As they are every year, producers Gil Cates and Michael Seligman are concerned about long-winded winners and those who want to use Oscar as a politcal platform. The longest acceptance speech on record was a 61/2-minute diatribe by Greer Garson,…
In the TV business, where career paths sometimes seem to be measured in nanoseconds, King World Productions’ Moira Coffey is a longdistance runner-literally too.King World’s chief researcher, who has been crunching numbers at the syndication company for 20 years, is…
News Units to Share Baghdad Video The five major U.S. television news organizations have struck an agreement that any video that can be uplinked out of Baghdad in the first 24 hours of the U.S. attack on Baghdad will be…
Top network show:Survivor: Amazon (CBS)/ 9.3/23 (Adults 18 to 49)23.3 million total viewers(Week ending March 9)Top cable show:Presidential News Conference Analysis (FNC)/5,938,000 total viewers(Week ending March 9)Top syndicated show: Wheel of Fortune/15,483,000 total viewers(Week ending March 2)
While planning for this year’s Academy Awards is proceeding normally, a cloud hangs over the event. Besides the challenge of HDTV, the Oscars are facing competition from war, including the possibility that the show will be interrupted by news broadcasts….
More ‘Celebrity Mole’ on the way ABC is close to a deal to renew Celebrity Mole for a summer run. The Stone Stanley Entertainment-produced show is expected to get a seven-episode order. Ahmad Rashad, who hosted the last incarnation Celebrity…
AMC Greenlights Movie Talk Series AMC has given the production green light to 13 half-hour episodes of Sunday Morning Shoot-Out, a high-profile weekly movie talk series that will be co-hosted by Peter Guber and Peter Bart. Mr. Guber, a well-known…
HBO Plays Hardball With Gandolfini In its contract dispute with Sopranos star James Gandolfini, HBO came heavy Tuesday, countersuing the actor in Los Angeles Superior Court and asking for at least $100 million in damages as well as an order…
Siegel, Turrell Exit TBS in Kent Restructuring New Turner Broadcasting Systems Chairman and CEO Philip Kent has moved quickly to put his mark on the Turner TV empire, restructuring its operating units so that they are more integrated and promoting…
Scripps’ Web growthTwo Scripps Networks Web sites broke ratings records in January. HGTV.com, the Web site for Home & Garden Television, counted 5,658,000 unique visitors in January, a 170 percent increase over the previous month, due in part to the…