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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:
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• 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:
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• 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 weeke