26 THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, JULY 17, 2002
ENTERTAINMENT NEWS CBS keeping promises to David Letterman
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — CBS says it's delivering on the promises it made to keep David Letterman with the network, heavily promoting his "Late Show" and scheduling what it hopes will be stronger leads in the program.
"We had a very easy negotiation with David Letterman," CBS President Leslie Moonves said wryly of this spring's contentious talks with the entertainer, who considered jumping to ABC.
Letterman's representatives made specific programming demands, including scheduling the new "CSI: Miami," a spinoff of the hit drama "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," at 10 p.m., Moonves told members of the Television Critics Association on Monday.
The network responded by scheduling the show for 10 p.m. Mondays this fall, Moonves said, although its contract with Letterman didn't require it to do so.
CBS also agreed to use the resources of parent company Viacom Inc. to heavily promote the "Late Show" on MTV and other properties.
And the network clearly was trying, Moonves said, recounting a joke comedian Jon Stewart made about how often Letterman was mentioned during the network's recent broadcast of the NCAA basketball championships.
"There was so much promotion I thought Letterman was playing Duke in
the semifinals," Stewart said.
Nicole Kidman could become honorary citizen
POTIGRAFU, Romania (AP) — The mayor of this drought-strenken village has never seen a movie with Nicole Kidman, but he'd like to make her an honorary citizen.
Mayor Gheorghe Voicu calls it "a hand from heaven for the locals" that "Cold Mountain," a big-budget movie starring Kidman and Jude Law and adapted from Charles Frazier's Civil War novel, is being filmed in the village of 1,300 people.
Voicu has been busy this summer fixing up the kindergarten and village school with income earned from the Miramax MGM film.
"Cold Mountain," which began filming Monday in Potigrafu, marks Romania's entry into the market for big Hollywood movies.
Costs remain low here: The average monthly salary is just 3.3 million lei about $100—substantially lower than in the nearby Czech Republic or Hungary, which have been popular with Western filmmakers looking for low costs and stunning architecture.
Anthony Minghella, who directed the Oscar-winning "The English Patient," found the fields and virgin forests of southern Romania a perfect setting for the $80 million "Cold Mountain," which takes place in the American South.
Critics declare programs mediocre for fall TV line-up
"I've never in 22 years seen shows with less salable star power," said the Dallas Morning News' Ed Bark, one of the more
With grayness beaming from the medium they love, and few TV stars on the interview horizon, many critics seemed unenthusiastic as they assembled from all corners of a country that is tenser and more economically uncertain than anyone would have imagined when camp broke on their 2001 gathering.
The publicity-thon began July 8 with a pitch for the syndicated She Spies, and will end July 26 with PBS.
Mediocre and thuddingly familiar.
PASADENA, Calif. — The major broadcast networks began their presentations Monday at the Television Critics Association's annual summer press tour. They were facing a tough audience anxious about the economy and terrorism but more deeply disappointed by the mediocre new programs coming in the fall.
senior critics.
"Everything seems like a repeat," said Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic. He was referring to a slate of new shows that has been unanimously branded as uninspired, but he could have been riffing on the event itself, arranged mutually by the critics and the networks as the most efficient mass method for interviewing stars and executives.
The fall programs reflect the malaise.
Signally, an NBC drama called Boomtown, tales of crime in Los Angeles told from many vantage points, is the only one mentioned spontaneously, out of 37 new broadcast series, by the majority of critics as arousing interest. Summing up the opinion of the underwhelmed, Mike Duffy of the Detroit Free Press called Boomtown "incredibly pretentious, but a show that's at least trying to do something a little different."
"It doesn't even look like the networks are trying," said TV Guide's Matt Roush.
An apparent lack of effort has the critics down.
That series,starring David Caruso as the brooding evidence-analyzer and Kim Delaney as a police investigator, is the one picked by most critics for commercial success.
In addition to straight remakes (Family Affair on the WB, The Twilight Zone on UPN), the fall schedule features a pile of derivative family comedies and uninspired cop and medical shows, including one spin-off, CBS's CSI: Miami."
"The networks have done crime so long and so well that the shows are starting to look the same," said Hal Boedeker of the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel. "It's kind of depressing."