and thoughts. **** Reader Gary Trapp alertly captured this still from Wednesday's telecast of the Grammy Awards which clearly shows the poor, misunderstood Eminem giving the public a one-fingered salute at the end of his duet with Elton John. See for yourself. **** I wasn't aware that receiving three Grammy Awards constituted a "snub," but apparently it does, to read the industry's coverage of Wednesday night's trophyfest. By failing to win any awards that did not have the word "rap" in the title, rapper Eminem was apparently made an object lesson by voters of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. On the other hand, maybe not. Ever since Jethro Tull walked off with the first heavy-metal Grammy, the academy has chosen the darndest times to show its preference for age and experience over youthful sensations. That extended not only to Steely Dan, this night's big winner in Pop Vocal Album, Pop Duo and Album of the Year, but — as others have pointed out — to this year's Best New Artist, Shelby Lynne, who has actually been performing and recording for 13 years; and the hard-rock winners from this year, Rage Against the Machine, who've been doing damage for a decade. That wasn't good enough for Inside.com's Bruce Haring, who leveled the most curious bit of outrage so far at the Grammy voters. He all but called them hypocrites for rewarding Steely Dan's "Two Against Nature" CD, "even though it has some of the most unsettling lyrics around — adulterous lovers scheming to drive a cuckolded wife crazy, and a pedophile with a thing for teenage runaways. ... This duo, who nowadays look more like college professors than musicians and raise no middle fingers to the public, touched off not a peep after winning Album of the Year." I'm no musical genius, but it seems to me that the academy may have been rewarding Steely Dan as much for their intelligent design as out of a sense of nostalgia. The reason nobody makes a big deal out of Donald Fagen's and Walter Becker's disturbing lyrics is because they have a certain ... what is the word ... subtlety. You remember subtlety. It was Gorgeous George before The Rock and Chyna. It was Clint Eastwood before Steven Seagal. It was Mike Wallace before Morton Downey and then Jerry Springer and then Chris Matthews. The singer Moby made the same point this week, expressing his concern for Eminem's lyrics, wondering if a "9-year-old kid in Idaho" would see the irony in them. One senses Steely Dan's lyrics soaring far above the heads of most pre-teenagers (if recording artists three times their age even come into orbit at all). Unlike most phony-baloney award shows on TV these days, the Grammys telecast is one of the very few that is shrouded someone in the murky groupthink of a professional elite. Most awards are given out based on some measurement of public opinion — a poll or an Internet vote — or on a desire by the presenters to be loved and accepted by the presentees, a cynical arrangement that nonetheless reaches its annual apotheosis in the feckless spectacle known as the Golden Globes. So I sort of liked the turn of fate, and I suspect the academy did too, and not simply because it was stating its preference for a salt-and-pepper duo from the Carter years. The Eminem "snub" lends just a little more mystique to a ceremony that, over the years, is becoming less like the People's Choice Awards and more like the Oscars. Which, of course, is exactly how the academy ("academy"!) perceives itself: the recording industry's equivalent of cinematic achievement, as evidenced by the bombast let loose by NARAS president Michael Greene late in Wednesday's ceremony. "Of late, the controversy over extreme lyrics has been a heat-seeking missile," Greene said, "and it's important to remember that the Academy is not here to defend or vilify, commercialize or censor art." Not here to commercialize art? Who is he kidding? Still, given the recording industry's relentless building of Marshall Mathers, it did seem "anticlimactic" (in Haring's words) for him to be denied the big prize. After millions of gallons of ink and thousands of hours of videotape were sacrificed on the Eminem "controversy," after piles of MTV hype and a duet with Elton John — which offered the nation incontrovertible proof that polka dots make you look fat — anything short of handing "The Marshall Mathers LP" every Grammy Award in sight would be a comedown. Disingenuous the academy may be, but regarding this so-called "snub," it at least dodges the hypocrisy charge.

