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Fox and NBC Have Big Summer Plans for Viewers
« on: May 6th, 2003, 3:04pm » |
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In Reality, Fox and NBC Have Big Summer Plans for Viewers
By Lisa de Moraes
Tuesday, May 6, 2003; Page C07
NBC and Fox, neck and neck in the May sweeps among the 18-to-49-year-old viewers that advertisers lust after, will continue their demographic battle into the early days of summer with a mind-numbing quantity of new and returning reality series.
Between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, more than half of NBC's summer slate will be filled with reality programs, including at least one hour every night except Thursday -- when NBC reruns actually do get ratings -- and Saturday, a night on which no one is watching NBC to start with.
Fox intends to air new original programming -- mostly reality -- Monday through Thursday nights during the early part of the summer.
Operation Summer Shock and Awe begins right after Memorial Day, on Tuesday, May 27. That's the night Fox debuts "American Junior," which at one point was called "American Idol Junior" because it's a version of "American Idol" with younger performers. You may have heard Ryan Seacrest hawking it on "American Idol." The debut is two hours, from 8 to 10 p.m.
That very same night, in the very same time slot, NBC will trot out a second edition of "Dog Eat Dog," with back-to-back episodes. "Dog Eat Dog" has been described as a cross between "Fear Factor" and "The Weakest Link" -- not surprisingly, given that it's produced by guys who worked on both of those shows.
The next night, the NBC series "Fame" comes back from the dead, this time as a reality show. More than 20 years later, Debbie Allen still stars as mentor to a bunch of aspiring singers, dancers, actors and musicians -- and how "Twilight Zone" is that? Only this time, Allen won't be playing a teacher at New York City's renowned High School for the Performing Arts, as she did in the 1980 "Fame" flick and in the scripted drama series that aired on NBC in 1982 and '83 and in first-run syndication after that through fall '87. This time she's playing Debbie Allen, the formerly famous dancer-choreographer star of the "Fame" flick and TV series who is trying to make a Paula Abdulesque comeback in a "so you wanna be a star" search reality show.
On Thursday, May 29, when NBC is in Must Rerun TV mode, Fox will roll out two self-explanatory reality shows: "Stupid Behavior Caught on Tape" and the returning "30 Seconds to Fame."
Dick Wolf's "Crime & Punishment," the reality series in which cameras chronicle actual cases brought to trial by the San Diego County district attorney's office, returns on Sunday, June 1, because NBC owes so much to Wolf, whose "Law & Order" franchise has saved the network on so many occasions.
The next night, NBC debuts "For Love or Money," which had been referred to as "Average Joe" but isn't now -- maybe because it's a knockoff of Fox's "Joe Millionaire" and is even going to air in that show's Monday 9 p.m. time slot. In the NBC version, a bunch of hot chicks vie for the heart of a hunky Dallas defense attorney who thinks he's the prize, only they've been told behind his back that whoever he picks will win a million bucks but has to dump him. Tough choice.
Two weeks later, Fox, which has been unable to capitalize on "Joe Millionaire's" enormous ratings success on Mondays at 9, will continue not capitalizing with "Paradise Hotel," which debuts in that slot on June 16.
The show involves 12 unmarried guests, six men and six women, who are given the opportunity to live together at a resort. Each week they will vote out one of their fellow residents to make room for a new guest. Viewers can vie to become the new guest by calling in for a chance to be a studio contestant. Contestants must win a unique studio game and be picked by the studio audience and ultimately the hotel guests. Oh, and did I mention that reality shows in which it takes three sentences to explain the premise never seem to succeed?
From 8 to 9 that same night, Fox will debut another reality series, "Anything for Love," which will test the limits of love-life humiliation to which people are willing to be subjected in order to appear on television. Anyone who watched the gruesome final episode of "Married by America" already knows the answer to that one, but since hardly anybody did, Fox is probably safe here.
NBC will package "For Love or Money" with the returning "Meet My Folks," starting June 9. The following night, the network debuts a talent search series, "Last Comic Standing: The Search for the Funniest Person in America," hosted by Jay Mohr.
MSNBC yesterday damped down reports that Jesse Ventura's new talk show is in trouble. The much-delayed show still has no start date or time slot, or exact format. (When Ventura announced his deal in a well-orchestrated visit to NBC's "Tonight Show" in February, he told Jay Leno that it would probably be on the air "in a month or so.") One decision has been made: The network will let the former Minnesota governor do his nightly show from St. Paul.
But the network vehemently denied reports that, as one source put it, "the first pilot was a disaster and the second was worse."
"It's utterly ridiculous," an MSNBC rep told The TV Column yesterday. "We're excited about the show and expect it to launch this summer."
He acknowledged that "the war did delay development of the show slightly," explaining that by the time Ventura officially came on board on March 1, "our attention was focused on the Iraqi war. Only in the last several weeks has attention returned to the show, and development has begun in earnest."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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