Category: Television

Wild and Whacky ‘The Osbournes’ Returns to MTV
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – They’ve met the Queen of England and President Bush. They’ve won their first Emmy Award, battled cancer, taken in another teenager and more dogs. Now television’s wildest family is ready again for prime time.
British rocker Ozzy Osbourne and his raucous, foul-mouthed clan will return to the tube on Nov. 26, kicking off a second season of MTV’s highest-rated show, the Viacom Inc.-owned cable music network said on Tuesday.
The future of “The Osbournes,” which became an overnight media sensation last season, was thrown into doubt after Osbourne’s wife and manager, Sharon, was diagnosed with colon cancer over the summer.
But the family decided to pick up where they left off last spring with 10 new episodes chronicling their lives in Beverly Hills as they simultaneously adjust to heightened fame and Sharon Osbourne’s illness.
“We are excited to invite the world into our home for another dose of Osbourne insanity,” Sharon Osbourne said in a statement issued by MTV. “This season the show takes on a whole new meaning as we share the highs and lows of the last six months with our viewers. With the Osbournes, you never know what you’re gonna get.”
The first season followed the daily exploits of the 53-year-old heavy metal legend in his off-stage role as a befuddled father puttering around his house, forever cleaning up after his incontinent dogs, taking orders from his wife, and sparring with their teenage children, Kelly and Jack.
The bleep-filled series became MTV’s biggest hit, earned an Emmy as television’s best “reality” series and turned the family into instant pop culture figures.
Ozzy-mania even extended to Buckingham Palace, where rock’s heavily tattooed “Prince of Darkness” was introduced to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II earlier this month at the Golden Jubilee pop concert in her honor.
This season, the show will feature a new member of the clan, 18-year-old Robert Marcato, a family friend whose mother recently died of cancer and has moved in with the Osbournes. They are in the process of legally adopting him.
Melinda the nanny also will return, along with an ever-expanding collection of dogs and cats and various other characters who drift in and out of the Osbourne household.
The show also will incorporate scenes from Ozzy’s touring schedule over the summer, a trip to Washington last May to dine with the president, and Kelly’s bid to launch a recording career as a singer.

CBS Gives Full-Season Orders to Four Shows
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – CBS, showing confidence in its new fall line-up, gave full-season orders to three dramas and a comedy on Monday, including the highest-rated new show of the fall season.
CBS said it had ordered an additional nine episodes, making a full 22-show season, for dramas “CSI: Miami,” “Without A Trace” and “Hack” and the comedy “Still Standing.”
“CSI: Miami” in particular has been a standout for the network, emerging as the most bona-fide hit among the new shows on the air this season. For the season through Oct. 20 it is the No. 5 show on television, according to Nielsen Media Research.
“Still Standing” and “Without A Trace” also both rank in Nielsen’s top 20 for the season. “Hack” has not been as strong as the others but the network said it is still up 56 percent in total viewers from the same time period last season.

Ford Sponsors ’24’ Premiere Without Commercial Breaks
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Tonight’s premiere of Fox’s espionage drama “24” will run without any commercial breaks, but eagle-eyed viewers should take note of the Ford Expedition driven by its star, Kiefer Sutherland.
Ford Motor Co is underwriting the entire show, which will run without any commercial interruptions, in a flashback to the early days of television, when shows were often sponsored by a single company. Such deals may also represent the future of television advertising, as marketers look for new strategies to reach potential viewers.
Two Ford commercials that imitate “24’s” trademark ticking clock, each about three minutes long, will bookend the premiere, and Sutherland will speak directly to the audience before the show, thanking Ford for its sponsorship.
Fans of “24,” which last season told the tale of an attempted assassination attempt of a presidential candidate, will get a 54-minute premiere uninterrupted by ads. Subsequent episodes will have standard commercial breaks.
In future episodes, Sutherland’s character will drive other Ford vehicles, including Thunderbirds and Mustangs, said Rick Novak, head of car advertising for Ford.
“We want a lot of good hero shots for our vehicles,” he said. “It’s an additional way, an innovative way to break through the clutter.”
A Fox spokeswoman confirmed that Ford has purchased commercial time throughout the upcoming “24” season, and that the auto maker is one of the show’s largest advertisers.
With television audiences fragmented by digital cable and satellite systems that offer hundreds of channels, and the introduction of personal video recorders like TiVo that make it easy to skip ads, marketers are seeking out new advertising methods.
Ford, which previously underwrote a commercial-free airing of the movie “Schindler’s List” and sponsored Fox’s blockbuster “American Idol” program, will also have prominent product placements in ABC’s spy drama “Alias” and in the upcoming James Bond film “Die Another Day.”
Among other car makers, BMW recently launched the second installment of short online films that feature its automobiles. In a similar vein, Mercedes-Benz has run a mock preview in movie theaters starring Benicio Del Toro and its 500 SL convertible.