Thursday, February 22, 2001

Housekeeping: As you know, last fall I did some fiddling around with Blogger, trying to turn TV Barn into a Weblog. My interest in moving to Weblog format, however, goes back much further. Weblogs have a lot of automated features, whereas I currently maintain most of this site by hand. Also, a Weblog is interactive, allowing readers to respond to stories in a way that's integrated with the main content (unlike the tvbarn2 message board I keep at Yahoo! Groups). Unfortunately, though Blogger was simpler than most Weblog technologies I'd tried, it was too slow and limited to be of much use. For the past few weeks I have begun experimenting with a site that uses a Weblog technology called Manila, and it appears to be just the right mix of speed, power and versatility. So I've decided to move TV Barn to a Manila-based service provider in the next few days. The address will remain tvbarn.com but the look will be quite different. I've also decided that full-length stories will no longer be posted to the main page, but to a secondary page. For now, while we're in transition, that secondary page will be over at tv.yahoo.com, where all TV Barn features have been appearing since last fall. We begin with the "Millionaire" story below. (By the way, if you know Manila, and are willing to help me out when I get stuck, let me know. Thanks.) **** "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" still reaches more than 80 million viewers a week. Now, with its ratings in decline, ABC and "Millionaire" executive producer Michael Davies are determined that "Millionaire" remain a force to be reckoned with. To that end, they have quietly launched a campaign to address what they believe is the show's Achilles heel: the preponderance of white male contestants. Read my story from the Kansas City Star

Wednesday, February 21, 2001

David Poole of our sister paper, the Charlotte Observer, writing about Dale Earnhardt's death: "Earnhardt's wreck in Turn 4 happened so quickly. With Waltrip holding off Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the win we were distracted, so the first ominous signs slipped by us. Somebody said that Ken Schrader, whose Pontiac had also been involved in the wreck, got out of his car to check on Earnhardt and immediately starting waving for help. Somebody said they were cutting off the roof. Then came the tarp. Oh God. No. When a wrecked car is covered with a tarp at a NASCAR track, that's always a horrible sign."

Tuesday, February 20, 2001

Roy Currlin writes, "NBC is promoting tonight's episode of 'Ed' — a repeat of an episode from last night — as, you guessed it, 'All-New.' And that's as opposed to the partly-new episodes littering the TV landscape these days." Speaking of NBC: In a move that is sure to tick off "Law & Order" creator Dick Wolf, NBC has once again decided to slap an extra disclaimer onto the show. You'll see it before Wednesday's episode (10 p.m.), words to the effect that, while based on real events, the show you are about to watch is a work of fiction. (Duh!) Unfortunately, NBC's caution will only make it harder to keep viewers from guessing the plot twist in this ripped-from-the-headlines murder case. This is the second time in two months that NBC has added an extra warning to a "Law & Order" episode; after the first incident, Wolf complained bitterly to the press that there was no reason for such a disclaimer since "L&O" viewers know what to expect when they tune in. By the way, the show, now in its 11th season, is "enjoying its highest ratings ever," according to a letter sent by Wolf to TV critics last week. Much as it pains me to admit it, we probably have "The West Wing" to thank for that.
• A fan rants about NBC's January disclaimer
**** Oh those mischievous "Survivor" litigants! Now Mark Burnett, newly minted with a multi-million-dollar deal to do versions three and four of his reality hit, has countersued Stacey Stillman, the lawyer who believes she was unfairly ejected from version one. As usual, our friends at The Smoking Gun have the document (check their archives if it's not on the home page) and, even better, have an MP3 file of Stillman's answering machine message refuting Burnett's charges! Now there's your reality programming! **** The day the Emergency Broadcast System actually did something, and remember "Mrs. Columbo"? That and other highlights of TV history in this week's edition of Tom Heald's Test Patterns, where you'll find more links than at the Kroger meat section. **** "You're a fine TV reporter, but as a sports historian ... well, you better stick to TV reporting." Must be a letter from a sports fan. Plenty of feedback on my NASCAR and XFL commentaries in the latest stash of reader mail.

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