CALLING IT QUITS?
Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon telling TV Guide Online that the Buffster might hang it up in May. “I’m beginning to suspect that it may be [Buffy’s] last season,” Whedon said. “Nothing’s official, but. . .the way people are talking, there’s a finality to it.” Ratings for this season are off 16 percent compared to this time last year.

CBS Looking At Victoria’s Secret Swimsuit Show

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Is CBS going scantily clad?
The network, which will air a Victoria’s Secret lingerie fashion show next month, says it is also looking at the idea of a Victoria’s Secret swimsuit special featuring that company’s signature clothes and models.
A CBS spokeswoman said the network had talked with Limited Brands Inc. about the idea of such a show and was open to airing it. A spokeswoman for Limited Brands was not immediately available for comment.
This year’s Victoria’s Secret lingerie show is scheduled for Nov. 20 at 10 p.m., and CBS is promoting it as a major special during “sweeps,” the periods where advertising rates are set based on network ratings.
The networks generally run a number of specials and promotions in the period to boost results.
Last year’s special drew 12.4 million viewers for ABC in a November airing at the Thursday 9 p.m. time slot, but also garnered a slew of complaints to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, alleging the show was indecent. Those complaints were dismissed.
CBS is a unit of Viacom Inc. and ABC is a unit of Walt Disney Co.

Christian Slater Joins THE WEST WING
NBC has announced that Christian Slater has agreed to making a multi-episode guest appearance on THE WEST WING, playing a submarine commander.

COMEBACK KID
Fox is bringing back “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” starting on Sunday, December 1.
No word yet about “Greg The Bunny” returning.

CBS Postpones Sniper-Themed ‘CSI: Miami’ Episode
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – CBS has postponed an episode of its hit crime drama “CSI: Miami” that deals with a series of shootings by a sniper because of the sniper attacks in the Washington D.C. area, the network said on Wednesday.
A network spokesman said the episode has been filmed but no decision has been made about when it will air. He said that if the sniper shootings had never taken place, the episode would have probably aired this year.
The show in question, first pitched to the network in August, features a sniper shooting people from a Miami high-rise building.
“CSI: Miami,” a spin-off of “CSI,” has proven to be a major hit for CBS in its freshman season. According to Nielsen Media Research, “CSI: Miami” is the No. 5 show of the season to date, and the No. 3 drama.
Last week, film studio 20th Century Fox pulled the sniper thriller, “Phone Booth,” from its Nov. 15 release date.
The movie stars Irish actor Colin Farrell as a man who answers a ringing telephone in a phone booth only to learn he is in the gun sights of a sniper, played by Kiefer Sutherland of television’s “24,” who threatens to shoot if he hangs up.
A new release date for the film has not yet been set.
CBS is a unit of Viacom Inc. and 20th Century Fox is a unit of News Corp. Ltd.

WIZARD OF OZZ
MTV president Brian Graden telling TV Guide Online the second season of The Osbournes will start on schedule next month, despite Sharon Osbourne ongoing cancer treatment. MTV has at least four episodes in the can already. Published reports had speculated that MTV might delay the second season until next year.

World Series Striking Out in Early TV Ratings
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The World Series has been an offensive showcase in its first two games, full of homers, big hits, and big numbers — except on television.
Fox Sports said on Tuesday total viewership for the first two games of this year’s contest between the Anaheim Angels and the San Francisco Giants was down 13 percent from 2001’s series between the New York Yankees and Arizona Diamondbacks, according to Nielsen Media Research statistics.
In fact, the first two games, played on Saturday and Sunday, drew lower ratings than the first two games in the 2000 series, a four-game sweep by the New York Yankees over the New York Mets that was Nielsen’s lowest-rated series in history.
This year’s first two games drew 17.5 million average viewers compared with 20.1 million a year earlier.
Game One’s rating, a measure of the percentage of homes with TVs that watched the game, was down 10 percent from 2001’s Game One. Game Two was down 21 percent from the 2001 Game Two on the same basis.
The all-California series — which opened at Edison International Field in Anaheim, California, near Los Angeles — has performed strongly among viewers in the western United States, but is down year-over-year in the Midwest and mountain states and is off a full 25 percent in the Eastern time zone compared with last year.
Fox, which paid $2.5 billion in 2000 for six years of baseball broadcasting rights, had been hoping to at least to break even with last year’s results.
Fox Sports President and Executive Producer Ed Goren had said last week that the network’s best-case scenario for this year’s series would be to break even compared to last year’s matchup.
Excluding the World Series, Fox’s overall baseball ratings for the four divisional series and two league championship series this year were up 5 percent over 2001.
Fox also said it had won the nightly prime-time competition both Saturday and Sunday nights in total viewers and adults aged 18-49, a key demographic for advertisers.
Both of the first two games were close, with San Francisco edging Anaheim 4-3 in Game One and Anaheim powering out an 11-10 victory over the Giants in Game Two. Oddsmakers had San Francisco as a slight favorite to take Game Three, scheduled for Tuesday evening in San Francisco’s Pac Bell Stadium.
Fox and Fox Sports are units of News Corp. Ltd.